Ma’s body was broken in three places. I still pray that the first break made it so she didn’t feel the others.
Wooster and the Widow Gibbons stayed three weeks. They’d driven out from Salem to visit Mitchell House, arriving just before the storm, wanting to see how Emily was doing and if I’d found Ma. They hadn’t known about Grandfather’s death or the journey to South Carolina—none of it.
Only God knows how much it meant to have them there. Now Wooster was the strong one, the healthy one who took charge, who’d saved my life yet again.
It was beyond my ken. Ma couldn’t really be gone, couldn’t really be dead, could not be buried in the family plot beside Grandfather and Grandmother Ashton.
I could not understand how the children played, why they cried, forever hungry, how it was that Noah’s leg and shoulder mended. Nothing in life had stopped—nothing but me and Ma.
I caught them laughing once; Emily and Ruby and Wooster stood in the kitchen, laughing at one of Henry’s antics. I stared at them, not angry, not exactly—just not understanding. What could there be to laugh about—now—ever?
The morning Wooster and the widow were to leave, Wooster and I walked early the mile to Ashland, to Ma’s grave. Old George had fashioned a false leg for Wooster back in Salem, and a shoe made to fit. With one crutch he stepped along at a good clip—faster than I felt up to—but we pushed on just the same. We didn’t talk. It was a thing I liked about Wooster. When we reached her stone, I sat, just sat, tired beyond telling, on the rain-wet ground.
“You might like to plant some flowers here, Robert, before you go,” Wooster said.
“Flowers?” I repeated. “Before I go?”The words stood fuzzy in my brain.
“Ones that will come up every year, whether you’re here or not.”
I thought, Where else would I be? but didn’t say it. “Flowers,” I said again, wondering what kind Ma would like.
“You’ve got to pick up, Robert, to go on.”
I wanted to say, I can’t, and what do you know about it anyway? You’ve got your ma! And she’s a real mother! But I didn’t say that, either. And what I couldn’t bring myself to think clearly was that I wouldn’t wish her back, not the way she was.
“As hard as it is, your life goes on,” Wooster started.
“I don’t want to hear this, Wooster—not now. I don’t want to think about it.”
“But you’ve got to think about it. There’s a house full of hungry people back there, most of them children. They’re looking to you for food, Robert, for answers.”
“Answers? I’m fresh out of answers. Come back some other day—some other lifetime,” I said. When there’s not so much death, I thought. I stood and stomped away, sure I could outwalk him. But that was wrong, too.
“Do you remember what you told me Chap. Goforth said, about serving where you’re called, about answering God’s call on your life?” Wooster panted but kept up with me.
I wanted to stick my fingers in my ears, to shout at the top of my lungs, not listen to any of this. Wooster grabbed my arm.
“What do you want from me?” I shouted.
“It’s not me that wants it, Robert!” he shouted back. “Why did you come here? Why did you fight your way all through the South, risk your life and mine to get here?”
“I did it to find Ma! Well, I sure found her! And look what happened!”
“Yes! Look what happened.” He wouldn’t let go of my arm. “You helped them get from South Carolina to North Carolina. They would have starved, the women would have been left alone—to the hands of deserters or foragers or Sherman’s bummers—if you hadn’t been there.”
“They were doing fine before I showed up!”
“You saved those kids, found Stargazer, brought Ruby’s mother back to her burial ground! For the sake of all that’s holy, Robert, you found Ruby—Jeremiah’s mother! Do you think Gen. Sherman would have provided a safe escort to two colored women, a passel of slave children, Emily, and your addled mother if you hadn’t been there—if he didn’t believe all you told him?”
“How did you know—”
“Emily told me. Ruby told me. Ruby told me you promised to get her to Jeremiah. Emily and those kids are counting on you to take care of them. You know they can’t stay here. There’s nothing for them! Emily won’t complain, but there’s not enough money to pay the taxes. They’ll be turned out before next winter.”
“Alex has money in England.”
