Nothing Gold Can Stay (13 page)

“I thought you were staying until morning,” Sabra said.

“This bus has no set schedule,” Thomas said. “When it comes by, you either get on board or you’re left behind.”

Wendy put the elastic and beads in the backpack and tightened the straps. She stood up, a bit unsteadily, and walked over to the barn mouth.

“So,” Thomas said, staring at Sabra, “ready to get on the bus?”

“I want to go, it’s just… ” Sabra paused. “I mean, I was thinking maybe you all could give me your address, or a phone number. That way I can find you.”

“But you’re coming,” Thomas said, locking his eyes on hers. “It’s just that you’re not sure you should leave tonight.”

“Yes,” Sabra said. “That’s what I mean.”

“The moon has turned sideways and is making a smiley face,” Wendy said, “really and truly.”

Thomas picked up the flashlight and leaned against a stall. He let the beam shine on the floor between him and Sabra. She could barely make out his face.

“Sometimes if you’re chained,” Thomas said, “other people have to set you free.”

“I’m not chained,” Sabra said.

“If that were true, you’d leave right now,” Thomas said. “I can teach every part of you how to be free, your mind and your body.”

“I’ve got to go,” Sabra said.

A match flared. Thomas slowly lowered the match into the stall. His hand came back up empty.

“Like I said, sometimes it takes someone else to set you free.”

“That’s not funny,” Sabra said. “I think you need to leave too.”

“Come see the smiley face,” Wendy said.

Sabra heard the fire first, a crackling inside the stall, but she didn’t believe it until she smelled smoke. Flames began licking through the stall slats. Sabra snatched the horse blanket from the barn floor, was about to the open the stall door when Thomas’s arm stopped her.

“Come on,” he said. “We’ve got to leave.”

“No,” Sabra shouted, and tore herself free.

She opened the stall door and swatted at the flames, but they had already leaped into the next stall. The blanket caught fire and she couldn’t put it out. The fire climbed into the loft and soon Sabra could barely see through the smoke. She stumbled out of the barn. Smoke wadded like cotton in her lungs and she coughed all the way to the spring trough. The farmhouse lights were on and her father was running toward the barn, Jeffrey and her mother trailing behind. In the high pasture she saw a beam of light pause where the fence was, then move onto parkway land and disappear.

Sabra didn’t know if she had slept or not, but she was awake when the dark in the east began to lighten. Her mother came into her room a few minutes later and told Sabra that barn or no barn, the cow would need to be milked. Sabra got dressed. When she passed through the front room, her father was asleep on the couch, still in his overalls. Soot grimed his face and hands and he smelled of smoke. The black patch where the barn had been yet smoldered, the milk pail nearby, lying on its side. The cow was drinking at the spring trough and looked up as Sabra walked by. She went on past the charred ground and into the high pasture and slipped through the fence.

The bus wasn’t there, but the flashlight was in the grass by the curb. She switched it off and made her way back up the slope and into the high pasture. Below, the cow had left the spring trough and stood by the barn’s ashes, waiting to be milked, not knowing where else to go.

The Dowry

A
fter Mrs. Newell took away his plate and coffee cup, Pastor Boone lingered at the table and watched the thick flakes fall. The garden angel’s wings were submerged, the redbud’s dark branches damasked white. Be grateful it’s not stinging sleet, Pastor Boone told himself as Mrs. Newell returned to the rectory’s dining room.

“You’ll catch the ague if you go out in such weather,” the housekeeper said, and nodded at his Bible. “Instead of hearing yourself read the Good Book, you’ll be hearing it read over your coffin.”

“Hear it, Mrs. Newell?” Pastor Boone smiled. “Do you dispute church doctrine that the dead remain so until Christ’s return?”

“Pshaw,” the housekeeper said. “You know my meaning.”

Pastor Boone nodded.

“Yes, we could wish for a better day, but I promised I would come.”

“Another week won’t matter,” the housekeeper said. “Youthful folk have all the time in the world.”

