Here and Again (20 page)

“Samuel?” Ginger called, trotting past her truck and across the parking lot.

He didn’t look in her direction. Instead, he picked a rifle up from the field and put it across his lap. Then he shook his head and said something. He put the rifle back into the grass.

“Samuel?” Ginger called louder as she crossed the street.

As he straightened in his seat, the smile on his face faltered. He sat still even as Ginger entered the field.

“Samuel,” Ginger said as she approached his chair. “Samuel, it’s me.” Stepping up to him, she reached out to touch. Her hand stopped before reaching his shoulder. “It’s me.”

He continued staring ahead with a fixed gaze. Stepping behind his chair, Ginger followed his eyes, trying to find what was keeping his attention.

Standing still just behind him, she reached out with her left hand and placed it upon his right shoulder. There was a blinding flash and Ginger froze where she was, blinking to gain her sight. When her vision returned, she found herself standing alone in the field. She turned around and then around again.

“Where did you go?” she asked.

There was no reply—just the sound of the breeze rustling the overgrown grass at her knees.

Some Christian

C
onfused and unsettled, Ginger stumbled back to the truck and was now driving through Woodstock toward home. She blinked over and over again, her eyes continuing to recover full vision. If she hadn’t been thrown off-balance by the weird goings-on in her world recently, the episode in the field had knocked her to the ground. She was sick, nausea rushing like the waves of a spring run on the Shenandoah. The flash was an omen. It had to be. She never was one to believe in anything like omens, but the last six days had completely changed her outlook on everything.

“Samuel!” she yelled up at the blue sky above. “Samuel, what the hell is going on?”

She reached the hardware store at the edge of town and pushed on the accelerator. Something bad was happening at home, she was certain. There was a brewing somewhere, somehow. What it was was not clear, but it was whirling like a great
black summer thunderhead and it was bearing straight down her little lane and was going to land on her gravel drive.

Her tires screeched as she rounded the corner of her road. Mr. Schaaf’s tractor sat exactly where she had last seen it but its seat was empty of its former occupant.

“Oh, God!” she breathed and then, gazing ahead, she slammed on her brakes.

A traffic jam on her lane? It was. Trucks and trailers and cars that were parked or trying to park lined the narrow shoulders of both sides of the road. There were people walking in the direction of her house. Young people. They were jostling one another, and if she peered up the part of the road that was clear, she could just make out about five or so standing in her front yard.

“What the hell?” Ginger pulled to the right and parked in the ditch directly in front of Mr. Schaaf’s tractor. She climbed out, grabbed her purse and the fuel, and slammed the truck door. With a quicker gait than anyone in front of her, Ginger walked up the lane, overtaking a young woman and two young men. They had to be no more than twenty, if that.

“Excuse me,” she said.

They stopped and turned around.

“Um. What is going on?”

“Colonel Rogers asked for some volunteers to come help him.”

“Rogers,” Ginger repeated. “Ed Rogers?”

“Yes, ma’am. Can I carry something for you?”

Ginger gazed at the young man and, very slowly, her gait lessened until she had come to a complete stop. He was six foot at least and dark with dark hair and matching eyes. It was his hair and its tidy cut that gave him away.

“You from VMI?” she asked, unloading her Coleman fuel into his offered arms.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “I’m Dijan Little.”

“Dijan Little,” she repeated.

“He ain’t so little.” The other young man snickered. The young woman laughed.

“I—I’m Virginia Martin,” Ginger said. Together, they continued their walk toward the house.

“Martin? Like Captain Jesse Martin?” Dijan asked.

“Yes! He was my husband. You knew him?”

“Nah. My dad’s a professor at Washington and Lee and a friend of the colonel’s. They talk about him.”

“Your dad knew Jesse?”

“Mmm. My dad teaches philosophy. Captain Martin and the colonel and my dad had great conversations in Latin.”

“Ah.” Ginger nodded.

As her right foot hit gravel, she found that the five people standing in front of her house were actually a group of students pulling up the posts of her snake-rail fence. The rest of it had already gone missing. Following the drive, she came to an abrupt halt and her eyes widened.

“What are those?” she yelled up the hill. From nowhere, Ed Rogers appeared and was now marching toward her.

“There you are!” he said, his face stern as he trotted down the drive. “We’ve got a lot of work to do.”

“What are those?” she repeated, pointing to the large back ends of two cream-colored horses.

“Mules,” Ed Rogers said. “You’ll need them because Christian hates to work and Penny can’t keep him straight.”

“I—I don’t think I—”

Ed Rogers took her purse and indicated that she should follow him up the hill.

