Love and War

the kitchen, oblivious to the pained look on the aging freedman's face.

The kitchen was empty. Soup stock containing one large bone simmered on the stove. He shouted, 'Gus, where the hell are you?'

She came dashing down the hall, hairbrush in hand. At the sight of him, her face glowed. She flung her arms around his neck. 'Sweetheart!'

He pressed his bearded cheek to hers but broke the embrace when she started to kiss him. He flung a shabby butternut trouser leg over a low-backed chair and sat. He fumbled in his shirt for matches and a half-smoked cigar. His lack of emotion worried her.

At the stove, she swirled the long wooden spoon three times around the simmering pot. Then she laid the spoon aside and reluctantly confronted him.

'Darling, you don't look well.'

'I caught the intestinal complaint again. I don't know which is worse, lying on a cot wishing my gut would fall out or riding over half of Virginia with General Hampton.'

'It's been that bad —?'

'We've lost more men and horses than you'd believe. At least three whole troops of the South Carolina Sixth are in the dead­line camp, without remounts.'

She glanced out the window. 'You still have Sport.'

'Barely.' He knocked his knuckles on the table twice.

She brushed at a strand of loose blond hair. 'It breaks my heart to see you so thin and white. And discouraged.'

'What else can you expect these days?' He found his nervousness increasing. Originally, he had considered staying the night — making love one last time — but he found he didn't have the brass to do that to her. Or the strength to endure it himself. Abruptly, he decided on a quick end.

He bit into the cigar stub, scraped a match on the chair bottom, waved it toward the windows as sulfurous fumes filled the room. 'The farm's a wreck.'

'Thank the Yankees. Hardly a day goes by without Boz or Washington firing a warning shot at some deserter sneaking around.'

'You shouldn't have stayed here. You shouldn't be here now. How can you raise anything? How can you and the niggers survive?'

'Charles, you know I don't like to hear that word. Especially in reference to my freedmen.'

He shrugged. 'I forgot. Sorry.' He didn't sound it.

She tugged at the tight waist of her dress. Charles's head was bent, his eye on the match applied to the cigar. Blue smoke whirled around his beard as he blew the match out.

Frightened, Gus said: 'You sound as though you don't really want me to answer the questions you asked. You sound as though you're trying to pick a fight.'

He plucked the cigar from his teeth. 'Now listen. It was a damned long ride up here —'

'May I remind you that no one begged you to make it?' The old defenses were going up again; the tartness, the wry mouth. They hurt him. But he had known for months that pain was necessary if he were to do what was right.

He smoked and stared, saw angry bewilderment in her blue eyes. He nearly relented. Then Ab Woolner came to mind, and Sharpsburg, and a great many other events and changes — so many, it hardly seemed possible that three years could contain them all. Or that any man could withstand them. Yet he had. But he was not unscathed.

More softly: 'How long are you able to stay?'

'I have to start back when it's dark.'

'Would you like —?' The unfinished question and her slight turn toward the door leading to the sleeping rooms had an adolescent awkwardness not typical of her. Red appeared in her cheeks.

'I need to water Sport and let him rest,' he said, aching to carry her in to bed. She heard the unspoken refusal.

'I'll give you supper when you're finished.'

With a bob of his head, he went out.

The dapple of shadow and light from moving clouds continued into the evening. Charles consumed two bowls of the thin beef soup and four pieces of coarse, delicious brown bread baked earlier. She ladled out a small portion of soup for herself but didn't touch it. While he ate, she said little, resting her chin on the backs of her interlocked hands, her elbows on the table on either side of the cooling soup. As she studied his face, she tried to fathom the sad mystery of what was wrong with him. Occasionally she prodded with a brief question.

He said he was sure the war was lost. He spoke of the high rate of desertion and Lee's failure to demonstrate faith in Wade Hampton by promoting him to commander of the cavalry. He mentioned actions whose names were unfamiliar and the escalating hostility.

'When Hunter was in the valley, he burned Governor Letcher's home in Lexington. The Military Institute, too. In Silver Spring, right outside Washington, they say Jube Early looted homes and farms in retaliation. Now he's loose in Pennsylvania — God knows what he's doing there. When this whole business started, it reminded me of a South Carolina tournament: fair ladies, courageous horsemen, games. It's turned into an abattoir, with butchers and cattle on both sides. Good soup,' he finished insincerely, pushing the bowl away. Do it now. Don't prolong it.

'What I came to say, Gus —' he cleared his throat '— with things going so badly, I don't know when I can get here again.'

Gus lifted her head, a swift, fierce movement, like a response to a slap. Bitterly, she said, 'Next week or never, the choice is yours. It always has been. I —' There she stopped, shaking her head as if saying no to herself.

'Go ahead, finish.'

Her voice strengthened. 'I hope you didn't expect a flood of tears in response to your announcement. I'm not sure I want you here in your present frame of mind. It's hardly new or profound to say that war is terrible. And you seem to forget men don't carry the entire burden. Do you think it's any easier to be a woman with a son or husband in the army? Do you think it's easier to sit and watch grown men play soldierboy by tearing up a garden — all the food you have in the world — and ruining a farm with their hooliganism? I know the war's done hard things to you. It's in your eyes, what you say, everything you do. You seem to be filled with rage —'

He rammed the chair back and stood, cigar in his teeth. He had lit a new one after eating, having decided he would go when the cigar was smoked. He might be leaving sooner than that.

'Don't bother to display your truculence,' Gus seethed. 'I've had my fill. What gives you special dispensation to beat your breast longer and harder than any of the rest of us? I love you, idiot that I am. I'm sorry for you. But I won't be treated like some dumb animal that's misbehaved. I won't be kicked, Charles. If you choose to come here again, let it be as the man I fell in love with. He's the one I want.'

Moments ticked by. He drew the cigar from his mouth.

'He died.'

She returned his stare. Softly, without wrath, she said, 'I think you had better go.'

'I think so too. Thanks for the food. Take care of yourself.'

He walked out, mounted Sport, and rode away beneath the lowering clouds of night.

For half an hour, Gus did nothing. She sat at the kitchen table, her hands on her stomach, while grief beat at her. Sometime during this period, Washington knocked at the back door. She didn't answer. He went away.

Darkness crept into the kitchen. When she finally stood, it was to light a lamp. She felt much as she had the night her husband died. She couldn't believe it had happened to her.

If she had been more realistic about Charles — less smitten — she would have recognized that something like this could happen. There had been signs, strong ones, during the past year. A couplet from 'An Essay on Man' cycled endlessly through her thoughts: Atoms or systems into ruin hurl'd. And now a bubble burst —

'And now a world.'

The whisper died away. With mental pushes and kicks, she forced herself to move through the dark house.