Here and Again Read online

  Lieutenant Fletcher Hallings has healed up nicely. He took to a lung infection shortly after we retired from Fredericksburg and I had great concern that he was not going to live. Never have I seen a face so pale. Had he gone, I think the weight of the war would be heavy upon me once more. I worry now at losing him. However, after careful thought, I believe he will not die in this war and neither will I. The war will go on perpetually and I will die of old age, my hair thin, my teeth gone, and my coat with its mismatched buttons hanging too large upon my fragile frame. What a sight I will be then when finally I return to you!

  The dream of you I have held in my mind changes with each night. It has been one of our wedding, another of our life together, building a home, yet another with our children. As time moves and now a picture of myself as old and in your arms flows across my mind, I realize the dream is ever changing. What is needed to see me through this moment will give way to another to help me through the next. A dream can change and as it does, the one before dies. I mourn the loss of each dream like the passing of an old friend. Sometimes—sometimes I cannot clearly see what shall come next. I sit then, in that moment, silent as if in an acoustic shadow waiting to hear what is next but hollow with loss.

  The wheel turns and spring will give way to summer. Perhaps we shall still be here, watching the river flow as the cicadas sing a lullaby. Perhaps we shall be elsewhere, fighting. I am not sure what the year will bring but I am quite certain it will not bring an end to the war. It will continue and I will march the length of Virginia following it.

  I must close now. Oddly, we are called to the general’s command. Perhaps we move, after all. I do hope so, though I think I now shall miss my brothers across the river—another loss left to mourn.

  Your devoted,

  Samuel

  Chapter 25

  Shenandoah Burning

  By the time her truck reached Harrisonburg, the evergreens had brushed all the white, puffy clouds away, bringing on their tail a huge black sky, which crawled inexorably north as if night itself had forgotten directions and rolled in from the south. There was, however, neither quarter moon nor stars in this night sky. There was rain—rain like a summer rain running the edge of a hurricane, whose eye glared down on Williamsburg and Richmond, but whose sweeping arms flattened and spread west like a scythe.

  Ginger didn’t like the sky and the Three Musketeers in her truck disliked it even more. Dodging through traffic in Harrisonburg, she rolled onto 81 with a great confluence of cars, whose drivers all obviously had the same notion: to outrun the storm. Whenever any one person has a bright idea, inevitably many, many others have the same; the general outcome usually is a mess of some sort, in this case a traffic jam. Several times she had thought to get off and take the old turnpike, but others would have thought of that also and instead of crawling on the highway she’d be stopped dead on the turnpike, for certainly the turnpike had seized up when the rain came on.

  There were no drops of water in this storm. It started as a dusting mist falling on the windshield like a whispered secret of some great event that would shortly ensue. Cars behind her disappeared, taken into some other world beyond a veil of black. Jumping from the cab when traffic stopped momentarily, Eli rescued the three backpacks from the truck bed. He shut his door just in time; the rain hit not in drops but as one great, heavy mass. It smashed into the back of the truck as if someone, trying to carefully lower a great load of dirt, had inadvertently dropped the entirety of it, sending the shocks on the rear wheels bouncing. The pounding on the roof was so horrendous they all crouched lower in their seats lest it blow off and take their heads with it. Inch by inch, the traffic crept north. Not a word was spoken and all attention was drawn forward through wide eyes straining to see the road ahead, praying for the exit sign to Woodstock.

  It came and Ginger slid off the highway, her truck rushed down the ramp by a flood of water. As they drove through the town, the traffic signals were out and the shops were dark. She turned left and the truck, finding a familiar road, followed it home. The Mitchell house was dark, as was the Whitakers’. Mr. Schaaf and his tractor were nowhere to be seen. The Creed house was but a vague shape beyond the wall of water, and up ahead the soft yellow-orange windows of Smoot’s farm winked through the rain, the only sign of warmth and life in the great blackness. Ginger was glad all over again that they had started using the kerosene lamps.