“It’s been eight months, Mrs. Newell,” he reminded her, “and, alas, they are not so youthful, especially Ethan. Two years of war took much of his youth from him, perhaps all.”

“I still say they can wait another week,” the housekeeper said. “Maybe by then the Colonel will die of spite and cap a snuffer on all this fuss.”

“I worry more that in a week Ethan will be the one harmed,” Pastor Boone replied, “and by his own volition.”

The housekeeper let out an exasperated sigh.

“Let me fetch Mr. Newell to hitch the horse and drive you out there.”

“No, it’s Sunday,” Pastor Boone said. “If he’ll ready the buggy, that’s enough. The solitude will allow me to reflect on next week’s sermon.”

The snow showed no signs of letting up as he released the brake handle, but the buggy’s canvas roof kept the snow off him, and the overcoat’s thick wool provided enough warmth. The wheels shushed through the town’s trodden snow. There were no other sounds, the storefronts shuttered and yards and porches empty; the only signs of habitation were windows lambent with hearth light. He passed Noah Andrews’s house. The physician would scold him for being out in such inhospitable weather, but Noah, also in his seventies, would do the same if summoned. Above, a low sky dulled to the color of lead. An appropriateness in that, Pastor Boone thought.

When the war had begun five years ago, he had watched as families who’d lived as good neighbors, many kin somewhere in their lineage, became implacable enemies. Fistfights occurred and men carried rifles to church services, though at least, unlike in other parts of the county, no killing had occurred within the community. Instead, local men died at Cold Harbor and Stones River and Shiloh, which in Hebrew, he’d told Noah Andrews, meant “place of peace.” The majority of the church’s congregants sided with the Union, those men riding west to join Lincoln’s army in Tennessee, but some, including the Davidsons, joined the Secessionists. Pastor Boone’s sympathies were with the Union as well, though no one other than Noah Andrews knew so. To hold together what frayed benevolence remained in the church, a pastor need appear neutral, he’d told himself. Yet there were times he suspected his silence had been mere cowardice.

Now Ethan Burke, who fought for the Union, wanted to marry Colonel Davidson’s daughter, Helen. The couple had come to him before last week’s service, once again pleading for his help. They had known each other all their lives, been baptized in the French Broad by Pastor Boone on the same spring Sunday. When Ethan and Helen were twelve, they’d asked if he’d marry them when they came of age. The adults had been amused. Since the war’s end last spring, Pastor Boone had watched them talking together before and after church, seen their quick touches. But when Ethan called on Helen at the Davidsons’ farm, the Colonel met him at the door, a Colt pistol in his remaining hand. You’ll not step on this porch again and live, he’d vowed. Ethan and Helen had taken Colonel Davidson at his word. Every Sunday afternoon for eight months Ethan, whose family owned only a swaybacked mule, walked three miles to the Davidson farm and did the chores most vexing for a one-handed man. While Helen watched from the porch, Ethan replaced the barn’s warped boards and rotting shingles, cleaned out the well, and stacked hay bales in the loft. Afterward, he stood on the steps and talked to Helen until darkness began settling over the valley. Then he’d walk back to the farmhouse where his widowed mother and younger siblings awaited him.

The congregants who’d fought Union seemed ready to leave the war behind them, even Reece Triplett, who’d lost two brothers at Cold Harbor, but not Colonel Davidson, nor his nephew and cousin, who’d served under the Colonel in the North Carolina Fifty-Fifth. Easier for the victors than the vanquished to forgive, Pastor Boone knew. Colonel Davidson sat stone-faced through the sermons, and unlike Ethan and the other veterans, including his own kinsmen, the Colonel wore his butternut field coat to every service. When Pastor Boone suggested that it was time to put the uniform away, Colonel Davidson nodded at the empty sleeve. Some things don’t let you forget, Pastor, he had replied brusquely. Give me back a hand and I’ll be ready to forgive, as your Bible says.

