One Came Home (6 page)

“We’ll stay here tonight. Start early,” Billy said, assuming all authority.

I squinted and saw the outlines of a half-dozen shelters, a makeshift table, and some sort of fire pit. I slid off the mule. I undid my bedroll, grabbed the Springfield, and headed for the largest lean-to. I fell asleep as soon as I stretched my legs between the blankets.

I did not expect Billy to edge in beside me that night. Don’t get the idea I offered an invitation. There were plenty of lean-tos to choose from, and Billy McCabe came into mine.
In addition to his largish frame, he brought two saddles, two bits, two bridles, and the saddlebags with him.

He made no effort to maintain quiet and peace either. The saddles thumped to the ground, the bits and bridles hit the earth with a jingle, and to make sure I’d awoken, Billy nudged my shoulder with a mud-caked boot. “Move over.”

“Brute,” I mumbled.

“Whiner,” said Billy.

I kept my eyes shut, trying to make like I was half asleep, but I could tell he thought I was so, so amusing (once again). Made me want to lock my teeth on an ankle, but I have manners, so that sort of behavior would never do. I moaned appropriately, which caused Billy to let loose more chuckling, and then, yes, I scooted over.

I did peek. Consider it scientific (albeit anatomical) interest when I tell you that I watched as Billy stripped down to a worn union suit several sizes too small. I had seen boys’ bodies at swimming holes, but never this close and never a man-boy of nineteen years. (I would
not
call Billy McCabe a man.)

The one verifiable
man
I had seen in a union suit—Grandfather Bolte—had a body like steel on hinges: strong, functional, but rather mechanical. I don’t mean any disrespect, but my grandfather’s body was about as interesting as a printing press, a butter churn, or a clothes-washing wringer. And while machinery might incite curiosity, it rarely fascinates.

But Billy? Through the threadbare cloth of that union suit, I read Billy’s movements in a cursive of muscles and
tendons that contracted and stretched across his back. You could not read my sister’s body like that, nor mine—our muscles weren’t so well elucidated. Moreover, Grandfather Bolte’s body steamed through the world, bending habitually on worn creases. But with Billy’s body I got the sense that anything could happen—he could twist, leap, spin every which way without thought. When Billy put his foot right near my face (of course) to shove a saddle into place, I watched the muscles above his ankle undulate like underwater plants. Billy’s body was
all
ease.

As much as the body before me was a revelation, I noticed something mundane too: the patch job on that union suit. The stitches were neat—many times tidier than mine. Who’d done that stitching?

It came to me: Billy had done it. Whereas my family overflowed with women, Billy’s family was devoid of them. As the oldest, Billy had taken on many tasks himself, including patching and sewing. I’d watched him mop a brother’s chin more than once.

I’d heard Billy tell the story of the birth of the youngest McCabe boy. Billy had been eight years old. He’d sat on the front porch waiting while his ma travailed. He heard every bit of his ma’s labor because it was a hot summer night and the windows of the house were thrown open to keep his parents’ bedroom as cool as possible.

Finally, his ma’s cries went quiet. He heard a whack. A tiny voice pierced the night. The sound brought Billy to his
feet in pure wonder. He heard his pa’s quick footsteps coming down the stairs. The front door opened. Billy turned grinning.

But when his pa appeared on the porch, he was not smiling. In fact, his pa saw Billy only to hand him a tiny wrapped infant (his fourth brother). Then his pa ran back inside, taking the stairs two at a time. Twenty minutes later, the midwife came out. She gathered the boys together for what she called “sorrowful news.”

Billy said then that he did not need to listen to the midwife’s words. He’d heard his pa crying. When the infant in his arms joined in the crying, Billy went into the kitchen to warm some milk.

In the lean-to, Billy sprawled out with his head on a saddle and fell asleep. He took up most of the available shelter. He smelled of horse. I suppose I smelled of mule. But horse smells worse. After all, a mule is only
half
horse. Even so, when Billy shifted and his back touched mine, I let it rest there.

