Here and Again Read online

  “I see you,” he said.

  “I saw you die,” she whispered, her chest heaving the emptiness beneath her hand.

  “No,” he replied adamantly as he sat behind her on the bed. “No, you did not, Virginia. You did not.”

  “The gun fired behind you.”

  “It did not hit me.”

  “I was there.” She gasped.

  “You were there, Virginia Moon, but you were not then. As I am here but am not now. I did not die upon the field of Cedar Creek.”

  She inhaled as if to catch her breath from a long run.

  “I moved to hold you, thinking you had come from beyond to fetch me and I was ready to die. So close you were to me. And the bloody bullet missed.” He chuckled dryly, a small hint of anger rising in his voice. “It hit another.”

  “Another?” she whispered.

  “Yes. I was yet living after Cedar Creek.”

  Ginger reflected upon the eyes staring at her in the violet hour so long ago—one hundred and fifty years ago. A bullet fired but Jesse had not died. Samuel yet lived.

  “I saw my husband there,” she said.

  “Where?”

  “In the violet hour of Cedar Creek.”

  A hush fell over Samuel. Ginger felt it as palpable—as if Samuel were physical.

  “He was in your eyes,” she added. “He died.”

  The hush grew in weight, pushing against Ginger’s body, putting pressure on her chest. She inhaled against it.

  “Tell me, Virginia Moon. How did your husband die?”

  Ginger exhaled, inhaling just at its end, for she knew to exhale completely would crush her beneath the ethereal weight in the room. Back then—back then—doors of the car in the drive shut with finality. Gazing out the window, two men had walked up to the porch and she quickly stepped outside, refusing them the courtesy of a knock.

  “He fought across someone else’s land far away.”

  “Where?”

  “It doesn’t matter really, does it? He always said once war starts, it’s always wrong because there are always innocents everywhere in the cross fire. Any soldier that has been in the fight knows this. It’s why so many of them have trouble when they return. But if a war is started by another, someone must fight. Jesse felt that to serve one’s country was the highest duty—to protect family and country. Most people who become soldiers feel the same. Sometimes the president, the commander-in-chief, asks soldiers to do things they do not agree with. But they are people of duty and follow the command without question. They have taken an oath to do so. It is what they are trained to do. In times like these, Jesse said one cannot fight against the wrongness of war. One can only resist it by doing one’s duty—by finding the right where it can be found among all the wrongness.” She softly guffawed. “That convolution never really made sense to me until two men walked up to the porch here a year and a half ago.”

  “How did Jesse Day Martin die, Virginia?” Samuel whispered.

  “He and his men were fighting in an area of small streets and two-story buildings. The battle was hot and they were in a tight place and so were ordered back. As they made their way under fire, they came to an intersection. To the left was a man crouched flush with a wall, holding two little boys and a little girl. His neck was bleeding.

  “Jesse motioned his men on and he himself disobeyed orders, turning down the street to help the man. His soldiers were . . . well, his men, and three of them disobeyed his orders and followed.”

  Smiling at the night, she added, “He always said you get what you teach, don’t you? Anyway, two of them cleared the corner before snipers began to fire overhead. The third held the corner, offering cover fire. One of his men was shot in the head before he got twenty feet. The other reached Jesse, who handed him the girl and a boy. Jesse grabbed the other boy and tried to lift the man. He pushed him away, motioning down the street. Thirty yards on the other side was a door that was cracked open and a woman desperately waved them to come. So my husband and his soldier ran down the open street toward the door and just as they let go of the kids, a bomb exploded.”

  Ginger watched heads and arms and body parts fly in the violet light of Cedar Creek. Her breath grew heavy, full of hurt.

  “Did the children live?”

  “I don’t know. The soldier covering them ran into the street and was shot. The rest of his troop returned and came on. None would ever agree to leave anyone behind. Jesse was unconscious when they got to him and he died on the way out.”

  “I am sorry, Virginia Moon.”

