The Mirk and Midnight Hour

by Jane Nickerson

  We approached the Lodge cautiously. All seemed peaceful except for the patter of rain. I lifted the door from the entrance and wrung out my skirt as we crossed the front room.

  My heart gave a leap of joy when I entered the next doorway because he was all right, sitting up, leaning against the wall with his hands lying quiet in his lap. He sat so motionless that his stillness filled the room. He seemed to take no notice of the drip, drip, dripping that happened right beside—though thankfully not actually on—his pallet. His expression was thoughtful, and rather austere, but when he saw us, the gaunt lines softened.

  “You came,” he said simply.

  I took an involuntary step forward and then stopped myself. I didn’t wish to voice my fears concerning the VanZeldts immediately. For one thing, I would have to get Seeley out of the way before I discussed such matters. And now, looking at the lieutenant, I suddenly thought it unlikely that the VanZeldts would harm the soldier when they had cared for him all these weeks. “I could hardly wait to see you again,” Seeley said. “I was afraid you wouldn’t still be here. Oh, and I made Violet promise she wouldn’t turn you in.” He plopped the saddlebags down just inside the doorway and then plopped himself down as close as he could to the lieutenant, narrowly missing the puddle. “We brought you food and stuff and”—his expression turned shy—“I brought paper and ink so you can begin writing another Heath Blackstock book. I’ve been thinking—maybe Heath could meet some snake people with forked tongues and scales and everything.”

  “First the food, Squiddy,” I said. “The lieutenant needs a meal before anything else.” I was anxious for Lieutenant Lynd to eat. He needed to put meat on his bones. So he wouldn’t look so tenuous. It seemed a long way to cross the floor with Lieutenant Lynd watching. I had started to spread out the food within his reach when I noticed something I hadn’t the other day. A red flannel mojo bag hung around Lieutenant Lynd’s neck.

  I pointed. “The VanZeldts tied that thing on you.”

  “They did,” he said, “right after they brought me here.”

  “You weren’t wearing it when we came before.”

  “Sometimes I take it off. The smell is pungent. But I always put it back on, because whatever the Shadows are doing, it seems to be working.” He picked up a corn dodger and leaned conspiratorially closer to Seeley. “In the army we had special names for the rations we were given.” The lieutenant was whispering, but I could hear. He caught my eye with his own smiling eyes so that I knew he knew I could hear. “We called the desiccated vegetables ‘bales of hay.’ If a fellow made the mistake of eating too much dry hay, he would swell up until he exploded.”

  Seeley laughed with delight. “Really?”

  “Well, I never saw it actually happen, but that was the rumor. And guess what we called ‘worm castles’?”

  Seeley drew his brows together. “Nasty old Swiss cheese?”

  “Good guess, but no. Our bread. Because by the time we got to Fort Donelson, the hard kind we had in our rations was full of maggots.”

  I sucked in my breath. The room seemed to have darkened.

  “Ugh.” Seeley shuddered. “Earthworms are nice, but … maggots. Ugh.”

  “You were—” My throat had closed up, so it was hard to make the words come out. “You were at Fort Donelson?”

  “Yes. Under General Grant. Before we crossed the Tennessee and headed south.”

  “Excuse me.” Abruptly I deserted Seeley and Lieutenant Lynd.

  Outside the Lodge, I strode across the clearing through the rain. I ducked beneath the spreading boughs of a great pine tree and sank to the ground, slumped against the trunk.

  He was at Fort Donelson. He might be the soldier who killed my brother.

  I banged my head against the bark until I scared myself and stopped.

  Lieutenant Lynd was the enemy.

  I stayed beneath the tree until I could regain control. Eventually I had to go back inside.

  Seeley and the lieutenant were still munching away when I entered. Lieutenant Lynd looked up inquiringly. I turned away and set my jaw as I seated myself on a stump as far from him as I could get. It wasn’t far enough. The room was small.

  “The lieutenant was saying how hard it was for the Yankees to cross the Tennessee,” Seeley told me. “They had to build a pontoon bridge. It was nearly washed away.”

