Something Rich and Strange: Selected Stories (27 page)

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 man 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.

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. Parson Boone passed corn and hay fields drowsing under the snow.

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?”

“I’ve seen many a man live who lost a hand,” Ethan said, shaking free Pastor Boone’s hand. “He in there survived it, didn’t he?”

“Ride back with me,” Pastor Boone said. “I promise we’ll find a way, a way that won’t risk your life.”

“Listen to him, Ethan,” Helen said. “Please.”

“We’ve waited long enough,” Ethan said, tears in his eyes as well now. “I’ve done all of everything else and it’s still not enough.”

“Just one more week,” Pastor Boone said. “Allow me one week.”

“Please, Ethan,” Helen said, sobbing.

Ethan dried his eyes with a swipe of his forearm. He nodded and addressed the house.

“One week,” the youth said loudly. “One week and I will do it, Colonel Davidson, I swear I will.”

“I have always taken you for a wise man, William, despite your primitive beliefs,” Doctor Andrews said the following morning. “But what you purpose is unworthy of a rational mind.”

The two men sat in the house’s back portion that served as office and examining room. Sickness, his or a congregant’s, had brought Pastor Boone to this room many times, but more often it served as a salon for the best-educated men in Marshall to discuss everything from literature and politics to science and religion. The room had changed little in three decades. The Franklin clock ticked on the top bookshelf, beside it jars holding powders and tinctures. On the middle shelf was a solemn row of leather-spined medical books, below that
Man’s Place in Nature
and
On the Origin of Species
wedged between volumes by Shakespeare, Scott, and Thackeray. The examining table pressed against the opposite wall; in the room’s center sat a mahogany desk, one side bedecked with pill cutter, ledger, mortar and pestle, the other a silver scale and balance aged to a dulled lustre. An oil lamp sat on the desk, its flame alive. Because of the closed curtains, a lacquered darkness gave the office the aura of a confessional booth, which, like the room’s seeming immutability, no doubt made it easier to speak of fears too often confirmed.

“There is no other way,” Pastor Boone said. “Elopement is not possible and the Colonel’s own wife and daughter cannot dissuade him. The youth has done all he can. For eight months, he’s performed all manner of chores. Even in this weather, he was out there cutting and stacking wood. He offered to burn his uniform, and him on the winning side.”

“The Colonel sounds rather like Prospero,” Doctor Andrews said.

“Prospero forgave his enemies,” Pastor Boone answered. “It was Ethan’s notion to do the labors, and he’s shown himself worthy of any man’s daughter.”

Doctor Andrews removed a briar pipe and tobacco box from a drawer, as was his habit when anticipating a vigorous exchange. He tamped the tobacco and lit the pipe, doused the match with a sweep of the hand.

“I see that your new pipe has arrived.”

“Yes,” Doctor Andrews said, holding the briar pipe before them. “I only wish ideas could cross the ocean as quickly.”

“So will you help us?”

“You have forgotten my oath, Parson,
primum non nocere
.”

“You will be healing, Noah, and not just two families but a whole community.”

“But at such cost, William,” Doctor Andrews replied. “They are young folks, both likable and attractive. If this union is not made, they will find others to betroth. With time, even accept that it was wise to do so.”

“Ethan is resolute,” Pastor Boone said. “What you will not do, he will do with an axe.”

“You truly believe so?” Doctor Andrews asked. “My experience avers that, once the axe is in hand, such brash valor abates. At Bowman-Gray I saw my fellows swoon cutting cadavers. The same in this office. Men you would think fearless get the vapors seeing a few drops of blood.”

“He saw blood and wounds in the war, no doubt amputations,” Pastor Boone said. “If it’s not done by someone else, he’ll do it. He would have done so yesterday with the Colonel’s own axe if I had not intervened. As for Leland Davidson, you know the man. Do you believe he’d break a vow, any vow?”

“I do not,” Doctor Andrews replied. “It would be an admission that he could be wrong.”

The clock chimed on the half hour. Doctor Andrews set the pipe on the desk’s spark-pocked wood.

“I must look in on Leah Blackburn. She has run a fever three days.”

“You have proffered no answer,” Pastor Boone said, but did not pause for one. “We are old men, Noah. Unlike the Colonel and this youth, we were spared the war’s violence and suffering. Perhaps it’s time for us to render what is our duty, even if we would wish it otherwise.”