Ethan had been there that Sunday, and knew, just as Pastor Boone knew, that the man was serious. Even before the war, Colonel Davidson had been a hard man, quick to take offense at the least slight. Once a peddler quipped that Davidson’s stallion looked better suited for plowing and it took the sheriff and two other men to keep him from thrashing the fellow. A hard man made harder by four years of watching men die all around him, and, of course, the hand cleaved by grapeshot. But others had suffered too. Pastor Boone had seen it in the faces of old and young alike. He had witnessed families grieving, sometimes brought news of the death himself. Those who didn’t have men in the war endured their share of fear and deprivation as well. Hardships he himself had been spared. Even in the war’s brutal last winter, he had never lacked firewood and food, and, childless, no son to fear for. No outliers had abused him. Almost alone in that dark time, he, Christ’s shepherd, had been blessed.

The horse’s nostrils exhaled white plumes, its hooves gaining cautious purchase on the slopes. A breeze came up and the snow slanted. Cold slipped under the pastor’s collar, between buttons. Faint boot prints appeared in the snow. As the prints deepened, Pastor Boone made out where hobnails secured a heel, newspaper replaced worn-out leather. The youth had endured this trek while Davidson sat inside his warm farmhouse. Pastor Boone reconsidered next Sunday’s sermon. Instead of a chapter from Acts on mercy, he pondered the opening verse in Obadiah,
The pride of thine own heart hath deceived thee.

The boot prints continued to deepen, and the horse followed them toward a smudge of chimney smoke. As the buggy crossed a creek, ice crackled beneath the wheels. An elopement to Texas would have been what many other couples would do, but Ethan, whose father had died of smallpox in the war’s final year, would not countenance being so far from his mother and siblings. The land bottomed out and the woods fell away. Pastor Boone passed corn and hay fields drowsing under the snow, awaiting spring.

Ethan was leaving the woodshed with an armload of kindling. He came to the porch edge, set the kindling beside three thick hearth logs, and returned to the shed. Helen stood on the porch, bundled in a woolen cloak and scarf. When she saw the buggy, Helen called out toward the shed. Ethan emerged, an axe gripped in his right hand. As the buggy halted in the yard, Colonel Davidson’s stern visage appeared at the window, withdrew. Ethan leaned the axe against the shed and tethered the horse to a fence post. He helped Pastor Boone down from the seat, then fetched water for the horse as Pastor Boone went up on the porch. Helen took his free hand with one equally cold.

“We didn’t know if you would come,” she said, “what with the weather so bad.”

The door opened and Mrs. Davidson appeared with a cup of coffee.

“Welcome, Pastor,” Mrs. Davidson said, and turned to Helen. “Give this to Ethan, Daughter.”

Helen took the cup and handed it to Ethan, who waited on the steps.

“Come in, Pastor Boone,” Mrs. Davidson said, “and you, Daughter, you should come in as well, at least a few minutes.”

“Unless Ethan comes, I’m staying on the porch,” Helen replied, “but we
will
hear what is said.”

As Pastor Boone stepped inside, Helen’s firm hand on the jamb ensured the door remained ajar. Mrs. Davidson took his overcoat and disappeared into a back room. Dim as the afternoon was outside, the parlor was gloamier. What light the fireplace offered slowly unshrouded the room—a painting of a hunter and his dog, a burgundy rug, a settee and bookshelf, last, in the far corner, a Windsor armchair occupied by the Colonel. The patriarch gave the slightest acknowledgment and remained seated. Brown yet lingered in the gray swept-back hair. Though Davidson was a decade younger, Pastor Boone never felt older in his presence.

Mrs. Davidson returned from the back room with a cup of coffee.

“Here, Pastor.”

Pastor Boone took it gratefully because the cold sliced through the half-open door, tamped what heat the fire offered. He raised the cup to his mouth, blew slowly so the moist warmth glazed his cheeks and brow. He sipped and nodded approvingly.

“It’s ever a blessing to drink real coffee again,” Mrs. Davidson said. “We were long enough without it.”

The Colonel shifted in his chair, his gaze locking on Pastor Boone’s Bible.

“Am I to assume your visit is in an official capacity?”

“I come at the request of your daughter and Ethan,” Pastor Boone replied, “but I also come as a friend to everyone here, including you.”