Before you think anything, know that it was a cool night and Billy exuded heat. But it was a mistake to let his back touch mine, because without warning, I felt a howling ache. Agatha and I often slept back to back.

I could not sleep now. That’s when I noticed a strong smell of rotting pigeon in the air. I thought of what I knew of pigeons and remembered a particular day in February.

Trying to guess the plans of wild pigeons is folly. The direction they go is their own business. Likewise, it’s near impossible to know where they’ll roost for the night, let alone build a nesting. Their movements defy theorizing and deducing (though fools persist). Pigeons come and go as they please.

The way they’ll come upon you will catch you unawares too: Sometimes the pigeons are like a towering thunderhead in front of you in all boldness and in numbers too great to count. Sometimes they’re as inconsequential as a litter of leaves rolling in the distance, and they pass in and out of the periphery of your vision without notice.

But whatever the configuration of pigeons that confronts
you, when they leave, they are
gone
. Those birds move
together
—as if they have one mind and one set of wings.

In 1871, I experienced wild pigeons on three distinct occasions. The first time was in February, when I saw a small, easily frightened group. I spotted them once. Then they were gone. In March, I saw pigeons a second time. This time they were the mighty cloud that Agatha spun underneath. These pigeons also left. And then there was the third time: in April, the pigeons returned and nested in our woods, not five miles west of Placid, Wisconsin.

The first time I saw the pigeons—the twenty-eighth of February—was a day coming after a long freeze and little sunlight. Day after day had glowed dimly, and night had slammed down at four o’clock in the afternoon. Because of the cold, my fingers refused to do small work and I marched around the store to get blood into my toes. I had thought I would like being free from school. (I’d finished my sixth year of winter school the year before.) But no schoolwork only made the dark hours endless.

That particular morning I awoke and saw the sky—a blue-sky day! By midmorning, everything outside glinted with running water. It ran along the edges of snowbanks and trickled down icicles. Drips hitting pans pinged in the store. By afternoon, patches of earth—red, brown, tan—appeared on the sides of hills. Everybody in the world came into town that day, with weeks of stored-up talk. They told jokes,
described how they planned to lay out their crops, and whispered that they’d near gone mad during the long, dark days. Then they finally got to business and bought the supplies that had supposedly brought them into town.

Agatha and I were about as helpful as two squirrels. We skittered through the store, trying to stay near the plate glass window. We offered assistance carrying packages (I swear, some the size of postage) out to our neighbors’ wagons to feel the sun on our skin and smell the air. Finally, Ma had enough of us, and said we should go ahead and run it off. “Don’t make me track you down for dinner,” she said.

We didn’t wait to be told twice. We raced to get our coats. Agatha put her sketchbook and pencil in a satchel, and I went up the stairs to grab the Springfield from the gun rack in the hallway.

Of course, Agatha gave me
that
look when she saw the rifle.

I tried to change the topic by pointing at the sketchbook bulging in the satchel. “What are you going to sketch? It’s winter,” I said.

She touched the Springfield. “You always end up killing something. I don’t know how you can be so sure about putting creatures to death.”

Months later I would ruminate upon this remark:
I don’t know how you can be so sure …
But at the time, I lumped it together with her other overly sensitive statements. I’d seen Agatha kill spiders. She seemed
sure
enough then.

Agatha glanced around and said what we both knew to be true: “We need to leave before Ma changes her mind.”

We pushed out the door and ran down Main Street. It made an abrupt turn over the railroad tracks and went right by the train station before lining up with the Wisconsin River.

As usual, Agatha decided our direction, but I thought she went toward the river for me. She knew I liked looking at rivers anytime—winter, summer, spring, whenever. And that day, near the rapids, spray froze to tree limbs and hung sharp from ledges. I put the Springfield down, found some rocks sprouting five-foot icicles, and knocked the ice free. “On guard!” I yelled, holding an icicle like a sword. Agatha picked up another, and we fought, sword-fight-like, until there was nothing left but stubs. Somehow, we both ended up stuck in the same snowbank and cackling hard.

