Slant of Light

by Steve Wiegenstein

  Newton’s fifth birthday came and went on a crisp day when the air was so bright it felt charged with energy. “Come walk with me,” Charlotte told Turner in the afternoon. They walked past Harp Webb’s empty house toward the narrow place along the riverbank where he had killed the one-armed man. Turner didn’t like to visit this spot; even though he supposed he had killed others in the fight at the ford, that first killing remained vivid in his mind, and the place felt haunted to him. He supposed it always would. But before they reached the spot, Charlotte veered through the bushes down an overgrown trail. “This is where Adam always came in the mornings,” she said.

  She led him down the sloping rock to the water’s edge. Together they sat and watched the river flow, its waters gently lapping near their feet. Turner thought for a moment to ask her how she knew this to be Cabot’s private spot, but thought the better of it. The time for jealous questions, if ever there was such a time, had passed.

  “Newton’s going to have a baby brother or sister come springtime,” she said.

  The news took Turner by surprise, and even more to his surprise he found himself wiping tears from his cheeks with a trembling hand. “Almost makes you afraid to bring a child into a world like this,” he said.

  “Almost,” she said.

  “You’re not afraid?”

  She smiled. “What kind of madwoman would I be if I weren’t? But you and I are not the sort to cower.”

  “If Sam Hildebrand shows up here, I may do some cowering,” Turner said disconsolately.

  “He’s likely to, you know,” she said, her expression serious. “Have you thought about that?” Turner nodded.

  “And?”

  “As far as I can see, my choices are to wait here and let him kill me, or go out and find him first. Two can play the ambush game.”

  The rock was warm in the sun. Charlotte took off her shoes and put them beside her. Turner did the same.

  “Murder or be murdered? Husband, is that the best you can come up with?” She flicked him playfully on his arm.

  “Very well, Madam President, tell me what to do.”

  She paused, then spoke slowly, deliberately. “What do you think Adam would do?”

  Turner didn’t even have to think. “He was going to leave Daybreak for a while. He had written your father and asked him to take him on as an aide.” Charlotte nodded. “I’m not surprised. He always loved that sense of duty.”

  She leaned over and put her open hand, fingers spread, into the water, just at the surface, and watched it ripple over her fingers. “You may not have noticed, but he always admired you. Always. Even when you were—you know. In eclipse.”

  Turner reflected. “I suppose so.”

  “You know I’m right.”

  “I don’t even admire myself sometimes.”

  “Who does? It’s a good thing you don’t.” Charlotte pressed her hand, cold and wet, against his face. “You should take Adam’s place. Go find my father, and enlist in the service.”

  “You can’t be serious,” Turner said. “This valley is dangerous enough as it is. But to leave you and Newton alone? With another baby coming?”

  “I didn’t say it would be easy,” she said. “But to stay here and have Hildebrand show up some night, drag you out and hang you? That wouldn’t be protecting us. And for you to stalk and kill him—even if you could, and don’t forget, he’s been ambushing people in the woods a lot longer than you have—what would that do? I didn’t come out here to spend my life with a bushwhacker.”

  “Daybreak started out as a beautiful dream, and many have suffered to breathe life into it,” Turner said. “I can’t just leave.”

  “What was that dream, what did we believe in, really? People working together, putting aside competition in pursuit of equality. You’re not giving that up. Daybreak will still be here when you return. And if it’s not here, it’ll be somewhere else.”

  Turner stood up. The river in front of him flowed on, north to south, always moving, always pushing, down out of the mountains, through the shut-ins, through the swamps to Arkansas and beyond. Now that he thought about it, why were they here, in this place? It was just chance. A good lecture in St. Louis, the meeting with George Webb. It all seemed so long ago. Maybe he should just load everything on another boat and float back downstream. But of course that was not possible. The river had flowed on. As he stood, he looked across to the other bank, and he recalled that the big cedar tree he was looking at, lit up with yellow light from the lowering sun, was the tree under which he and Adam had buried the one-armed man. It wasn’t just the land that kept them here, or the loved ones they had buried in the cemetery; it was the killing as well, the body secretly buried in the sandy river bottom.