Wooster snorted. “From everything you told me about him, from what I know from Emily, he’s probably already spent it. Even if he hasn’t, he can’t get it through the blockades, and after the war, who knows what will get through? Do you think he’ll pay to raise slave children as his own? Do you think he’ll provide for Emily once he learns she’s freed all the slaves—didn’t get a penny for them?” He shook my arm. “Think, Robert. Think!”
“I don’t want to think!” I shoved him away. “I can’t take responsibility for them. Look what happened to Ma when I tried to help her. She’s dead, Wooster. She’s dead! I killed her!” And then the dam broke—the dam I’d been holding back three weeks.
“You didn’t kill her, Robert. You kept her from killing innocent people—me, Emily, Ruby, Noah—the children. She couldn’t help herself, and she couldn’t stop. You know that.”
I did know that, but I needed to punish someone. I needed to punish myself for failing—failing Ma and Pa, failing to pull our family back together, failing to get Ma home. “I couldn’t stop her.” I swore. “I couldn’t change her.” I swiped at my eyes. “She could have lived a hundred more years, and I couldn’t change her.”
“That’s the truth you have to remember. It wasn’t your job to change her. It was your job to love her, and you did that. Now you need to forgive her, to let her go.”
“I did forgive her! I knew she couldn’t help it!”
“Knowing she couldn’t help what she was is not the same as forgiving her. You know that. You know that because you know that not being able to help her is not the same as not loving her.”
His words spun in my head. I didn’t want to listen. I didn’t want to heed. My temples throbbed. “I don’t know how to go on, Wooster. I don’t know how.”
“One day at a time. One minute at a time. The strength doesn’t come from you. You know that, Robert.” I looked at him, wondering how he knew, if he really knew. “Emily told me you learned that, too. I’m glad, Robert.”
Why would Emily tell him anything so personal about me? I hadn’t even said it to her in that many words, and yet she knew—enough to tell Wooster. They were alike in many ways, and I was surprised I hadn’t paid better heed. “You aren’t courting Emily, are you?” It was the first time the idea had swept through my mind.
Wooster started, then snorted. He chuckled. The chuckle spread till he laughed out loud. “That’s you! That’s a lot more like you, Robert Glover! That’s the grumbling, bumbling friend I ran South with!” He laughed till he clutched his sides. He laughed till tears stood in his eyes, but he hadn’t answered my question.
“So what is it? Are you? Are you courting her?”
He stopped laughing—almost. “No, you fool. But if you don’t wake up and do it yourself, I’m bound to!” I felt my dander rise, but he punched me in the chest. “Somebody’s bound to—and soon. Just make sure it’s you.”
“I mean to.”
“Then do it. You remember what you told Chap. Goforth about Katie Frances? Well, you’re every bit as slow and stupid as he was.”
“It’s not the same! Katie Frances loved Andrew. She wanted to marry him, but he didn’t see it. He was afraid of what the war would do to him—to her.”
Wooster stared hard at me, like he was trying to read my thoughts, trying to figure who I was. “And you’re not?” He started to walk away, then turned back. “Emily has eyes for you and only you. You’re a fool not to see it, and a bigger fool not to ask her to marry you.” I stared after him, wondering if he could be telling the truth.
“But I’m eighteen. I don’t have anything. I can’t ask her. And there’s a war on!”
“The war is nearly over. Gen. Sherman’s already in North Carolina. Petersburg and Richmond are nearly broken through. We both know the South can’t hold. It can’t be news to the generals! When this war’s done there won’t be many men with a penny to rub between their fingers. That won’t keep life from going on.”
He started to walk away again, but turned back. “If you can’t offer Emily anything now, court her. Promise her you’ll make something of yourself—then go out and do it.” Wooster raked his fingers through his hair, frustrated. “Because if you don’t, you fool—I will.” And he stomped off. He stomped off and left me standing in the road.
I couldn’t take all that in, not yet.