  Pulling up the drive, Ginger stopped when the passenger-side door was just next to the porch. She threw the truck in park and got out. Dragging the backpacks from the cab, Eli and Miriam made their way to the porch. The front door opened as Ginger helped Jacob from the cab and, together, she and the Three Musketeers, drenched by the storm, stepped into the house at five o’clock p.m.

  As Ginger stood dripping in the entryway, she found a scent in the house that was very familiar but she wasn’t quite able to place it. Osbee had made ginger cookies and coffee and the moist heat from both hung heavily in the glow of the many lamps that were lit throughout the family room. But something else filled the air—a cinnamon-orange fragrance as if Christmas had returned but forgot to bring the snow.

  “Jacob!” Bea called as she shut the door and wrapped her arms around his waist.

  “Hey, Bea,” he greeted, letting go of Ginger to return the hug.

  “You’re wet,” she stated.

  “You stayin’?” Oliver asked from the dining room, one ginger cookie held in each hand.

  “Who are they?” Bea asked, gazing over to Miriam and Eli.

  “The Three Musketeers,” Ginger said, grinning. “Come to rescue us from our farming ignorance.”

  “I’m not ignorant,” Osbee called from the kitchen.

  Bea looked sideways at her mother.

  “Eli and Miriam, this is my daughter, Bea. And that cookie monster over there is Oliver, my youngest.”

  “You guys going to live with us?” Oliver asked.

  “Yes, they are,” Ginger replied. She kicked off her boots.

  “Where are they sleeping?”

  “I’m still working that out.”

  As Ginger headed through the dining room, she saw her mother and Beau walking behind Henry, who was coming through the back door with a bucket of milk. She started.

  “Mom,” Ginger said.

  Her dad popped out from behind the kitchen wall. “Ginny Moon!” he announced, flinging his arms wide-open. He was tall and thin with round spectacles, thinning hair, and a square jaw. He never changed.

  “Dad!” She ran forward and he took her in his arms. Burying her head in his chest, she felt the embrace of home as if she’d never left. She counted his heartbeat—one, two, three. “Dad,” she whispered, her eyes welling up at the strength of his wiry arms and his very loud heart. She felt her mother encircle her from the back and she rested now just as she used to when she was little, having crawled between them in bed after a bad dream.

  “You have made a great deal of progress since we talked last,” her mother said.

  Ginger released her father to look at her mother. She was a foot shorter than her dad and her strawberry blond braid swung forward over her right shoulder. Just a few gray hairs had come in at the temples since last they were together and her brown eyes moistened as she held Ginger’s face in her hands.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?”

  “We did,” her dad replied.

  “I mean coming now. You must have packed immediately after hanging up the phone.”

  They all three laughed. Wrapping her arms around her daughter’s waist, Monica turned to Jacob and his friends. “And who do we have here?” she asked.

  “The Three Musketeers,” Tim replied, kissing Ginger’s head. “Gonna show us how to farm.”

  “I know how to farm,” Osbee said, stepping in from the kitchen.

  “Jacob’s Amish,” Bea explained.

&n
bsp; “Really?” Tim replied. “Cool.”

  “Uh, Mom, Dad, Osbee. This is Jacob Esch, Miriam Schrock, and Eli Beiler. These are my parents, Mr. and Mrs. Barnes.”

  “Tim and Monica,” her dad corrected.

  “Call them what you’re comfortable with,” Ginger said. “And this is Grandma Osbee, or Mrs. Smoot if you want.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Osbee said.

  “Nice to meet you,” Miriam replied.

  “Come in, come in,” Tim said, motioning to the kitchen. “We’ve brought Market Spice tea from Seattle.”

  “Ah! That’s the cinnamon smell,” Ginger declared, walking arm in arm with her mother.

  “You forgot what it was?” Tim asked, incredulous.