  “Well,” he said, “if the goal was to show how human nature could be perfected, we’ve certainly fallen short. That tree over there is where we buried him—you know, the man who killed Lysander Smith.”

  “Was that the goal? Perfection?”

  “I thought so at one time. Maybe not.” Turner reflected that he had always been prone to believing his own rhetoric—that human beings could rise above the endless cycle of work and spend, turning into gods. Instead, he had joined the monsters, a liar, a killer, a cheat. Some demigod he had become. Maybe the goal should simply have been to live a better life, or try to live a better life.

  Charlotte tugged at the tail of his coat, and he sat back down on the sloping rock. “We’re in a war,” she said. None of us are innocent now. We aren’t going to change the world for a while. All we can hope to do is keep things together and survive.”

  “I’ve been an idealistic fool, pretending I could remake humanity.”

  “I love the idealist. I married one. And if he ever gets realistic and starts accepting whatever the world hands him, I’ll kick him in the shins.”

  It was getting dark. They put their shoes on and headed back from the river, hand in hand.

  “Springtime, eh?” he said.

  “Yes. May, I think.”

  “Shall we start talking about names?”

  “Let’s wait till springtime. Don’t want to bring bad luck.”

  “All right. But if it’s another boy—”

  She read his mind. “Yes. That would be good. And when you return, we must think about how to keep this community on a sound footing. We know that farming won’t support a town of any size, and I’m beginning to have my doubts about the rope mill.”

  “I haven’t agreed with your idea about leaving,” Turner said.

  “Yet,” said Charlotte.

  When they emerged from the river woods, they could see a troop of Federal cavalry resting on their horses outside their house. Almost everyone else in the community was gathered around them. Sheriff Willingham was sitting in their front door, playing with Newton, making him guess which hand held a pebble. He stood up as they approached and removed his hat.

  “Evening, folks. I have some bad news.”

  Turner felt Charlotte wobble on his arm, but she regained her strength. They walked the last few steps toward him.

  “Yes, Sheriff? What is it?” Charlotte said. Her voice was husky.

  He held out a piece of paper. “Evacuation order. Captain’s issued it. This valley’s had too much rebel activity, and we can’t seem to stamp it out. So every man from fifteen to forty-five has to clear out. Women and children can stay or go as they please. I’m sorry.”

  “Is that all?” Charlotte exclaimed. “I was afraid … well … I was afraid someone had gotten killed.”

  “No, ma’am,” he said. “But any man we find in the valley from now on is considered an outlaw. Orders are to shoot on sight.”

  “When does this start?” Turner said.

  “Starts now,” said Willingham. “These boys and me are riding on down the river. We’re stopping at every settlement from here to Greenville. It’ll take us another day or two, but when they come back, they’ll be ready to shoot.”

  “Does the captain
have that kind of authority?” Charlotte said.

  “Well, ma’am, it’s martial law. They can do anything they decide to do. Back when Frémont was the state commander, he freed all the slaves, till Old Abe went and un-freed ‘em.”

  “Come on, Willingham,” said one of the horsemen. “I want to make it to French Mills before full dark.”

  “Well, you’ve been served your notice,” Willingham said, walking to his horse. He looked around the group and gestured toward Turner, Wickman, Schnack, and the others. “Don’t know when I’ll see you fellers again. Good luck to you.” He scrutinized Emile Mercadier. “How old are you, mister?”

  “I’m over forty-five, that’s for sure,” Mercadier said.

  “All right then. Well, goodbye.” He mounted his horse.

  “How does it feel to be driving people from their homes?” Charlotte called to him.

  “Better than it would feel to have these boys chasing after me and shooting at me,” Willingham said. He rode off in the center of the troop.