I walked back toward Ashland, stopped in the circular drive. I saw the Big House’s black ruin with its chimney monuments, saw the cemetery plot on the hillside—Ma’s newly dug grave, and the lane to the run-down slave cabins beyond, broken and empty. I turned again and saw Wooster, my friend, clomping unevenly out the lane and down the road toward Mitchell House, toward Emily and Ruby, toward Noah and Mamee and the six small slave children in need of a home. I thought of Henry’s brown eyes, imagined him growing up, learning to read, working at Laurelea with me and the Henrys.
I shook my head. I didn’t feel equal to taking responsibility for Henry, for any of them. I didn’t know how I could offer them protection or a home, or offer Emily a life when I owned nothing. But I didn’t for a minute think that would stop Wooster from doing all of that.
Everything in front of me promised long years and hard work. Maybe I could make a different home, a different family. Maybe Emily would agree to be part of that. I shook my head. That seemed too good to be true, but I wondered.
Everything behind me, even the grieving, promised the laying down of struggle, an uneasy peace made of giving up. It seemed safer, an easier path, not so frightening. The going forward seemed too big, too hard, too uncertain.
Wooster had turned onto the road. I saw him between patches of new leaves as he thumped out of sight, determined, strong. He’d lain near death three months before. What made him so strong, so sure now? The love of his mother, the people in his church, his faith? The belief that his life could be different, new, that it could go on? What?
I remembered him back at the field hospital, when Andrew talked about war-maimed men and how they’d have nothing to offer a woman, no life worth claiming. Even then Wooster knew that was a lie, knew he was stronger than that.
But I knew, for my own part, that war maimed in ways a body couldn’t see.
The old, easier path pulled hard at me. It would be so easy to give up, to quit fighting. Was that the decision Ma’d made? Did she have a choice—ever? Or did something broken inside keep her from having choices? I’d begged her to hold on. I knew she’d tried sometimes. She’d waged her inner war, long as I could remember. She’d run from one life to another, back and forth. But for some reason she couldn’t hold on. She couldn’t.
But I could. I could choose life and all that meant, or I could sit in my darkness.
“I can’t do this alone, Lord.”
I will never leave you nor forsake you. That Scripture promise came as clear in my mind as it had on that South Carolina road.
“But how can I do this?”
And I remembered: I can do all things through Christ, who strengthens me.
Christ in me. I sighed. Ma understood, I think—even if it was only for a few minutes, only at the end. I wondered what Ma had prayed for, what she’d thought in those last moments—before she thought Jed Slocum had returned, and after—when she thought I was her enemy.
I wished time could turn back, wished things could have been different for her, for Pa, for all of us. I guessed that is what everyone living through this war wished. I knew Andrew had wished it for him and Katie Frances. I prayed they’d made it, would make it through the war.
But what about after? Wooster was right—most of us wouldn’t have a penny to rub between our fingers. Most of us lost loved ones, farms, everything that matters in this life. It would be hard to find our way, hard to find my way.
Trust in the Lord with all thine heart and lean not on thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him and he will direct your paths.
I breathed that Scripture in, let it take hold, let it settle. It was all right. I’d long known that you never reach a thing without setting your feet straight and walking toward it. I could do that. I could trust Him.
I breathed again. The air was new. That surprised me. I hadn’t noticed when winter passed, when spring came on. The violets were blooming. It was time to plant. That surprised me too.
I looked again for Wooster but couldn’t see him. He was beyond the line of trees and probably most of the way to Mitchell House.
I started down the lane. Maybe I could catch him, talk to him. Maybe I’d thank him, or just shake his hand.
It would be good, would be right to see Wooster and the Widow Gibbons off to Salem. They’d done so much for us all, in so many ways.
I picked up my pace. I thought of Emily standing in the morning sunshine, standing in the doorway of Mitchell House, waving good-bye to our friends, then waiting … waiting, maybe, for me to come home. I pondered that till the thought stole my breath. I smiled … all over… and began to run.