  Ginger laughed and as she stepped into the kitchen she froze. Samuel was there, leaning next to the stove, his arms folded before his chest.

  “Welcome home, Virginia Moon,” he greeted.

  Everyone was in the kitchen now. Ginger did not reply. Instead she looked at Osbee, who was peering behind Ginger’s father to the Three Musketeers. Henry washed his hands in the sink next to Samuel and looked over his shoulder at his mother, a smile growing across his face. She opened her eyes wider at him to ask the question without asking the question. He shrugged a little. Oliver giggled.

  Slowly, Ginger turned her head to the left and up, gazing into her father’s eyes. He was smiling so big, Ginger raised her hand to her mouth to stop the laugh. That answered that question.

  “I don’t see,” her mother whispered in her ear, the sheer disappointment silencing the joy she felt for her father.

  “Oh, Mom, I’m sorry,” Ginger replied.

  “Me, too.”

  There was now no movement, no sound—just an awkward silence.

  “Miriam,” Ginger finally said, turning to the girl. “Would you like to get out of your wet things?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Eli?”

  “Sure,” he replied in his easy way.

  Ginger stepped forward and when she gazed over to Jacob, he met her eyes with a deep crease growing between his eyebrows.

  “Henry, Bea? Can you please take them upstairs to change?”

  Henry wiped his hands on a towel and motioned to Eli.

  “You raised Amish, too?” Bea asked, taking Miriam’s hand.

  “I was,” the girl replied, following Bea into the dining room.

  “You learn to plow?”

  “I did.”

  The conversation continued and when it was but a murmur from upstairs, Ginger said, “I see why you left last time you were here, Jacob.”

  “I—I think Miriam, Eli, and I can’t stay,” he replied, quietly. “I thought maybe—maybe it was just my medicine that made me see him last time.”

  “You’re supposed to stay,” Ginger said.

  “Monica! Is this our daughter?”

  “Please, Dad.”

  Jacob glanced over to Ginger’s father, asking, “You see him?”

  “We all see him,” Oliver replied.

  “I don’t,” Monica added.

  “I found you in the ditch, inebriated,” Samuel said to Jacob.

  “Y-you did?”

  “Yes. I stopped Virginia on the road so she would find you.”

  Jacob hobbled over to the kitchen table and lowered himself slowly into a chair as he turned his gaze to Ginger. “He shouldn’t be here,” the boy said.

  “He can’t get home, for one reason or another,” Osbee explained.

  “Why can’t you go home?” Jacob asked Samuel.

  “I don’t know.”

  “He doesn’t see the light,” Tim offered.

  Ginger’s eyes popped open as she flicked them in Samuel’s direction. He glowered.

  “He’s come to help us make the farm home,” Osbee said. “Just like you, Jacob. And now your friends are here with you. You can tell them about Samuel or not. Choice is yours, but we have a place here for Samuel in our home and at our table, just as we have a place for all of you. Who knows who else will show up and for what reason. All we know is we are all here now and we have a place and a home and a lot of work, so our home will be here for us. Do you have a home right now?”

  Jacob gazed around the kitchen, looking at everyone but Samuel.

  “I know where it is. I’m just not sure how to get to it anymore,” he replied.

  “I am the same,” Samuel said.

  They looked at each other, each taking measure.

  “I think it best, if possible, not to tell Eli and Miriam. It’s not—with us,” Jacob requested.

  “As you think best,” Ginger said. “Now, if y’all don’t mind, I need a shower and we need to get dinner going and sleeping arrangements made.”

  As Monica and Osbee made dinner, Eli, Tim, and Ginger made their way out to the summer kitchen through the fury of rain to light the stove for heat and make the bed. Oliver, seeing the transformation of the attic over the summer kitchen change from a storage space into a bedroom, wanted desperately to sleep with the big boys and began a perpetual request of Jacob and Eli that lasted from the striking of the first match that lit the stove, through dinner, and past the dishes.

