Ghost Soldier (3 page)

Mrs. Hambrick was taking Dad to meet some of her “good friends” at the university that afternoon, and she wanted me to come along, as well. I was torn. The last thing I wanted to do was sit in some college dining hall listening to a bunch of boring adults. But I didn't want to leave Dad alone with Mrs. Hambrick and those good friends of hers, either.

In the end, it didn't matter what I wanted. Dad said I had to come with them. I told him I only had T-shirts and an old Apple computer sweatshirt with holes in the sleeves, unless he wanted me to wear my running sweats—not exactly the right clothes for a fancy faculty club.

But Dad said the place wasn't that fancy. He dug through my duffel bag and pulled out a plaid flannel shirt I'd brought to wear over the T-shirts, and said I'd look okay if I wore that, all buttoned up.

“Why do I have to get dressed up like this?” I asked him. “I look like a geek!” Even dumber than you do in your jacket, with loose hairs pulling out of your ponytail, I thought, but I didn't say it out loud.

“Trust me,” Dad said, grinning, “I've seen plenty of geeks, and you don't look anything like one.” Then his round face got serious. “Do it for me, Alexander, okay? Paige is important to me. I've told you that. And these are people we'll see a lot of when we move here.”

“I live in Indiana,” I told him. “Not here.”

Dad sat down on Carleton's bed and fidgeted with a stuffed tyrannosaurus. “I know you wish things were different, Alexander, but your mother's not coming back.”

“She will,” I said, even if he didn't want to hear it. I twisted the leather lariat as if it was a tether binding her to me.

“Alexander,” Dad said, and his voice sounded muffled, as if he were trying not to cry. Maybe he did hope Mom would come back, but he just couldn't quite believe it. Maybe it's harder to believe in someone when you're grown up. Then he looked at me and said, “Your mother left us, and I divorced her.”

So what? Mom didn't show up in court, so maybe she didn't know she was divorced. If you can undo a marriage, can't you undo a divorce? “You'll see,” I said calmly, staring him right in the eye. “She'll be back.”

“You're like a program stuck in an endless loop!” He sounded exasperated, but he was the one who looked away. “Please, Alexander—just give Paige a chance, for me? You'll like her—if you just let yourself. She knows you like history, so she's set up this trip to a Civil War battlefield on Saturday. I want you to enjoy it.”

But I didn't want to like her. “Why does she think I like history?” I asked, wondering what else she thought she knew about me.

Dad blinked, surprised. “I told her you did. I mean—you've got all those books about the Trojan War and those posters of Greece up on your walls…” His voice trailed off.

He really didn't understand. Maybe he didn't remember Mom's stories. But all I said was, “Mom's stories about the Trojan War aren't the same as the Civil War, Dad. I'm not interested.”

He stood up suddenly and dropped the toy dinosaur on Carleton's bed. “Well, act interested this weekend.” And he strode out of the room.

I still felt like a geek when we got to the Great Hall, but the other two professors didn't seem to mind how either Dad or I looked. They talked about computers and teaching and asked questions about Indiana, then told Dad how much he was going to like North Carolina.

I just sat there not paying much attention to them, glad I could get something ordinary like a cheeseburger.

“So you like history, Alexander?” Dr. Seagraves asked, her black eyes curious.

I mumbled, “Sure, I guess—some history, anyway.”

“Well, Alexander is certainly the name for a history lover,” she said, smiling as she speared a lettuce leaf. “Alexander the Great, you know.”

I remembered that Mrs. Hambrick said Dr. Seagraves taught history. I thought about telling her my mom loved history—she named me for Alexander the Great. But I felt funny talking about Mom in this place. So I just nodded and stuffed a french fry in my mouth.

“Alexander plays the recorder,” Mrs. Hambrick said. “Another tie with history.”

Dr. Seagraves looked at me as if I'd just done something very interesting. “That
is
quite an historic instrument. Does your music teacher have you play medieval rondos and ballads in class?”

I swallowed the french fry, wondering what to answer. Everybody was looking at me. I finally said, “Well, I kind of like folk songs and stuff better.”

“Don't put the boy on the spot,” Dr. Knox said. He taught in the math department with Mrs. Hambrick. “Perhaps he just plays the instrument because he likes the way it sounds! Not everything has to do with history, you know.”