“This is Augustus and this is Agrippa,” he said in
introduction. “You’ll like the mules better than the horses. Get your boots on.”

With no more said, Ed led Ginger by the hand into the house. There in the kitchen she found Lorena, Eloise Schaaf, Merry Whitaker, Genore Mitchell, Marilou Creed, and Osbee. Each was in some stage of cooking something and the house was thick with moisture and scent from their efforts. Mr. Rogers dropped her purse on the stair step without so much as a pause and headed straight into the kitchen.

“I tried to call you,” Osbee said, a wide smile growing across her face as she reached up and touched Ginger’s hair. “Love the headband.”

“Your hair is beautiful!” Lorena said.

“Thanks. Sorry I didn’t call. I wasn’t thinking.”

She smiled at her neighbors, who smiled reticently back. She could tell they were concerned and wanted to say something to her but Ginger wasn’t allowed to stop. Ed pulled her into the sunroom and only then let go of her hand. He pointed to her boots.

“What are we doing?” Ginger asked, obediently slipping out of her shoes.

“We’ve got people finishing the fence around where your garden beds will go. I’ve got people clearing out the barn, several others tidying up in the summer house, and a couple more building a chicken coop.”

“Chickens?” Ginger declared, sliding into her left boot.

“One of our neighbors donated his flock,” Lorena explained through the sunroom door. “It was causing trouble with the neighbors.”

“Not yet.” Mr. Rogers motioned his wife to silence.

Ginger stood straight up. “Why? What’s wrong with the chickens?” she asked, her eyes narrowing.

“Nothing. You’ll need eggs,” he replied. “Come on. I need you to harness the horses.”

“The horses?”

“We’ve got a lot of help today, so time to learn to plant while everyone’s doing everything else.”

There was a loud scream from the direction of the barn.

Ginger tripped forward in the sunroom, her right boot barely on. As Mr. Rogers opened the door, four people raced with terrified eyes in his direction. On the heels of the last person was Bubba, head down and at a run.

“Look out!” the woman in the front yelled as she flew up the stairs.

She nearly knocked Ginger over as she cleared the door. Balancing herself on the windowsill, Ginger watched the three young men behind her skip the bottom three steps of the sunroom stairs and achieve the slate floor in one great leap. The last one grabbed Mr. Rogers by the arm, pulled him inside, and slammed the door. There was a clickety-clickety clicketing up the stairs outside and then
BAM!
The door shuddered, squeaking a little in pain. So did everyone in the sunroom—everyone, that is, but Mr. Rogers.

“What are y’all doing?” he inquired, his voice steady and stone like his face. Instinctively, everyone straightened to attention, more or less—even Ginger.

“That goat’s possessed!” The man talking was of Asian descent with short black hair and a square jaw. His wild and wide eyes looked past the colonel. Ginger swallowed at the thought that the goat had scared even him. He didn’t look like he could be scared.

“It is a goat,” Mr. Rogers said, and quick as the flash in the field he opened the door.

Ginger saw the goat reel and jump back, landing effortlessly on its feet a yard to the right of the stair steps.
“Neeeeeahhhh,”
it said, looking for all as if it were laughing. With a little clickety jump, it turned, let out a small bluster from its nose, and sauntered away in the direction of the covered bridge.

Ginger shivered as she watched it go and then her eyes caught a gleam of red paint peeking from around the corner of the house.

“Is that Henry’s Child?” Ginger asked, bobbing her head up and down like a hungry chicken as she tried to see more of it. Ed’s rough hand slipped into her palm.

“Had to move it to make room in the barn,” he said.

“Room?” Ginger was pulled reluctantly out of the sunroom and down the steps. She couldn’t see where Bubba had gone.

“We’ve got equipment. Let’s move.”

There was a
pop
somewhere behind the barn and an engine engaged.

“Wh-what’s that?”

“I brought a small tractor an—”

“I don’t need a tract—”

“It’s not for fieldwork. It’s for power. They’re getting hay up into the top level of the barn.”

“I—I have no ha . . . Who?” Ginger and Mr. Rogers entered the barn.

“We’ve got help, like I said. And I brought hay. You’ll need it until you get your crop in.”

“Ah!” Ginger brightened. “Solomon Schaaf says I have winter wheat in the field. Time to plant the alfalfa.” She filled with a little bubble of pride for knowing something that was going on and needed to be done.

“That’s just the beginning.”

Her bubble popped. She frowned a bit, thinking Mr. Rogers
had taken some pride himself at poking her and listening to her deflate.

“Mrs. Martin?” She found Jacob standing next to Christian’s stall door. Henry was yet at his side.