  The colonists were left standing in the packed dirt in front of the house. “What are we going to do, Mr. Turner?” Schnack said.

  “Seeing that everybody on every side wants to shoot us, I guess we’d better do as the man says and leave,” Turner said. “Like it or not.”

  “I go back to Cincinnati, I think,” Schnack said. “After that, I don’t know, enlist maybe.”

  “Not me,” Wickman said. “Sleeping on the ground is not for me. We’ve still got Emile’s shop in town. I’ll just go up there and stay. Who knows, maybe I’ll learn shoe repair. Missus, maybe you can bring the girls in now and then, whenever it’s safe.”

  “How about you, Mr. Turner?” Schnack said. “Where are you going to go?”

  Turner looked up at the ridge, which was now almost completely dark. “I’m going east. I’ll try to find Charlotte’s father and sign on with him. Do what I can to get this war over with as soon as possible and come back to Daybreak.”

  One by one, everyone went back to their homes. Turner and Charlotte stood in the yard and watched them go. Newton quietly slipped between them and took their hands.

  “Your daddy has to go and fight in this war,” Charlotte told him.

  “Are you going to be a hero?” Newton asked with awe in his face.

  “Only as much of a hero as I need to be to get back to you,” said Turner.

  That night they met at the Temple, then went out and dug up two fence posts from around Wickman’s house to give the departing men their shares of the community treasury. “I may not have this much when I come back,” Schnack said, embarrassed. “I hear you got to buy your own food and such.”

  “Don’t worry,” Charlotte said. “You’re a citizen of Daybreak. You can come back without a penny if you have to.”

  “I give it to my mama back in Cincinnati,” he said. “She’ll hold it for me and send me what I need.”

  “Let’s go out together tomorrow morning,” Turner said. “We can leave the wagon in town with Wickman.”

  Emile Mercadier raised his hand as the group was about to leave. “One moment,” he said. He tottered toward the front of the room; Emile’s legs had been getting worse through the years, and his steps were slow and painful.

  “We come a long way,” he said. “Marie and I, we come all the way from France, and John Wesley and Frances there come from Baltimore, and Mr. Schnack from Ohio, and on and on it goes. But here we are today, together. I want you all to come back when this war is over, but we all know that war sometimes don’t cooperate with what we want. So I ask you all, stop for a moment with me and accept my thanks. Thank you, my brothers and sisters, for laboring with me these years, and may we all meet here again soon.” He reached out to Charlotte. “Take my hand, cherie.”

  Charlotte stepped up and took his hand, and with her other hand she grasped Turner’s. One by one the members of the community joined hands, Marie last of all, taking the hand of Schnack and completing the circle by taking her father’s. No one spoke. They stood in a great ring, hands clasped in the dim lamplight, for a long minute. Then Emile raised his hands, and they all followed.

  “Where there is darkness,” he said softly.

  In bed that night, with Newton asleep, they made love, and Turner felt an intensity in Charlotte, as if she were making love to him for the last time in her life. Neither of them wanted the moment to end. But end it did, and afterward they lay together quietly, with her head resting on his chest.

  “What kind of world will we see after all this is over?” Turner said into the night.

  “The same world you left,” Charlotte answered. “People love and are loved. You love and are loved. Men do horrible deeds and great deeds. Women wait and fear and hope and love. Children grow up and we try to smooth their way, but fail most of the time.”

  “Will Daybreak be here when I get back?”

  She swatted his chest softly. “Of course, you silly man. Do you think Daybreak is just a place? That’s only in the book. You’ll take Daybreak with you, and I’ll keep Daybreak here.”

  There was a silence for a time. Turner could tell she was working on what to say next. “In the morning,” she said, “you must get up early. Go spend some time with your daughter, and her mother. Then come back to me.” She rubbed her nose against his shoulder. “Now lie still,” she said. “I want to listen to your heartbeat.”