“Well, we certainly have a great deal of War Between the States history around here,” Dr. Seagraves said. She didn't seem mad at Dr. Knox for ribbing her.

“Civil War, if you please,” Dr. Knox said, shaking his head. “I've been telling you that all year.”

Dr. Seagraves smiled at Dr. Knox and brushed away a strand of black hair that had come loose from her long braid. “If you stay here long enough, Knoxie, you'll get the name straight.”

Dr. Knox snorted. “You'd know as much about that as I do. You came here from Missouri!”

“Remember, my family came from North Carolina originally,” Dr. Seagraves said, frowning slightly. “They fled after Sherman's raiders destroyed their home.”

My eyes widened. I wondered if Dr. Seagraves had family here waiting for her all that time, cousins or great-great-great-great-nieces and -nephews or something. It was over a hundred years since the Civil War—how long did you have to wait for people to come back?

“She's been trying to sort out the family genealogy,” Mrs. Hambrick explained.

Dr. Seagraves pushed her plate away. “I got a chance to come here as a visiting professor, but my year's almost up and I haven't found anything. My mother's grandmother was just a young girl when she left North Carolina after the War. She married a man named Andrew Harkens, but I couldn't find any record of him. Then she died in her twenties after having a baby girl. She could never bring herself to talk about her old home or the rest of her family, and we're not even sure of her maiden name.”

Mrs. Hambrick nodded. “So many Southern names were lost after the War. Family lines continued, but it was the women who went on. And it's so hard to trace your ancestors through the female side of the family!”

Dr. Seagraves sighed. “It was foolish to come here expecting to discover hidden family secrets.”

I thought about tracing my own family, as a student waiter took away our lunch plates and brought us dessert. I knew Dad's parents had died—I'd seen pictures of them in an old album and pictures of Uncle Greg when he was a kid. There were even old, faded photos of my great-grandparents as kids, looking serious in strange grown-up-style clothes. But I didn't know anything about my mother's family. She had told me everything about families who'd lived thousands of years ago, but nothing about her own. I didn't even know where they lived.

“Dr. Seagraves,” I asked hesitantly, “where did you look to learn about your folks?”

Dad glanced at me, surprised, but Mrs. Hambrick smiled, like we were one big happy family already.

“I checked county records,” Dr. Seagraves told me, spooning up some purplish sherbet. “But a lot of them were destroyed during the Reconstruction. The ones left in the archives didn't tell me anything. I've also been checking with genealogical societies and the Daughters of the Confederacy, of course.”

Dr. Knox looked up from his cheesecake. “I still find it hard to believe that people feel proud of ancestors who fought for the Confederacy. Fighting for the Union, sure—they fought to unite the country and to abolish slavery! It was a noble cause.”

Dr. Seagraves shook her head decisively. “Some Northerners certainly wanted to abolish slavery and believed in uniting the country, but the government used the idea to inspire popular support for their political and economic aims.”

“Well, defeating the South certainly freed the slaves and reunited the Union,” Dr. Knox pointed out.

Dr. Seagraves put her spoon down, spilling a puddle of sherbet onto her plate. “Yes, but it also brought new suffering not just for the soldiers who died on both sides, but for the families that were broken apart and lost track of one another.”

“Perhaps something will turn up about your ancestors before the semester ends,” Mrs. Hambrick said softly.

Dr. Seagraves smiled. “Well, I appreciate the thought, Paige, but I'm afraid I'll have to go home to St. Louis this summer not knowing. I suppose it sounds silly, but knowing who your family was tells you something about who you are. I wanted to learn that.”

I wanted to learn it, too. I pushed away my plate of half-eaten pie. The crust was too sweet, and the syrup stuck in my throat.

*   *   *

Outside, after lunch, the professors spoke together in the quad. I liked the trim hedges and the bright flowers lining the walkways up to the speckled stone buildings.

Dad pulled me aside, down a little walkway and out of earshot of the others. “Thanks, Defender of the Galaxy,” he said, winking at me. “I appreciate your being so polite to Dr. Seagraves. I owe you one.”