“I told him to go in,” her son said quickly.

“Why aren’t you in bed? You’re still recovering.” Ginger scowled.

“You can’t horse farm your acreage,” Jacob said, ignoring her. “This is very hard and you’ve only got yourself and three kids.”

“It is what she wants to do,” Mr. Rogers said.

“She’s never done it, though,” Jacob replied, his eyes firm as he gazed at Ed Rogers’s stone face.

Ginger looked between the men. A standoff. Jacob was young and lean with a kind face and a gentle manner. Ed Rogers was older. No less kind but he was a forceful presence. It was like looking at the two sides of humanity. There were similarities here—discipline, neatness, order, duty. But when push came to shove, Ed’s side of humanity would push and shove and Jacob’s would yield and yield and yield again.

She placed her hand upon her heart, for before her stood the two sides of her own marriage, with its conflicts and comforts. What was true above all else, to Ginger’s mind but not to Jesse’s, was that Jacob’s way was the correct one. There could be no contention between two people if one side would not contend. Most of their marital arguments arose from this simple point and it was from this point love had to overrule reason in order for there to be any peace. That overriding love had killed her husband in a far and distant land not so long ago.

“Help comes,” Henry said, breaking the silence.

Both men started.

“It does come, Henry,” Ginger agreed. “Have to hold still and wait.”

Henry grinned. “And we rise together,” he added.

Mother and son beamed at each other. Then Ginger took a deep breath and turned to Jacob. “You know about all this stuff?” She motioned to all the yokes and harnesses that now hung neatly on fresh pegs in the back of the barn where Henry’s Child used to sit.

“I do.”

“So I have two teachers,” Ginger said, smiling.

Jacob pinched his lips together and gazed down to Henry.

“And we have two students,” Jacob said quietly.

“Nah,” Henry said. “Bea and I made a deal. I first learn how to take care of the cow. She’s in the field. Wait here.”

Henry trotted toward his mother. She grabbed his hand as he passed and gave it a little squeeze. He smiled and then headed out of the barn with a yell. “Bea!”

“You get the horses out,” Ed instructed. “I’ll get the mules.”

“Let me get the yokes,” Jacob said.

“No,” Ginger replied adamantly. “Is Mr. Wheldon still here?”

“Yeah,” Jacob said, cocking his head. “If he wasn’t, neither would I be.”

Ginger shrugged and opened Penny’s stall door. She found Beau seated toward the far right corner with Regard curled up anxiously behind him.

“Can you go ask him to help with the yokes, please? I won’t have you lifting heavy things and ripping your stitches out,” she said over her shoulder. “Hello, Penny.”

The horse came forward and placed its muzzle on Ginger’s shoulder. Penny nickered softly and Ginger closed her eyes, breathing in. Horses smelled of earth, and Ginger brushed Penny’s cheek gently, a slow peace filling her in the midst of the chaos she had found greeting her upon her return from town.

A loud whinny startled her from her moment. “For the love of
Pete, Christian, I’m coming,” she said as she grabbed Penny’s leader rope. “Too many weird people doing too many weird things. Huh, guys?”

Beau lowered himself to the ground as Regard cowered behind him.

“You’re a good friend, Beau. Don’t know what you see in that goat, though.” She attached the leader rope to Penny’s bridle. Opening the back door of the stall, Ginger led the horse out toward the corral.

To her right, she found a small tractor puttering away at the end of the barn. Where rubber wheels should have been, it had instead metal ones, which at the moment were lifted from the ground. Around the left wheel, the one that faced Ginger, a large belt was wound and as the wheel turned the belt moved. Following its trajectory, Ginger found its other end wound around a wheel that was attached to what looked to be a luggage ramp—the kind that moved suitcases onto an airplane. But instead of suitcases, rectangular cubes of hay were being tossed from within a large trailer by a couple of strangers. At the top of the ramp, a young man stood in the upper barn door, grabbing the hay and then disappearing inside. At that moment, Dijan Little’s head poked out of the door and grabbed the next oncoming bale.

“Elevator.” Ginger gazed down and found Bea standing next to her.

“Doesn’t look like an elevator,” Ginger said.

“For hay,” Bea continued. “We’ll need to take it into the back door of the barn and through the upper floor with the next delivery. Don’t need to move the bales so far across the upper floor that way.”

Ginger stared at her daughter. “Really,” was her only reply.

“That’s what Samuel said. He really liked it.”

“Ah! You’ve seen him!” Ginger declared.

“He’s around.”

Christian screamed and kicked his stall door.

“I’m coming!” Ginger yelled back. She handed the rope to Bea.