Whiskers In The Dark

4

April 9, 2018

Monday

Harry, Susan, and the animals awoke to 43ºF, gray skies, light winds. Bright embers glowed in the fireplace as Harry had awakened in the middle of the night to put more logs on the fire. She added more to keep the cabin warm as the windows rattled a bit in the wind. Both women pulled on extra layers of clothing.

“What’s your weather app say?” Harry peered at her phone.

Susan stared at hers. “Spring snowstorm. Predicted to start early evening.”

“Didn’t say that yesterday. Mine says the same thing as yours. Certainly looks threatening.”

Susan wrapped a scarf around her neck. “Supposed to snow from Maine to North Carolina. A nor’easter. Those are hateful and my phone says it’s already snowing in New England. Moving down.” She looked around for heavier gloves than yesterday’s light work gloves.

“The changing seasons. You never know but usually by April fifteenth we’ve seen our last hard frost. By then the forsythia’s in bloom. Guess not this year.” Harry zipped up her lightweight down jacket, which did keep her warm. “Let’s make a run for the bathroom. Got your toothbrush?”

“Do.”

They charged out of the cabin, sprinting up to the stone house, where running water was actually running and hot. There was no bathroom or kitchen in their cabin. Their items, even towels, were at the stone house.

After brushing their teeth and tidying up their hair, they put their items in bags, a Dopp kit for Harry, a baby blue bag with a ribbon for Susan. Harry usually bought men’s things because they were better made, lasted longer. She always bought men’s work boots.

“Let’s leave our bags here. No one will care.” Susan slipped her blue bag on a shelf. Harry did likewise.

They clambered upstairs for breakfast.

“Susan, I’ll be right back. I need to make sure I closed the door to the cabin. Tucker will push it open if I didn’t.”

“Okay.” Susan sat next to Jason Holzknect, set to talk about his Chesapeake Beagles in Maryland, while Harry dashed back to the cabin.

“We want to go with you,” Tucker announced.

“All right, you all. Stay inside. It’s cold outside, the barn will be cold, too. You’ve got your food and water.” She put two more large logs on the fire, checked the fire screen. “I think we’ll probably leave early today and I don’t want to go on a search and annoy mission. I search, you annoy.”

“Not me,” Pirate protested.

“Perfect.” Pewter flopped on the bed.

Harry had brought her comforter and Susan brought her heavy sleeping bag, so the kitties snuggled into them while the dogs sat in front of the crackling fire.

“I should go with you. You need protection,” Tucker grumbled.

Harry walked to the door, looked back. “Be good. I’ll see you soon enough.” She opened the door and closed it firmly behind her.

Once in the dining hall, muffins on the tables, the president announced that those who had come from the North, north of the Mason-Dixon Line, should leave now as the storm, according to her app, was sweeping down and would be in New York and Pennsylvania by noon. They just had almost enough time to outrun it—some snowflakes but the worst would be later.

Jason leaned toward Harry. “Heard you’ve got a lot of miles on your Volvo station wagon. Let me sell you a Highlander. Great car for snow. I’ll give you a preacher’s price.”

Harry’s eyebrows raised. “What denomination?”

Those around her laughed, then Arlene smiled. “He would sell you one, too. Actually, I think Jason could sell ice to Eskimos.”

None of the people from the northern hunts rebelled. Everyone had endured a tough winter and knew what was coming: yet another storm to dump inches of snow everywhere.

Jason remarked, “Well, I can work for maybe two hours. Maryland will be later. I am so tired of winter.”

“We all are,” Liz Reeser said, and everyone agreed. “Okay, those who are staying. Two groups. Work until about noon. Clear what you can and then let’s all pack up and go. We aren’t going to get lucky with this storm.”

Jason folded his arms across his chest. He looked out the windows. “It’s the wind I worry about. Well, ladies, let’s go.”

Susan, Liz, Jason, Harry, and Mary Reed comprised one work party. Clare, the other Liz, Mag Walker—all from Hermit’s Hollow Beagles, who had driven down early this morning—made up another with Arlene and Jessica Anderson. They headed toward the first creek crossing, which wasn’t far from the stone building. Branches were down; some had fallen into the creek.

The mound could be seen to their right.

“The mound looks clear.” Susan pulled a branch out of the water. “You’d think because it’s higher, the winds would have done more damage there than here.”

Mary said, “Well, sometimes the wind almost funnels down here. I think it’s worse.”

“Maybe the wind wants to leave the arms and legs alone.” Jason half smiled. “Every now and then some historian from a university wants to dig up there. What good does it do to find arm and leg bones? You don’t know who they once belonged to. Just let everything be.”

“I agree.” Harry slipped a pair of sharp clippers into a leather pouch on her belt.

Jason, cut branch in hand, said to Harry, “Highlander’s perfect in snow, mud, sleet, rain. Think about it. Preacher’s price.”

She smiled at him. “I will.”

The two groups labored intensely and by noon returned to the stone building.