  “I’d be mad, you know. Really pissed off at him for not looking after his own, but I know what he saw.” She rolled over and looked up into the shadows of Samuel’s eyes. “He saw himself—just a man trying to get his babies home. There but for the grace of God go I, so to speak. We all judge a situation that someone is in with how we think we’d react. Truth to say, very few of us are willing to lay down our lives for another, no matter how we think we would. A soldier, though? That is exactly what they choose to do when they sign up. They leave their spouses and children and try to stay alive though their lives aren’t theirs to keep or throw away any longer. Their lives belong to their service. So Jesse saw a father with children struggling on a street beneath a rain of bullets. There was no other choice really but to help because it is wrong for children to be subjected to gunfire. That is the wrongness of war. Jesse had to make a decision to make this right somehow because he cared—cared for the man and his children as he cared for his own. Bullets don’t care. People do.”

  “He is a great man, Virginia.”

  “No. No, he was not. He was a just man, Samuel. Every man isn’t great. Every soldier isn’t a hero. But sometimes in your life, you’re faced with a choice and it makes you. That choice made him. Jesse was a good, honorable man. But he was a great father.”

  The hush in the room lifted a little as Samuel reached out his hand and brushed a tear from her cheek. His touch was not upon her skin, but she did feel it.

  “I can feel you, Samuel.” Her voice was shaky as she reached for his hand in disbelief. “Your touch.”

  “And I feel you, Virginia Moon. Your loss.”

  “Y-you called my name, there on Cedar Creek. You knew it then.”

  Samuel shook his head. “No. I saw upon a summer’s night, as I wrote to my love, a ginger moon. Autumn’s moon rising in July as I held a picture of you standing next to me in my hand.”

  “I was there,” Ginger replied. “In Woodstock. What happened to our picture?”

  Samuel nodded and said, “I sent it away, not sure of what—who you were. Not sure what you meant. You were there but not then. And the moon and our photograph left me out of place. Ginger moon was simply a name I gave for that feeling—being out of place.”

  “But I am Ginger Moon.”

  “I know that now.” Samuel chuckled.

  “I’ve been without a root, Samuel. Out of place. I’m not so out of place now.”

  “No?” Samuel dropped his hand and gazed out the window.

  “And neither are you.”

  “But I am. Perpetually between my beginning and my end.”

  “Samuel,” she said, “I’ve been empty since Jesse died. I have lived in the acoustic shadow for over a year.”

  He looked back at her and, though his eyes were shadow, she knew he wept.

  “Now I’m with you, Samuel. And I will be right here until you find your end—until you can go home.”

  “Home to my love, Juliette Marie. She was beautiful beyond words. Kind and sweet.”

  “And you love her still.”

  “Beyond words. But she was then. And I am now.”

  “You’ll find your way back to her, Samuel. I know it. I believe you’re halfway home.”

  “Am I, Virginia Moon?”

  “Yes. I’
m sure of it.”

  The alarm on her phone sounded quietly and Ginger reached over to the bed stand to turn it off.

  “I do hope so,” Samuel said, standing. Without another word, he exited through the bedroom door.

  “But when you go,” Ginger whispered, “I think I will hurt.”

  “So will I,” his voice softly replied.

  Ginger climbed out of bed and slid into her slippers as she opened the door.

  “I know how to make coffee, Samuel. Just not without electricity, which, I may add, we are now not using out of deference to you.”

  He laughed softly somewhere unseen as she passed Bea’s door.

  “Because you are here, but are not now,” she added, stopping at the top of the stairs and gazing out to the road washed in moonlight, glistening like a river.

  “I am here, not now,” he agreed.

  “As I was there, but not then.” She didn’t really understand that. It was like Jesse’s rightness in the wrongness of war statement and she thought she’d need to wait until something happened to make it clear. She shivered.

  “We are together, Virginia Moon, somewhere without form, like the emptiness within a jar of clay. The jar is missing, but the purpose remains.”