  “Too bad they weren’t all swept off with it,” I said, low and fierce.

  Seeley stared. Lieutenant Lynd put down the sandwich he was holding. I had effectively stopped the conversation.

  “Thank you for everything, Miss Dancey,” the lieutenant said finally, hesitantly. “You’re very good to me, and I know it’s difficult for you as a Southern lady. It’s hardest on the women when we’ve taken occupation of their towns. It seems they hate us more than the men do.”

  “I loathe all Yankees,” I said. “You kill our brothers, fathers, husbands, and destroy our homes and way of life. Why shouldn’t we hate you?”

  He drew back slightly at my words. “The ladies in Nashville averted their eyes and crossed the road to get farther away from us. They twitched their skirts out of the way as if we were the most disgusting, filthy creatures they’d ever encountered. Believe it or not, that was more painful than a bullet.”

  How ridiculous that an enemy should be hurt because, naturally, the conquered despised him. I turned from his gaze. However, there was no place in particular to look, so I could only watch the rhythmic spatter falling into the puddle beside Seeley as Lieutenant Lynd continued.

  “The Southern men don’t act that way. Probably because soldiers shooting at each other sense how alike we really are under the uniforms. I could look in the haunted eyes of the other army and see my own ghost. We were alike in the mud, the bullets, the noise, the smoke, the question of what we were doing there. Some pickets even got friendly as they patrolled and exchanged tobacco and stories.”

  “And then went back to killing each other the next day.” I shook my head. Idiotic men.

  “Yes,” he said, “they went back to doing their duty.”

  “So, how many Confederates have you killed?” Seeley asked.

  “Oh, I’m a terrible marksman. Probably as many of them as they killed of me.”

  “How can you possibly know the number of men you’ve struck down?” I was clutching my black-edged handkerchief so tightly that my nails cut into my palm.

  “You have a point,” the lieutenant said slowly. “I guess I really have no idea. The smoke is so thick once the firing starts that all you can do is shoot into the haze.”

  For a moment no one spoke. Seeley began flicking droplets from the puddle my way.

  I ignored him. “Go on, though, Lieutenant. I’m curious about your opinion as to why the ladies react differently from the men?”

  He didn’t answer for a moment. He finished his sandwich before speaking again and I found myself watching his mouth as he chewed. He wiped it with a napkin. “The ladies don’t get to take action. They have to stay home, to worry, to suffer, to do without. They picture the enemy as alien beasts come to take everything from them. So naturally they hate us—who could blame them?”

  I broke away from the study of his mouth and busied myself with brushing away crumbs. I spoke very fast as I did so. “All we asked was to be allowed to leave with what was ours. All that talk, talk, talk, and we don’t understand each other at all. I don’t believe we even speak the same language. You Northerners march down here and expect to change everything we know and to make us cold and rough like yourselves and you burn our harvest and steal our stock and waste our country and you kill—you kill our loved ones.” I dashed away hot tears with the back of my hand.

  “You’re wearing mourning,” Lieutenant Lynd said gently. “Who …?”

  I swallowed. “My twin brother, Rush. Fort Donelson.”

  “Oh.” His voice was flat. He nodded slightly and looked down at his hands. “What a horrible thing war is. There’s nothing I can say to
let you know how sorry I am.”

  We sat in brooding silence for several minutes.

  Seeley twitched, shifted, and finally asked, “Shall I bring him the other things now?”

  Lieutenant Lynd shook himself and sat up straighter. “Let me finish this sweet potato pie first. Once I see everything you brought, I may forget to eat, and eating is important.” He gave a weak grin. “Did you hear that?”

  “Hear what?” Seeley asked.

  “How I said ‘sweet potato pie’? With a drawl like a Southerner. It’s impossible to say those words without putting on a rebel twang. See, I do speak the same language.”

  “Try ‘Alabama,’ ” Seeley said. “That’s a hard one to say Yankee.”

