Wild Wind Westward

by Vanessa Royall

  Then the man laughed. “Son, that’s been done long ago. This is August the tenth, year of our Lord eighteen hundred and sixty-three.”

  August tenth? Could not be. It was…it was July the second, and…

  Hard. To think. The faces wavered, and gradually disappeared into the cloud out of which they had emerged. But Eric remembered them as he sank away into sleep. He knew they would be there again.

  Father and daughter looked at each other after Eric had dozed off. “Well, reckon we know his name now, at least,” said Wilbur Nesterling. “Can’t tell for sure, yet, but he did ask what day it was. Seems a good sign.”

  “Oh, I hope so,” said his daughter, Elaine. “But oughtn’t we to have contacted his unit? Shouldn’t we do so now?”

  “You know how I feel about that, child. War is evil. All war, both sides. This here’s a good man an’ he’s done all anybody could expect him to do. We’re doing the Lord’s work now.”

  “As you say, Father. That he survived at all shows the hand of God in his destiny.”

  “Ah, my child, and your hand, too. You were the one to find him.”

  The Nesterlings themselves were almost as lucky as Eric. Their farm, just west of Gettysburg, had felt the ebb and flow of armies while the great battle took place. For three days, July first, second, and third, Confederate and Union forces surged back and forth across the soil, battering down the wheat, the com. Until, when the tide of battle turned, and the North drove Lee and his men out of Pennsylvania, not a sprout of wheat, not a stalk of com, remained standing. Yet, incredibly, the farmhouse had not been touched, the barn was still intact. Even the livestock had not been appropriated for food.

  “They were too busy fighting, and I reckon they didn’t have time to wreck our buildings or kill our cattle,” Wilbur Nesterling reasoned. “And God’s will, of course.”

  Wilbur Nesterling put his faith in God, not men, and he had taught his daughter, his only child, to do the same. She was his reason for living, now that his wife had died, but he feared for her, and never had he feared for her more than during the great battle. Soldiers were animals, and Elaine was—Did she know it yet? Was she aware of her power—a great beauty? But for once the armies swept in, fought, and left. They did not remain week after week to despoil the countryside and deflower its women. Wilbur gave thanks to his God when the soldiers left Gettysburg, and it was with considerable consternation that he saw his daughter race across the fields the day after General Meade’s departure, calling something he could not quite decipher. She was greatly agitated, and her clothing dirty and in disarray. God forbid if…

  “Father, Father! I was out seeking berries, and I came upon a soldier!”

  Wilbur, fearing the worst, had turned immediately toward his house, to get his shotgun and do what must be done.

  But Elaine Nesterling was not without awareness of her dear father’s gentle obsessions.

  “Oh, it’s not that! Is that all you can think about? I found a man, and he’s alive. Badly wounded, but alive. His men must not have found him, before they left. And we must do something.”

  The dead—thousands of them—had been buried, and the wounded carted away for treatment. The battlefield had been scoured for survivors. So at first Wilbur did not see how a whole living man could have been missed. Perhaps he was attempting to desert. But when Elaine led him back across the mined field and into the trees behind Cemetery Ridge, when she showed him the place beneath the fallen tree where the soft earth had been dug for a shelter, he understood. The man was nearer dead than alive, his uniform blasted away by some unimaginable explosion, lacerations covering his body, a limb or two broken, and his breath coming in long, horrible hisses. Such a sound had caught Elaine’s attention.

  The surprising thing was that the man had found shelter at all. God’s will.

  Even more surprising, that he was still alive.

  God’s will as well.

  Father and daughter fashioned a makeshift stretcher of saplings and vines, and trundled the wounded man back to the farmhouse. A doctor was summoned. He shook his head, but, because the Nesterlings insisted, he set the broken legs, the shattered arm, bandaged tightly the skull he believed fatally fractured, shook his head again, and left.

  “There’s no hope,” he told them. “This man ought to have died three times already. Once from shock, once from the blow to his head, and once from exposure. Call me if you need me, but there’s nothing more I can do.”