Arlene Billeaud and Jessica Anderson, from the other group, came into view. Jessica hailed from New York, a northern hunt, but was staying with Mary Reed in Warrenton. The two groups waved at one another.

“How’d you do?” Arlene asked.

“Pretty good. Got the big stuff off the trails. Most of the limbs, too, but the wind is really picking up. We’ve quit in time,” Susan offered.

“We’ve done all we can do but we’ll have to come back and lop off the hanging branches.” Mary noted a necessary chore. A branch coming down during a hunt couldn’t be risked.

The sky was darkening. Amy Burke Walker looked up. “Maybe this is starting early. We’d all better pack up.”

When Harry and Susan reached their cabin and opened the door, the two dogs shot out, ran around in circles.

Pewter, on the bed, rolled over. “Dogs are stupid.”

The dogs, free, didn’t hear it. Not that her opinion would change anything.

As the two women packed up Susan’s station wagon, Harry left to retrieve their kits from the bathroom in the stone building, where she ran into Jason in the hall.

“I guess I’ll see you next weekend. We’ll need to come back.”

“We will.” He stepped outside, Harry beside him.

A sapling was bent over the mound area.

Harry inquired, “How many died?”

“There’s a cenotaph on the road, not in the direction you’re going. If I remember, it was placed there by the First Massachusetts Cavalry twenty-eight years after their defeat. Out of two hundred and ninety-four troopers in combat, one hundred ninety-eight were counted as casualties, many wounded but enough killed for it to be infamous.”

“That many?”

“If I remember it correctly, yes. Out here, far from much help, no wonder they were carried to this stone building, and I guess surgeons were commandeered from the Confederate men. Probably local women came in to help, too.”

“You know what I think about? How seeing what metal does to the human body—grapeshot, stuff like that—seeing that, how it affected those women who came in to nurse. I remember reading how many sat by bedsides to write letters home for the wounded. Those women must have gotten close, gotten to care about the men, whether they were Yankees or our boys. When you think of it, really they were kids.”

Jason nodded. “What’s the saying: Old men make the wars, young men fight them? That’s why we have Hounds for Heroes. Nothing changes. All right, gear’s in the truck. You and Susan have a safe journey.” He climbed up, as Clare was already in the truck, turned the key, a satisfying rumble announcing a true eight-cylinder engine. Driving off, they both waved.

Susan slid in her bedroll, followed by the comforter. It’s one thing to work outside in the cold; it’s another thing to be cold inside.

“Drinks?” Harry asked.

“In the cooler in the front. You can put your feet on it.”

“Okay. Ran into Jason when I was picking up my Dopp kit.”

“Saw you two talking at his truck.” Susan wiggled her fingers in her gloves.

“Like you, an amateur historian, I guess. But we were talking about how civilians must have felt as they nursed the wounded, the wounded of both sides.”

Susan breathed in, the air tingling in her lungs. “I guess if you read about that terrible war when you’re in school in Montana, it might not affect you. We live with it. See battlefields every day. What astonishes me is that the estimate of those enlisted was seven hundred and fifty thousand. Harry, if we had that percent of men in combat with our current population, that would number about eight million, give or take. It’s incomprehensible.”

“Is. I always thought the state should have funded former governor Doug Wilder’s museum of slavery. Didn’t.”

“Yeah, well, Ned”—she named her husband, a representative in the House of Delegates—“can talk about that. For one thing, it wasn’t a good time financially. Biz is picking up.”

“Depends on the biz.” Harry walked back into the cabin for her PLP, paranoid last peek.

Nothing left, everything tidied up, the fire put out, she closed the door. “Remind me to bring a picture to hang on the wall. A beagle or a basset, I know.” She grinned.

Both women leaned on the wagon for a moment, looking around. “Didn’t get to the tree branch that crashed right through that kennel roof.” Susan pointed it out.

“Next weekend. I’m assuming we’ll be back next weekend, kennel repairs and lopping off the low hangers. We’re running out of time.” She peered at the kennel maybe one hundred fifty yards away. “Can you think of the force? That branch crashed straight through the roof.”

“Where are the cats?” Harry asked.

“On the seat where you folded up your comforter. You didn’t think they’d stay in the back, did you?”

“Well, I do have everything fixed up, plus they can look out your back station wagon window, which is big.”

Susan smiled. “When are you going to figure out that your animals do exactly as they please? No one has ever accused you of being a disciplinarian.”

“Well—” Harry whistled for the dogs, who were seemingly in conversation by the front door to the stone house.

The beagle had walked toward them.

Pirate whispered, “It’s that dog we can see through.”

Tucker called out, “Who are you?”

“Ruffy.” The dog came near, then sat down.

“Do you have a safe place to bunk up?” Tucker was curious.

“I can go anywhere I want. In the kennels, in the cabins. All of Aldie is mine.”

“How come I can see through you?” Pirate asked.

“I live in a different dimension.”

“I don’t know what that means.” The big puppy was confused.