  “Alabama,” Lieutenant Lynd said. “You’re right. I sound just like—”

  He was making fun of me. “And what,” I interrupted, “makes you think you’re so enlightened that you can tell us our way of life is wrong? What gives you the right to come down here and take away our property?”

  “Because, Miss Dancey, your ‘property’ is men, women, and children.” For the first time the lieutenant’s tone was impatient. “Our pastor brought an old black man to a church meeting and had him remove his shirt. His back was so crisscrossed with scars from whipping that it was scarcely recognizable as skin.”

  “Of course it’s wrong to treat a servant so. Almost everyone I know would agree it’s wrong. No one in my family has ever laid a hand on any of our people.” Except for Sunny.

  Lieutenant Lynd shook his head. “I had to do more than spout that it’s ‘wrong.’ I had to put on a uniform and do something about it. People must take responsibility and stand up for innocents who have been so ill treated and oppressed they can’t stand up for themselves. The sin would be upon our heads if we continued to do nothing when we have the means to right things.”

  Seeley was playing in the puddle again, staring at it so fixedly that I knew he was upset.

  “There are slaves in the Bible,” I muttered. “Abraham had slaves.”

  “Thousands of years ago. No civilized, advanced society should allow such injustice.” He took a deep breath. “Let’s not talk about the war anymore. I don’t want to quarrel with you when you’re my benefactor, and when you’ve had such a terrible loss, but if we talk about it, we’ll quarrel.”

  I bit the inside of my cheek but couldn’t make myself hush. Redhot anger shot through me. Now I knew how Sunny had felt only a few hours earlier when she couldn’t be quiet no matter how Dorian reacted. “If you Northerners ruin the economy of the South, you’ll ruin your own. You just better hope we win or you’ll be in trouble.”

  His brow furrowed with something like pity, and that only made me angrier. He opened his mouth to say something, then closed it.

  “What?” I cried. “What were you about to say?”

  His head bent.

  “Tell me,” I demanded.

  He sighed. “Only that it’s unlikely to happen.”

  “What’s unlikely to happen?”

  “The Confederates don’t have a chance.”

  “Violet,” Seeley said, touching my shoulder, “please stop talking. The lieutenant doesn’t want to argue. I hope I can free my own slaves when I’m big enough, especially Mammy, even if the South wins, so be mad at me if you want to be mad.”

  “Oh, Seeley, you know I’m never mad at you. But”—I returned to Lieutenant Lynd—“what do you mean, we don’t have a chance? We’ve got cotton. Europe will step in and help us. They need Southern cotton.”

  “Europe doesn’t care that much,” he said carefully. Reasonably. “They’ll manage without it. They can get cotton from other sources. The North has all the country’s manufacturing, and their numbers far outweigh yours. They haven’t even started to tap into their resources.”

  He might have said “our” but instead said “their” when referring to the North. He might have pointed out that it was South Carolina that fired the first shot, but he did not. He was a fair fighter, and some tiny, hidden piece of me was relieved that he seemed much sharper and more aware than he had two days ago. More present. But that didn’t mean I could let him get away with anything.

  “One rebel can whip five Yankees.” I stated what I had heard our boys say so often.

  Lieutenant Lynd ignored the stupid boast. I was glad. “I only hope the end won’t be too long coming,” he said. “And when it does, we’ll have lots of mending to do so we can be one nation again as we’re meant to be.”

  My face was set. I made no further response.

  He began consuming corn dodgers one by one with determination, as if he were not enjoying them but knew he needed the nourishment.

  “Be sure to eat all the calf’s-foot jelly,” I said shortly. “It’s good for healing.”

  We continued in uncomfortable silence until Lieutenant Lynd dropped a dodger and said suddenly, “Why can’t the three of us be different from everyone else?”

  “Different how?” I asked.

  “Why can’t we be friends? Here, in this place so far away from the battlefront?”

  “Of course we can,” Seeley said.

  I bit my lip and was turning away when a slight movement from the wavy-glass window caught my eye.

  “Oh, my land,” I breathed.