I couldn't help smiling at the old nickname, even if it was kind of dumb. Then I thought, If he owes me one, why not collect? “Okay, then tell me about Mom's family. Dr. Seagraves said it's important to know the family you came from. I know about you and your side of the family, but what about Mom?”

He frowned and glanced over his shoulder, but Mrs. Hambrick was still talking with the professors. “This isn't the time or place for this conversation.”

“When, then? Why won't you ever talk about her?” I knew I sounded whiny, but I'd tried to have this conversation with him too many times to give up now. He always had some excuse not to tell me any more about Mom than I knew for myself.

Dad shut his eyes. Finally he said, “You want to know about your mother's family?” He kept his voice down, but his round face flushed. “Well, I can't help you. She never gave me a straight answer about where she came from.”

“Please, Dad—there aren't any wedding pictures anywhere, or pictures of her parents—I've got to have grandparents somewhere, don't I? Why didn't I ever meet them?”

Dad took a deep breath. “We eloped and got married by a justice of the peace. No fancy wedding, no pictures. She said she didn't want any—she wanted to live the moment, not pose for it with photos. She told me her parents were dead—she didn't have anyone to come to a wedding. I was so carried away that I just believed her.” He looked up, and his grey eyes shone with tears. “I don't even know if she was telling the truth, okay? She said her maiden name was Thomson, but she never showed me a picture of her parents or told me where she'd grown up. I wish things were different—believe me, I do—but I don't think she wanted us to be able to find any answers.”

I jammed my fists down into my jeans pockets as far as they would go and stared at the pebbly paving on the walkway. Even under the hot sun I felt cold inside. Why hadn't Mom told Dad about her family? I couldn't understand, and it scared me.

“Bill?” Mrs. Hambrick said. “Alexander? Are you two all right?”

Her friends had gone, and she stood there looking concerned. I wanted to tell her, No, I'm not okay, and my dad's not okay, and it's all your fault! But I couldn't say anything.

“We were just talking about going to the battlefield tomorrow,” Dad told her, blinking hard before he turned away from me.

I could have said I wouldn't go. I could have told Mrs. Hambrick I couldn't care less about her stupid Civil War, or War Between the States, or whatever they wanted to call it. But I remembered the ghosts last night, with their wide-brimmed hats and their rifles glinting in the moonlight. Maybe they were soldiers from the War.

“It's almost the anniversary of the end of the siege of Petersburg,” Mrs. Hambrick said, her face relaxing a little. “They have reenactors do living history demonstrations at the battlefield—I'm sure you'll like it, Alexander.”

I could feel Dad's eyes on me, willing me to be polite. I just followed Dad and Mrs. Hambrick down the wide wooden steps to the parking lot below as she talked. I wasn't interested in living history shows. I was interested in the ghosts.

Before Mom left, I'd never said anything to Dad about the Indian ghosts I saw. But the first summer after she left, I'd felt the cold and smelled the tang of oranges again. When I found myself shivering in the July heat, I knew I was looking into another window through time.

I saw the grassy Indiana field grow wet in the afternoon sun, until it turned into a swamp, with clear water in the middle and muddy places near the banks. Men led horses across it, men in rusty armor with puffy sleeves, wearing curved helmets on their heads. Some men inched across rickety wooden bridges, swaying above the deepest parts of the water. At the far bank, men tugged at the horses, knee-deep in sticky mud. I was so excited, I ran and told Dad, and he smiled at me, the bluish light from his computer monitor turning his face pale.

“I can almost see the soldiers the way you describe them,” he said. “De Soto's men, right? Where did you hear about them?”

“I didn't hear about them,” I tried to tell him. “They're there—you can see them if you don't mind the cold. It's like looking through a window. Mom said I could see ghosts!”

His face closed up then, crumpling like a spelling test littered with mistakes. “Was that a game you two played?” His voice sounded rusty. Then he swallowed and said, “It sounds like fun.”

“It's not a game—I saw them!”

“Okay, Defender of the Galaxy,” he said dully. “I'm sure you did.” But as he turned back to his computer, I knew he didn't believe me. When I ran outside again, the soldiers were gone and the swamp had turned back into a dry grassy plain. I felt so sad at losing them I couldn't stop the tears from leaking down my cheeks.