  If God wanted the man to live, Wilbur reasoned, then he would live. But Elaine was less placid, less accepting. Night and day she stayed near the man, whose fairness moved something deep inside her that had never been moved before, but which, mysteriously, was nevertheless very familiar to her, even thrilling. Hourly she bathed him with a damp cloth, holding his fever down. Tenderly she replaced the dressings over his lacerations, and watched them heal. With fearful interest at first, later with a kind of gentle amusement, she quieted him in delirium, listened to him babble in a soft tongue, strange to her, but not unsettling.

  The only bad times for her occurred when he would try to start up against the bonds which held him to the bed, when he would cry out, “Kristin! Kristin, darling!” in a voice filled with love and desperation.

  Elaine Nesterling was a loving girl, but she hated it when he called that name. And, although she did not believe her own creations, Elaine spun tragic fantasies that a terrible, heartless woman named Kristin had once wronged this splendid man lying near death on a bed in her father’s house.

  Ah, but she would make him forget that name when he recovered. And she never doubted that he would recover.

  When first he opened his eyes, near the end of July, she was there. Every time thereafter, if he stirred or made a sound, she was there. Finally, when he was conscious enough to speak, to seem to see her and her father, she quieted him, saw him back into sleep, and, on the calendar hanging on the pantry wall, made a big star on the date, August tenth. Over a month had been lost to this man Gunnarson, but for herself—she was sure—boon beyond measure had been won.

  By the latter part of August Eric was well enough to sit up for an hour each day. He began to take solid foods, vegetables, a boiled potato, small pieces of beef or pork. The small quantities of broth Elaine had managed to spoon into him before had sustained him, but now, on substantial fare, he began to grow slowly stronger. He was unable to concentrate very well, and his remarks wandered, now about the army, now about things that had happened in New York, which he could not explain in sufficient detail for her to understand. But she read to him, and he liked that. She read him long passages from the Bible, and he nodded in vague pleasure at the majestic poetry of the Old Testament Uncle Tom’s Cabin agitated him, though, so Elaine discontinued that, and instead took up the tales of Fenimore Cooper. Wilbur Nesterling had been brought up in staid New England, and had been to school before removing himself to the wilds of prewar Pennsylvania, but he had brought his books along with him. One day in early September, when Elaine was reading Eric Romeo and Juliet, the suffering of the doomed lovers moved her to tears, and she had to pause.

  Eric was still very weak, and had never really conversed with her, but her weeping struck him deeply, and he was no longer just a convalescent but a man.

  “It’s all right” he told her. “You don’t have to go on. I know it’s very sad.”

  “That’s not it, that’s not it,” she said, wiping her eyes on the corner of her apron, “it’s just that it’s so beautiful.”

  “Being apart from someone you love is never beautiful,” he said, staring into a middle distance.

  Kristin! thought Elaine, suddenly worried, and she put aside the book.

  For a long time Eric was not at all sure he would survive. His eyes focused not much better than his mind, and if there was a part of his body that did not throb with pain, he had not yet found it. All he knew for certain, for a long time, was that somehow he had come from the grave of earth beneath the tree to
this warm farmhouse, and friends. A man and a woman. Gradually he knew them as a father and a daughter, good people, both, and then, during September when he began to sense a quiver of strength returning, he distinguished them further: he was in the home of a canny old farmer and his beautiful daughter.

  Elaine was truly lovely, in spirit as well as form, comely of face, soft of hand, high of breast. He looked forward to seeing her from the moment of waking, and all day he enjoyed her moving about the house, taking care of it, taking care of him. He remembered everything about Kristin now, although he did not speak of her, and sometimes it gave him pain to feel toward Elaine the emotions he had learned with Kristin, from whom he was parted. Where was she now? What had become of her? What had become of the war and the world?

  “I must have paper,” he said one October morning. The chill of approaching winter already moved through the valleys, and in the fireplace logs burned high.

