At nine that morning, Celeste rode Roland while Ben was on Sweetpea, an old, kind gelding. They walked along a winding farm road, past pastures greening up.
“You could have gone to early service,” Ben remarked. “I’m as happy to go to an Episcopal church as a Catholic one.”
“I know, but I’m a Christian by training not by nature.” She looked up. “This is my true place of worship. I think of it as the Church of the Blue Dome.”
He also looked up. “No arguments between Catholics and Protestants under this church. It’s always seemed silly to me. At one point during the war, some South African troops marched by us as we moved to the front, real Africans with white officers. Who or what did they worship? I never asked. Didn’t matter.”
“Do you think of the war much?”
“I try not to. Sometimes a thought or a picture jumps into my head, but I don’t want to remember. No one does.”
“Let’s hope that was the war to end all wars.”
He leaned over to pat Sweetpea’s neck. “This horse has more brains than we do. Have you ever heard of horses making war on one another? For what, hay? The idea of a horse in the sky? Because he doesn’t like another horse’s color? There’s something inside us, Celeste. I don’t know what it is but I’ve seen it. Death, nothing but death. For what? To stop Kaiser Bill? And why would millions of Germans follow Kaiser Bill? He wasn’t in the trenches. I try to forget and then questions wiggle into my mind.”
“They’re the questions we should all ask. I tell myself if we ever get the vote, this will change. No woman wants to send her husband, her son, her brother to war. Maybe we can change it.”
“Celeste, you have to change men first.”
“Well, you don’t believe in it.”
“Only because I saw it. I signed up to fight. I wanted to fight.”
“Would you fight again?”
A silence followed this question as they rode by masses of daffodils planted by an unseen hand a century ago, or a gift from the birds, who knew.
“If we were invaded, I would. Imagine that your Runnymede Square has two deep trenches on either side of the Mason-Dixon Line in which thousands upon thousands of men sat, lived, died, all along Maryland and Pennsylvania. And we’d built cannons that could lob shells seventy miles, we had machine guns and barbed wire. Insane. The limeys and the French complained that Americans wouldn’t be able to fight, that all we knew were what they called running battles because most of our experiences were against Indians. Obviously they forgot about the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, and the horrors of 1861 to 1865. They really thought we couldn’t endure or understand what they called set battles.”
“They were wrong,” Celeste quietly said.
“It took us a little bit to adjust. Mostly because we thought it was a misuse of men, and it was. Everyone was a sitting duck. You know what? We saved their sorry asses.” He stopped before he truly lost his temper.
“Yes, yes, I think we did. I don’t grasp how nations that gave us Beethoven or Shakespeare or even this new writer, Proust, I don’t understand how they could be so blind.”
“I don’t either but back to your question. Yes, I hope that was the war to end all wars, but I think killing is bred into us as well as stupidity.” He took a deep breath. “I hope I haven’t upset you.”
“Just the reverse. I want to know what you think and feel. You’ve lived through things I have not. I live well because you lived through them, as did my father and my grandfather. What I have is a superb education and not a bad brain, but I have only so many experiences, and many of those have been muffled because I’m a woman. I resent it, you know.”
A smile burst across his handsome face. “That you are and we can fuss about that, but I don’t want you to know what I know. I don’t want Cora or Louise or Juts to know these horrors or my sister or mother. Trust me, Celeste. Trust me on this.”
A flood of gratitude, respect, perhaps the first flush of deep understanding swept over her. “I do trust you, Ben. I trusted you the moment I met you and I have no idea why.”
“One of the fellows in my unit believed in past lives. Maybe we knew one another before. No matter. I’m glad we know one another now.”
“I wonder if now with our advancements, can we reduce suffering? Perhaps we knew one another in even more savage times. But maybe we can end this suffering.”
“You’d have to eliminate free will.”
Celeste stopped Roland and Sweetpea followed suit. “You fascinate me. I watched you think at speed during the baseball game. Your mind is unusual. Perhaps you know that. I have had one of the best educations money can buy, but that thought never occurred to me.”
“Maybe that’s why. What you learned was orthodoxy.”
“True. I did. I also learned the underpinnings of Western culture. I have a lot to learn from you.”
“Flattery will get you everywhere,” he teased. “I’m not so smart, but I think for myself. And, to change the subject, can we go a little faster?”
“Do you know how to post?”
“What?”
“I’ll show you.” She did rise on the horse’s diagonal, a proper post.
He watched, then tried to imitate her. He flopped back onto the saddle.
“You see why it’s imperative for men to learn to trot.”
“I do.” He took a deep breath, tried again, and trotted beside her.
They trotted a bit, no cantering, then walked back to the stable, where Henry awaited them. His church service didn’t begin until noon.
Ben dismounted, swinging his right leg over then pushing his left foot out of the stirrup to gracefully land on the grass. Then he reached up to give her a hand, she dismounted properly but also gracefully.
Face flushed, she put her hand around his neck, bending him to her while she whispered in his ear, “If life made sense, men would ride sidesaddle.”
He laughed. She laughed. Neither one could remember a time of such laughter as the last few days. Clouds of laughter, torrents of laughter, feeling light as a feather, floating with joy, feeling the sunlight in even the darkest corners. Carefree. Demons at bay, sadness banished. Blessedly carefree.