  Ginger looked through the crack in the door and saw Bea on the bed and the boys bivouacked on the floor.

  “They worked hard yesterday,” she noted.

  There was no answer.

  She made her coffee, packed her lunch, and by the time she was dressed and out the door her headache had dissipated into a muted pain. She didn’t see Samuel again until she drove down the lane and looked back in her mirror. There he stood, at the end of her driveway, motionless in the moonlight. There he would stay to watch over things until her return.

  Before she entered the freeway, she stopped for gas and, while there, entered the little convenience store. She picked up a Three Musketeers bar and with her gift tucked away from the heater she drove down Highway 81, through Harrisonburg, and headed west. The moon drew black lines across the gray asphalt as she climbed through the trees to Franklin. There was no snow, not even a hint in the shallow trenches at the road’s edge, and Ginger tried to remember a time when the winter had gone so completely in so short a time. She wondered if it would return, one last blast of snow on its way out.

  As she rounded the next bend, her headlights flashed on the sign that read “Oak Flat” and she shook her head remembering Samuel and Jacob and the scent of vomit in her truck. The smell was there still, though just a hint now, a secret that the backseat kept from the front. She laughed a little to herself, recalling how she’d yelled at Samuel to get in the truck. That was less than two weeks ago. There was no way she would have guessed then that she’d be here now, farming with her children. Life just changed for her with the turning of the season.

  Her headlights flashed again on something up ahead and Ginger slowed down. She stopped abruptly.

  “I cannot believe it.” She breathed, her lips pulled tight across her teeth. She put the truck into park without turning it off, opened her door, and stepped out.

  “Is that Jacob Esch?” she asked, pointing to . . . well, Jacob Esch. His left arm was flung over another boy’s shoulder and together they were stumbling in the ditch next to the road.

  “Yea-ha,” the other boy replied, clearly intoxicated.

  “Who are you?”

  “Eli—Eli Beiler.”

  “You and Jacob have been drinking?”

  The boy giggled. “A little.”

  “Well, Eli-Eli Beiler. Did you know Jacob just had his appendix out and is on pain medication?”

  “No, he’s not.”

  “He’s not?” Ginger cocked her head.

  “Makes him feel funny.”

  Closing her eyes, Ginger shook her head, hoping that when she opened them somehow the two boys would be gone. She put both her hands on her hips and opened her right eye. Nope—the boys were still there.

  “Where are you two going now?” she asked.

  “Back to Mr. McLaughlin’s farm up there in Oak Flat.”

  “What’s there?”

  “Our beds.” Eli laughed.

  She sighed, saying, “Get in. I’ll drive you.”

  “Ah! Thank you, ma’am.” As Eli struggled out of the ditch, carrying the deadweight of Jacob Esch in his arms, Ginger opened the back door.

  “It’s not as cold as it’s been,” he said as he dumped Jacob into the backseat.

  “How much have you guys had?” She twisted her nose at the thick smell of alcohol that rolled off them.

  “Not too much.” He giggled again as he shut the door.

  “Has Jacob thrown up?” Ginger opened the door to the front passenger seat and then walked around the front of her truck.

  “Uh, yea-ha. He didn’t have hardly anything and he threw up.”

  She smiled brightly. “There’s a blessing.” Backing up, she turned the truck around and headed back to Oak Flat.

  “May I ask your name, ma’am?”

  “I am Mrs. Martin.”

  “Oh! Jacob talks about you! You farming and never have done before.”

  “That’s right. I’ve got a few things to say to him, so maybe he’ll have more to talk about with you than farming.”

  Eli hiccupped and pointed left at the Oak Flat sign. She turned, driving about a mile down the road and then veering off to the right down a steep gravel lane that wound through dense forest. About one half of a mile in, the trees opened up to a white house with a red barn.

  “Can you turn your lights off, please?” Eli asked in a whisper.