  Elaine finished washing the breakfast bowls, and came over to his bed. There was a look in her eyes he could not read.

  “Why?” she asked, quietly.

  Eric read her look, her tone. One part of him felt tenderness, even joy, because he knew he was loved. But, because she did love him, loved him so obviously and with such devotion, the chances of hurting her were increased. He did not wish to hurt her at all; the mere thought of it caused tumult in his own heart. But he had to write.

  “I must try and contact my army division, and tell them of my whereabouts and circumstances. It is my responsibility. I should also write to New York. I know people there, and they will worry if they don’t hear from me.”

  Elaine said nothing, and dutifully brought him writing paper, ink, and a pen. Eric wrote. He had no idea where, at this point, Colonel Randolph’s division might be, and it was quite likely that Randolph himself was dead. Eric wrote to the commanding general of the Army of the Potomac, describing his wounds, his present situation, and promising to rejoin his unit as soon as he was able to travel. He slipped the message into an envelope, sealed it, and then began his letter to Kristin. She must know he was safe, and, if not well, at least recovering. There was no other way but to send the letter directly to her, in care of the Madison Hotel. Surely she and Gustav would have moved from there by now, but perhaps the letter might be forwarded. Perhaps it would reach her somehow. He could only hope. It was a very short message, but it said all that needed to be told:

  Dear Kristin:

  I was wounded in battle last summer, but am on the way to complete recovery. I do so hope that you are well and happy. To me, the future shall be what it seemed when last we met. All waiting eventually ends.

  Momentarily he had the impulse to sign it “Starbane,” his ancestral name, so that, if Gustav should happen to read it, the wretch should know the man he had bested was indomitable. But Eric had no land, and without land it was not right to use the name. Instead he initialed the page “EG,” and, hoping for the best, sealed the envelope.

  “New York must be a very fine place,” said Elaine, glancing at the envelope. The name Kristin stared up at her, and burned into her mind.

  “It is not so fine as all that. Great, true, but also cold and hard. I was born in the country, and the countryside will always be first in my heart.”

  Elaine was pleased. “I shall walk down to the main road,” she offered, “and give these to the postman when he rides by.”

  Eric thanked her, lay down, and dozed off. The effort of the letters had taxed him considerably. It was one thing to write cheerfully that he was on the road to “complete recovery,” and quite another actually to be recovered.

  Elaine saw that he was covered warmly with the heavy quilt she had made especially for him, then slipped on her coat and left the house. The Nesterling farmstead was about half a mile from the main road, which wandered through the countryside, from Gettysburg to Harrisburg. Usually Elaine delighted in the walk to meet the postman when he made his once-a-week round. And today was splendid, the air clear and sharp, just a kiss of clean wind, the whole world filled with the scent of oak leaves, straw, and crisp dry cornhusks. In a distant field she saw her father cutting and binding stalks of com, setting them into shucks to dry. They looked like small golden teepees on the reddish-brown earth of autumn. Usually Elaine would have savored this stroll down to the main road. But not today. Eric’s two letters burned in her hand. They were his connection to the outside world. Since July she had had him to herself, and the outside world did not matter. The outside world did not even exist. But now…

  When she studied her heart, which was a prayer phrase her father sometimes used, Elaine knew she loved Eric. She knew also that love forced is love rejected. She must wait, and let Eric find her, find her truly, although she had been there before his eyes the entire time since summer. She thought, of late, that he seemed to look at her differently, more intensely, and so one fine day might he not study his own heart, and discover what was already inside?

  He might. He would!

  But not, perhaps, if the outside world intruded, if letters came back, if…

  Elaine Nesterling had never done a great sin.

  Once she had lied to her teacher, Mrs. Dobbs, saying that her primer had fallen into the creek, when, in truth, Elaine had left it carelessly on the porch, and a goat had eaten it.

  Several times she had complained to her mother—when her mother was alive—and thus avoided chores she knew she ought to have done.