  Eli acquiesced and, without being asked, he made the offer to Henry, too. Thus, as all four boys and Bea headed out to care for the horses and mules, Ginger and her parents pulled two cots and two sleeping bags down from the attic of the house. Henry and Oliver were tucked into the double bed and Eli and Jacob made their way to the cots. Monica and Tim took the twin beds in the boys’ room, while Miriam and Bea slept in Bea’s queen bed. At ten p.m., Ginger climbed the stairs with her lantern, entered her room, and shut the door. Beau, who had followed her, collapsed on the floor.

  “That’s exactly how I feel,” she said as she placed the lantern on her desk and sat down. The rain hitting her window sounded like tiny metal beads tapping the glass. She closed her eyes and listened to the wind coming in waves at the house like an ocean tide, quiet as it flowed out and then roaring in. The light of the quarter moon was blanketed by the black clouds above and there was an uneasy emptiness in the house, even though it was full of people.

  “Samuel?” she called.

  “Yes, Virginia Moon.”

  “Thank you for watching over things.”

  “I would be nowhere else.”

  She opened her eyes and gazed at her reflection on the black glass before her. She didn’t see where he was, but she knew he was there. And now was the time to ask. “What happened to Juliette, Samuel?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Was she home over Laurel Creek when you were at war?”

  “No. We were not yet married. She was from Sharpsburg and I had asked her to take her father south as we were going to come into Maryland.”

  “Antietam,” Ginger breathed.

  Samuel’s head nodded in the reflection as he said, “Yes. But I did not know that at the time I asked her to move. She left before that battle.”

  “Where’d she go?”

  “First to Strasburg and her cousin. As Sheridan came through the valley in September, I received a note that they were heading farther south to a cousin of her cousin. She didn’t know where that would be as they were leaving in haste but would write as soon as she arrived. I never heard from her again.”

  “Did she die?”

  Samuel gazed up in the reflection as he placed his left hand on his chest. “I found—” He broke off.

  Ginger turned around to face him and asked, “Found what?”

  “The farm near Strasburg was burned to the ground and we found four bodies. Nothing but bone among the ashes.”

  “You don’t know if one of them was Juliette.”

  “I do.”

  “How?”

  “Because one of
them was her father, burned but recognizable by his clubfoot and his cane. She would never have left him.”

  Ginger listened to the wind scratch the roof.

  “So we came to Cedar Creek, the rising blue tide amongst the flaming leaves of Virginia. And as I fought, I prayed for death to come and bear me to the arms of my love.”

  Samuel lowered his head and peered across the room from the shadow of his eyes.

  “And I came,” Ginger said.

  He nodded, continuing. “You were there in answer to my prayer. I moved to hold you and you disappeared. The bullet that you saw hit Jeb.”

  “Wh-who’s Jeb?” Ginger asked, confused.

  “I didn’t even see him, for I was filled with you. And then you were gone and the smoke cleared and Jeb, my best friend and son of the other man I called father, the Reverend Harker, whose buttons secured my own jacket, fell before mine own eyes, blood pouring from his gut onto his blue uniform. He served in the Northern army with his brother, Zach, and I for the South. War tearing us apart. Now here he was, a man I had known all my life, as close to me as if he were my own brother, bleeding by a bullet meant for me.”

  “I saw him,” Ginger whispered.

  “I knew then, it was over for me. We were lost and duty called me elsewhere, for I held Jeb in my arms and he begged me to take him to Ruth. I knew his love. I knew that burning. So I picked him up and headed south, crossing the Shenandoah on a fallen tree to gain the other side of the river—the side that was not set ablaze by Sheridan.

  “And we came to rest two days later at a place I had been before. I found myself across the Shenandoah from where I had sat several years before, looking at my picture with you as I rested on a large boulder. It was where I saw the ginger moon, an autumn moon in July, and began to feel out of place. How strange it was that I was there again. There but on the other side of the river.”