“Just accept it, Pirate,” Tucker commanded. “Ruffy, I believe you’re a ghost. Why are you here?”

“I’m here to stay with my friend,” Ruffy replied.

“Is your friend dead?” Tucker was blunt.

“Yes,” came the reply.

“Come on, you two bums,” Harry hollered.

Tucker turned her head, then turned it back. “Ruffy, I’m sorry.”

“That’s okay. Will you all be back?”

“Next weekend, I hope,” Tucker answered.

“That would be nice.” Then Ruffy walked away, fading with each step.

Once in the station wagon, doors locked because Pewter knew how to open them, Susan steered down the long driveway. “Look at that sky.”

“Why is it that spring snowstorms are the worst?” Harry peered out through the passenger-side window. “I think we’ll just make it. Then again, I don’t know. Looks ominous.”

“Spring snowstorms are the worst because we all want winter to be over. Maybe we let our defenses down.” Susan reached the paved state road.

They drove in silence along winding roads until they reached Route 50, called the Little River Turnpike at the time of the Battle of Aldie, where Susan turned left, east, then turned right at the circle. She’d hit Route 29 above Warrenton. They drove in companionable silence, the animals now asleep.

Harry broke the silence. “Don’t know what it is about that mound, but it kind of makes me shiver.”

“Well, arms and legs are one thing, but I think it’s creepy that no one knows where the bodies are buried. I mean, how could you forget that?”

“Beats me.” Harry swore she saw a tiny snowflake fall. “Maybe when there are that many wounded in a hospital, you lose track. You’re so busy trying to keep men alive, you don’t fret over where someone has put the dead. I expect all of our battlefields are full of unknown burial spots. I mean, it isn’t like Manassas or Gettysburg, which are shrines. And who really knows where all their dead are there?”

Susan thought, then replied, “But they had burial details.”

“Depends on the battle, doesn’t it? First Manassas the Federals ran, leaving behind their dead, their wounded, and their dancing clothes. They thought they’d be dancing in Richmond. Can you imagine just leaving your wounded screaming on the ground? We took them to our hospital tents.”

“No. Then again, with the exception of those men who had fought in the Mexican-American War, no one had seen wounded, heard the guns, moved forward in clouds of gun smoke, blinded. The smells and the noise alone would be terrifying and there you are, an eighteen-year-old farm boy from Iowa or a kid off a fishing boat in the Chesapeake Bay. Chaos. So I expect it was chaos in the field hospitals, too, and then the wounded were transferred to anyplace that could hold them. All transferred south. The North just ignored them.”

“You’re the history student. But I swear I feel something at Aldie and it’s concentrated sorrow.”

Susan nodded. “Yes, being there, I could almost believe in ghosts.” She leaned over to turn up the heat on her side. “Actually, I do believe in ghosts.”

“For thousands of years people have sworn they’ve seen spirits. I’m not arguing with thousands of years. I’m not saying I want to see one.” Harry saw another snowflake.

“Me neither. What I’d like to see is sunshine.”

“Forget that. I have seen two little snowflakes.”

“Well, Harry, let’s hope they stay little because if the heavens open up, we’ll have a devil of a time getting home. You know Southerners can’t drive in the snow.”

“Hey, we’re Southerners.” Harry sat up straight.

“We’re the exception that proves the rule.” Susan smiled. “Like Northerners not knowing how to pass and repass. It’s kind of equal, driving versus talking.”

“They don’t.” Harry pronounced this as though it was an edict from the Supreme Court.

Passing and repassing means when you run errands or encounter someone, known or unknown, you bid them hello or good day or whatever. If it’s someone you know, you must ask about their day, their health, their family, all that stuff. They reply, the repass. This is why any errand takes twice or three times as long as it does north of the Mason-Dixon Line.

“They are in too much of a hurry,” Susan said, then laughed. “Although sometimes when Big Mim”—she mentioned a rich citizen of their little town, Crozet—“goes on a tear, I rather envy them. I can actually get wistful about Massachusetts.”

“Ha. But think how much we learn every time we step out the door. Anyway, I think they’re hinckty. They should learn to do it our way.”

“Hinckty” meant a snob, the worst kind of snob. So Harry sat there in the glow of having said something awful about someone or someones. But happily, it didn’t sound awful. Even better, the people from the North wouldn’t recognize the word.

“Harry, you’re being ugly.” Susan sounded prim.

“I may be ugly but I’m your best friend and you love me, love me, love me.” She paused. “Don’t you?”

They both laughed, rolling along, happy to be together, happy for the tiniest break from being wives.

Susan returned to the buried. “You know, maybe ten years ago, archaeologists or historians or someone with a shovel found Varus’s lost legions, three legions that left from the camp at Koblenz during the reign of Caesar Augustus, in A.D. 9, and never returned. And they finally found them in Teutoburg Forest. We now know they were ambushed by Germanic tribesmen two thousand years ago.”

“Well, maybe in two thousand years, we’ll know where some of the dead at Aldie are buried.”

They wouldn’t have to wait that long.