After we’d extricated ourselves, I picked up the Springfield and we started to walk again, talking the whole way about everything and nothing. We sang as many verses as we could remember of “My Darling Clementine” and made up several more. We discussed how much ginger was required to make a good ginger beer and argued about whether a diamond-shaped kite or a box kite was better for flying in the fierce wind at Mount Zion Cemetery. We made plans to start a moth collection, find a bear’s den (I promised not to shoot), track down some honeycomb, and climb up to Flat Rock, where we’d spend the night watching for comets.

Then Agatha turned at a split-rail fence, and I realized she
was heading toward the McCabes’. Or, to be more accurate, toward Billy McCabe.

Had she wanted to see Billy this entire time? I’d wanted to be with
her
, and here she was thinking about Billy?

Billy McCabe had corrupted my sister’s character. It began the moment he and Agatha became best friends at that town picnic on the bluff. Billy was fifteen, Agatha was fourteen, and I was nine. The two of them went off to explore a cavern with “an echo like a cathedral.” (Some words a person remembers with exactitude.) I followed, keeping up until Billy ruffled my hair with his pawlike hand. “Why don’t you play with Ebenezer? He’s your
age
,” he said.

I rolled my eyes at Agatha, sure she’d agree that Billy McCabe’s pea-brained presence was no longer required. We, the sisters, would go off on our own. We’d leave the dimwit behind.

Instead, Agatha shrugged. “You don’t like caves, Georgie. Stay here. You’ll have more fun.”

Oh yes, that stung!

Agatha and Billy had been friends ever since. From then on, everybody in Placid assumed that Billy and Agatha would tie the knot.

This blue-sky February day was only two months after the New Year’s ball. Ever since that ball, the situation had felt tentative. I’d been watching Agatha closely, sure all it took for disaster to strike was Agatha showing weakness where Billy was concerned.

If spending your blue-sky day on someone wasn’t a
consent, then I didn’t know what it was. Meet Mrs. Billy McCabe! Billy would take Agatha off to some barely settled, territory-like place in Minnesota and I’d never see her again. Apparently, this was all fine by Agatha.

I stopped right there. “I’m not going that way,” I said.

“What?” said Agatha.

“You’re asking me to spend time with babies so you can be with Billy.”

“Georgie, you
like
those boys fine.”

“The McCabe boys think the most ignorant things are funny. All they’ll want to do is shoot this rifle.”

“That’s what you want to do.”

“Not like that, I don’t.” I kept walking down the road.

Agatha stood at the turnoff watching me. “Where are you going?”

I turned around to face her and said loudly: “To be by myself. I don’t
fancy
the McCabes like you do: Billy, Billy, Billy.”

Her face screwed tight when I sang out his name like that. “Suit yourself. Be back here in an hour,” she said.

I walked on without saying anything. Our first free day, all that bright blue sky and melting snow, and Agatha wasted it. She’d do worse too: she’d ruin everything. She’d leave our family. She’d leave
me
. In an hour I expected to see Agatha and Billy perched on the McCabe fence, holding hands, ready to share their “announcement.”

Let her. I do not need her
, I thought.

*  *  *

I more or less clomped down the road, losing all sense of blue sky. When I reached a field, I turned into it and headed toward the woods on the other side.

I was three-quarters across when I saw something rooting around on a patch of snowless ground underneath some black oaks. It stopped me short. I looked twice to be sure. But that rosy chest was unmistakable, and those birds are not exactly small—wild pigeons.

February 28 was mighty early. People talked about pigeons sending scouts, but I’d never believed them. Scouting suggested intelligence, which everybody knew pigeons lacked. But there they were: about twenty-five of them feeding on acorns at the field’s edge. They called to one another, each note higher than the last:
kee-kee-kee-kee
.