  Several times she had kissed boys in the graveyard in back of the church, and once she had let Vance Trumbull, of Hagerstown, touch her breasts, but that might just have been an accident, and although it hadn’t been, not really, it would have had to happen sometime anyway, wouldn’t it? Vance Trumbull was a nice boy.

  That was the problem. Vance Trumbull and the others had been—were—still boys. There was a man now in Elaine’s house, and in her heart.

  She reached the main road, and looked toward the north, from which direction the postman rode. Far off on the horizon she saw him coming, his horse trotting easily over the golden hills. God, such beauty in this earth, such possibility for beauty and love within her breast. Yet all of it might be ruined by these two letters in her hand. Elaine Nesterling had never done a great sin, and at this moment, she was sufficiently afflicted by imminent loss to convince herself that what she chose to do was no sin either.

  The postman rode up to her and reined in his horse, greeted her, and reached into a leather saddlebag.

  “Naught but the Harrisburg newspaper, Miz Nesterling,” he said, not noticing the pleased expression on her face as he gave this news, not noticing either the two crumpled envelopes beneath her apron. “Gen’l Thomas sure gave them Rebs a licking at Chickamauga. Can’t see how the South can last much longer. Anything for me to post?”

  “No,” she answered, sweetly, her heart resolved and at peace. She took the newspaper with her, bade the postman good-bye, and walked across the fields toward her father. She managed, on this short trek, to shred Eric’s two letters into tiny pieces, scattering them as she walked, letting them blow out over the hills with the wind, like flecks of forlorn snow.

  “What’s the news?” called Wilbur Nesterling, as he saw her approaching. He took the paper and sat down next to a com shuck, wiping his forehead. He was not getting any younger, and he knew it. Farming was no work for a man getting on in years, but he couldn’t afford a hired man, and he didn’t have a son.

  “Father,” Elaine said tentatively, as Wilbur read the war news and shook his head in perplexity at human folly, “what do you think will happen if—when—Eric gets better?”

  Wilbur looked up. He had, many times, seen her looking at the young man. He knew the look. It was natural, God’s will. Wilbur didn’t mind. Long as looking was as far as it went. Right now.

  “I don’t know,” he allowed. “Why don’t you ask him?”

  “Oh, I couldn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “He’d think…he’d think
I was too interested.”

  Wilbur smiled, tenderly but shrewdly. “Why, honey, I thought that’s just what you were.”

  “Oh, Papa.”

  “Now, now. I understand. He’s a fine-looking man, and he seems a smart one, too. But he doesn’t talk much. What of his friends? His kin?”

  She shook her head. Her father was right. When she came right down to it, Eric had not told her very much about himself at all.

  Well, winter was coming, and he certainly would not be ready to travel before it settled over the land. There would be many long, long winter days by the fire, plenty of days for him to tell her everything there was.

  October, red and gold and rustling, became cold, blue November, which swept suddenly into white December, and on into January 1864. The great cold of winter settled over the Pennsylvania hills, and the comfortable distances of summer grew vast and measureless from horizon to horizon. The Nesterling farmhouse seemed to hunker down against the very cold, and at night beneath an icy, starriven sky, there was to be heard the distant booming of blue ice on the rivers and lakes.

  But in the farmhouse itself all was warm and safe and dry.

  Eric felt strength flowing back to him. He was able to walk now with only a slight limp, and often he would go out with Wilbur Nesterling to tend to the cattle in the barn. Each week he watched from the farmhouse window, waiting for the postman to ride by, and although the paper brought them news of the outside world—Lincoln would run for president again; Chattanooga had fallen to the Union, and Ulysses S. Grant had become general-in-chief—he received letters neither from the army nor from Kristin. At first he was puzzled and hurt by this, but he put things into perspective. Of what use would he be, now, as a fighting man? He was just beginning to walk again. Even if he were fit to travel and rejoin his unit, the roads were impassable. As for Kristin, his heart was with her, hers with him. They had been apart before. He would see her once again, when Time and God arranged it. In the spring. In the summer. When he was hale and fine.