  “Sparrow!” I cried. The lieutenant looked startled as I jumped up. Seeley followed me outside.

  The girl was darting, deerlike on her skinny legs, into the dripping, misty trees. She would have disappeared if I hadn’t called out once more. “It’s me. Miss Violet. Your cousin Laney’s friend. Don’t run off.”

  The girls at school had been frightened of Anarchy, Sparrow’s grandmother, and considered her a witch. On the rare times she was seen, they were also nervous of Sparrow, who was an odd, elusive child. I, however, had visited Anarchy’s little cottage now and again and was delighted by them both.

  Sparrow halted. Slowly she turned and came toward us through the drizzle, her great brown eyes wide. “I seen them,” she said. Her voice was so soft I had to lean in to hear.

  “Seen who?” I asked.

  “The People Things. I seen them a little bit ago, yonder by the big house.”

  She was obviously disturbed. I put my arm around her shoulders and she flinched slightly. “We won’t let anything hurt you, honey. You’re safe with us. This is Seeley. You’re about the same age, I think.”

  Seeley held out his hand. Sparrow simply stared at it.

  “What have you got there?” Seeley asked, pointing to the sling she wore across her middle.

  “Coon Baby.” Sparrow pulled the cloth back a little. A pointy nose poked out, along with bright, curious eyes set in a black mask.

  Seeley grinned. “Can I pet him?”

  Sparrow nodded.

  “Come inside where it’s dry—or rather dryish,” I said. “There’s a nice man there. Come tell us about what you saw.” It was the simple truth that the lieutenant was a nice man.

  The girl let me lead her to the Lodge. Seeley continued awkwardly petting Coon Baby as Sparrow picked her way with dainty, muddy bare feet through the debris in the front room and on to Lieutenant Lynd’s chamber.

  She halted just inside the doorway, twisting her hands together and acting as if she might turn and run any second.

  “Look who we found,” Seeley announced to the lieutenant with pride.

  “Lieutenant Lynd,” I said, “this is Sparrow. She lives a long ways off with her grandmother in the forest.”

  “I’m pleased to meet you,” the lieutenant said, smiling. “I couldn’t wait to see who Sparrow was.”

  “What on earth are you doing so far from home?” I asked the girl.

  It took a moment for her to answer. When she did, she spoke carefully and solemnly. “I been seeking a good place to leave Coon Baby. I tended him ’cause some critter ate his ma, but Memaw says ’tis time he be going to stay with his own kin.”

  “Why can’t you keep him?” Seeley asked
.

  “Memaw says it ain’t right to hold tight to a wild critter. I hate it, though, ’cause I raised him by hand.”

  Seeley couldn’t seem to stop looking at Sparrow. It wasn’t just her possession of Coon Baby that was fascinating. With her slight body, wild cloud of black hair, triangular face, and enormous, eyes, she made an enchanting figure. “I like your dress,” Seeley said.

  She glanced downward but did not smile. Her gown was of green-striped gingham, drenched from the rain, and much too short for her.

  “Come and sit down over here,” I said. “There’s still some pie left, if you’d like some.”

  She lowered herself tentatively to the edge of the stump while Seeley sat down beside her. I handed her a slice of pie, but she did not eat it. Instead, Coon Baby stuck his nose out and bit. Lieutenant Lynd gave a short, surprised laugh at the sight.

  “Now,” I said, “tell us who it was that scared you.”

  Sparrow shuddered. “Don’t know as I should talk about them,” she whispered. “Might be they’re listening.”

  We all glanced toward the dusky window.

  “I’ll go look around outside. To make sure no one’s near.” I made myself speak firmly, although I was by no means feeling as confident as I sounded.

  Outside, the drizzle had stopped and a breeze had picked up, swirling a rising mist. I walked to the edge of the clearing and peered as far as I could. Trunks swayed and leaves rippled, but I could see no person. When I returned, the lieutenant was talking quietly to Sparrow. She seemed less jumpy. The man had a calming way about him.

  “No one’s there,” I said.