“That door needs to be shut,” Colonel Davidson told his wife.

“Don’t do it, Mother,” Helen said from the porch. “We’ll hear what is said.”

Pastor Boone allowed himself a slight smile. He was tempted to speak of Helen being much her father’s child, decided it prudent not to. Mrs. Davidson stared at the floor.

“Very well,” Colonel Davidson said. “The chill can hasten us past civilities. Have your say, Pastor.”

“It is time for all of us to heal, Leland,” Pastor Boone said.

“Heal,” Colonel Davidson answered, and lifted his left arm. “As your friend Doctor Andrews can inform you, there are things that cannot be healed.”

“Not by man perhaps,” Pastor Boone said, raising the Bible, “but by God, by his grace. Colossians says
Forgive as the Lord forgave you
.”

“So you have come to bandy verses,” the Colonel said, tugging back the sleeve so firelight reddened the stubbed wrist. “
Life shall go for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth,
thus hand for a hand.”

“Luke says
love your enemies, do good to them
.”

“Leviticus says to chase our enemies,” Colonel Davidson countered, “
and they shall fall before you by the sword.
”

“You quote overly from the Old Testament,” Pastor Boone said. “Therein lies more retribution than forgiveness.”

“Yet they are cleaved together as one book,” Colonel Davidson answered. “Thus we choose which verses to live by.”

“Ethan has suffered as well,” Pastor Boone said. “You have lost a hand, he has lost his youth. What you saw on the battlefield, he saw. What anger, what hatred you felt toward the enemy, he felt also.”

“I accept his hatred now no less than then.”

“But he doesn’t hate you,” Pastor Boone replied. “Moreover, he loves that which is part of you, and Helen loves him. You have seen his devotion to your daughter, to your whole family. He has put his uniform away. Ethan will burn it to appease you, he has told me so, and promised never to speak of the war in your presence. What more can you ask?”

The Colonel nodded at the missing hand.

“I’ve answered that,” he said, “nothing more or less.”

“Yes, you have, and in your family’s presence,” Pastor Boone said, allowing a terseness in his tone as well. “What about their wishes?”

“It was my hand taken and therefore my grievance, not theirs.”

For a few moments the only sound was the fire’s hiss and crackle.

“They could have married without your blessing,” Pastor Boone said. “They can yet.”

“Yes, and should they, let us be clear,” the Colonel replied, “Helen will never step inside this house again, and if I see Ethan Burke on this land, or in town, or in church, I will kill him.”

“You would need kill me too then, Father,” Helen shouted from the porch.

Mrs. Davidson raised her hands to her ears.

“I will not listen to one word more,” she said, her voice rising. “I will not. I will not.”

When she turned to Pastor Boone, something seemed not so much to break inside her as wither. Mrs. Davidson’s hands fell to her sides and her head drooped. For four years she had maintained the farm with her husband gone, no one to help but a daughter. Twice, outliers had come and stolen livestock, threatened to burn the house and barn down. Pastor Boone remembered how when the word came of Lee’s surrender, no Confederate soldier’s wife, including the woman before him, had mourned the lost cause. What tears had been shed were of relief it was finally over.

“There is no good in speaking of further violence,” Pastor Boone said. “Haven’t we all suffered enough these last years?”

“We, Pastor?” Colonel Davidson asked, his face reddening. “You dare speak to me of
your
suffering during the war.

“Fetch Pastor Boone’s overcoat,” the Colonel told his wife, and this time Mrs. Davidson did as she was told.

When Pastor Boone came outside, Ethan stood on the front step, Helen on the porch, their clasped hands bridging the boundary. They were arguing. Helen turned to Pastor Boone, tears in her eyes.

“Don’t let Ethan do it.”

“We shouldn’t have bothered having you come,” Ethan said. He freed his hands and gestured toward the axe. “It’s the only thing to satisfy him. By God, I’ll do it right now. I will.”

Pastor Boone stepped close and took the youth by the elbow.

“You’ll bleed to death or get gangrene. What good will come of that?”