  Charlotte lay there for a long time, her ear pressed against James’ nightshirt, listening to the sounds of the dark. Newton stirring in his sleep. A cricket somewhere near the door. James’ breathing in her ear as it grew slower and deeper.

  How many nights had she lain here in just such a way, the one who stayed awake while the others slept? This was to be her task in life, it seemed, to be the watchful and strong one, the one who held everyone else together. Others could fall apart or indulge their failings, but not her. Where was the justice in that? Was there no room in the world for a moment’s weakness for her? Giving James cheer as he marched off to war, when what she really wanted was to retreat from it all and hide away from the world. Her father far away, her husband leaving, and of course—

  Her love gone.

  She suddenly recalled her mother and understood what had happened to her during those final years. Someone she loved had been taken from her, taken without sense or cause, and her own life was hollowed out, a great emptiness inside her that could not be filled by anything else. It would remain forever empty.

  Tomorrow she would try to be that strong person again. Tonight she lay in darkness. She turned her face away and rested her cheek on her forearm.

  Charlotte realized that she had not truly mourned Adam yet. She had only experienced his loss in the same unthinking way of her mother, stunned by the blow into insensibility and mute gestures. She needed to do more to honor him than just feel sad and send her husband to fight in his place. She owed it to him—she owed it to herself—to ponder both his dying and his living, to make something of it. The qualities in her that had drawn him to her—those needed to be remembered and preserved, not like a flower between the pages of a book, but in life as she lived it, or else the woman he loved would be lost. And the things in him she had loved so much—

  Those things were buried in the cemetery, at least in their true form. The best she could hope was to re-create them in the people around her, her children, the villagers, herself.

  And a wall inside her broke and she began to cry, the tears she had been holding back all this time, let them run down her cheeks and over her arm without trying to wipe them away, tears for Adam and for herself. She let them flow. Perhaps there would be no end to them, but so be it. Surely there would be an end to tears someday. Let the flow begin, in the hope that someday they would wash out a clean channel from her heart into the brutal, brutal world.

  November 1862

  Chapter 29

  Charlotte sat in the cemetery on the bench Wickman had carved, holding the Sharps rifle in her lap. The b
ittersweet she had planted on Adam’s grave had grown a foot up the marker; in another year it would be reaching beyond its top. She would run a string from the grave to the overhanging tree branches to give it something to climb. Another year or two, and it would garland the edge of the forest with its bright berries, and then perhaps spread along the hillside. That would be good, autumn flashes of orange along the forest’s verge to remember him by.

  Charlotte recalled Harp’s Webb’s words about the power of watchful waiting; there had been turkey sign on the hillside across the hollow. She would have a couple of hours this afternoon to try to bag one while young Adam was napping; Marie had promised to come to her door and wave when he awoke. And if not a turkey, perhaps a deer would come out to graze among the corn stubble. Or a squirrel, or a rabbit. Anything would be fine.

  She looked down at the village. She could see the river ford, the junction of the main road and the Daybreak road, the Temple of Community, the houses, her house, and all the way down to Webb’s house. She could see Newton, no napper anymore, leading Angus Mercadier, who ought to have been napping, around the fields. From this distance she could not hear them, but she could tell they were talking as they played, a steady stream of kid-talk, Lord only knew about what. Now that the leaves were off the trees, she could see the water wheel in the river, turning slowly, its energy running to no purpose since the gear shaft was not engaged.

  They had not put in any cash crops this year. There seemed no point to it, and besides, food was the first necessity. So the whole valley had been planted in row crops and hill crops—potatoes, beans, corn, sweet potatoes, greens, beets, turnips. Wheat took too much work for the flour it yielded, so this year there would be nothing but cornbread. There was one rangy hog they had been tolling down to the barn, and in a few more weeks they would kill it. Foraging parties and thieves—it was hard to tell the difference—had gotten all the cattle. At least the foraging parties stopped and gave them scrip.