  Ginger looked over at him, finding the boy crouched forward as if sneaking by some sleeping predator. She half smiled, imagining Farmer McLaughlin would be about as happy as she if awakened by two drunk Amish boys.

  “We have the little shed to the right,” he continued, motioning to the side of the barn. Flipping her lights off, Ginger crawled across the drive in the moonlight and put the truck in park. Ever so quietly, Eli opened his door and hopped out.

  “I’ll open our house,” he said as Ginger climbed out of the driver’s seat. She came around the bed of the truck and opened the back door. Pulling Jacob by the arms, she raised him until he was seated, at which point Eli returned and together they carried the boy into the shed.

  It was less of a shed and more of a bedroom, with bunk beds, a little bathroom on the left, and a space heater glowing warmly. It was carpeted and clean and it seemed that Farmer McLaughlin had taken care to provide a home for these two boys.

  “Nice place,” Ginger noted as they dropped Jacob on the lower bunk.

  “Yea-ha,” Eli said and with a small gag stumbled into the bathroom and shut the door.

  “At least it wasn’t in the car.” She looked around the room for a paper and something to write with and, finding none, stepped out of the shed and back to the truck. She flipped on the inside light and rummaged through the cab and her handbag, finding only an old eyeliner pencil.

  “Why is it when you need to write something, there’s nothing to write on?” She gazed up into her rearview mirror and a thought passed across her mind. She giggled wholeheartedly as she turned off the light. Back in the shed, she heard Eli still vomiting in the bathroom.

  Lowering herself onto the bed next to Jacob, she pulled the cap off her eyeliner.

  “Tell me, Jacob, my dear. After a night like this, do you walk into the bathroom and face yourself in the mirror?”

  She chuckled softly as she wrote, Call Mrs. Martin, and then her cell phone number backward across his forehead. Once that was accomplished, she popped the lid on the pencil smartly and stood. She crossed the doorstep and as she shut the door, she said, “Good night, Jacob Esch. Sleep well.”

  Still snickering from her great idea, she wished sh
e could see Jacob’s face in the mirror the next morning. Then she gazed up and stopped short. There was an older African-American man standing by her driver’s-side door in the moonlight.

  “You are not Miriam Schrock,” he stated.

  “N-no. I’m Virginia Martin. A nurse at the hospital where Jacob had his appendix out. I—uh, I found the boys walking on the road and gave them a lift home.”

  “They been drinking again?”

  Ginger shuffled from one foot to another. She knew the answer but thought it not her place to say so.

  “No need to tell me, Mrs. Martin. I know they have. And I’m sick of it. One day I’m gonna wake up and one of ’em will be dead from it.”

  “It’s a nice home you’ve made for them here.”

  He nodded. “And they’ve been good workers. They’re real good boys. I been waiting for them to come to their senses and go back to their parents, but I just can’t have this anymore. Worries me sick.”

  Ginger nodded, supposing she, too, would worry about them.

  “Maybe, Mr. McLaughlin, they need to be men now. Maybe to be responsible to somebody besides themselves.”

  “That’s what’s been on my mind of late. Wish they’d go home.”

  “We’ll see. Maybe before they go home, they have to grow up.”

  Mr. McLaughlin shrugged and opened her car door.

  “Thank you,” she said. The man gave a nod and backed away as Ginger started the truck. She put it in reverse, gazing back in the mirror. Before she took her foot off the brake, she rolled down the window.

  “I don’t suppose you have children.”

  “A boy and a girl,” he said. “They’re both marines in Afghanistan.”

  Ginger smiled. Of course they were. “I don’t suppose they went to VMI?”

  The farmer cocked his head and replied, “Yes. They did. How’d you know?”

  “Just a lucky guess. You must be proud of them.”

  “I am.”

  She leaned out the window and looked at Mr. McLaughlin steady in the eyes.

  “And they have a great father.”

  The man shrugged and as she backed up he stood still in the moonlight, watching her go.