the Buffalo Soldier (2002) Read online

  How do you feel? she asked simply.

  Really, okay.

  You don't feel a little woozy or queasy?

  Nope. My hand and my wrist hurt a lot more than my head.

  She noticed then the gauze that was held tight to the palm of his left hand by the white hospital tape they kept in a drawer in the bathroom on the first floor.

  Okay, the Pope is about to switch from the zucchetto to the miter. I hope they show it. You watching? If we had pomp like that in this country--

  Paul, how did this happen? she said, lifting Alfred's arm and trying to imagine the cuts on the inside of his hand. She realized his wrist was swollen and bruised.

  The professor turned to her and shook his head. Well, as Alfred said, he fell off the horse.

  I understand that! she snapped.

  Forgive me. These are the salient details. We were near the Cousinos', in a meadow maybe fifty yards in from the road. We were just out hacking, really, giving Mesa some exercise, and--who knows exactly how these things happen--one minute the boy was in the saddle, and the next he was on the ground.

  I thought you were just walking the horse, Laura said.

  A little trotting, Paul admitted.

  Since when?

  Monday.

  Go on, Laura said.

  There's really nothing more to tell. Maybe Alfred encouraged Mesa at the exact moment she hit a patch of ice under the snow. Maybe the horse just slipped--it all took about a second, a second and a half--and your boy here went head over teacup. Or whatever that expression is.

  You should see my glove. It looks like an animal ripped it apart.

  The professor shook his head. It doesn't look that bad. But it is pretty useless now.

  I think we should go to the doctor, she said.

  If it would make you feel better, Paul agreed. But we did call and speak to the nurse, and she didn't see any cause for alarm. The boy doesn't need stitches, and his wrist isn't broken or sprained.

  How do you know that?

  Well, I don't. At least not for a certainty. But the swelling isn't huge and he can move it pretty well. Right?

  Right.

  And his head? Laura asked.

  The nurse said to keep ice on it for a bit. So far he doesn't have any signs it's going to be more serious than a goose egg.

  Was he wearing his helmet? She didn't like how angry she sounded, but she couldn't help herself.

  I was, Alfred said, although the question had been directed at Paul.

  And you still conked your head?

  Might have been considerably more troublesome if he hadn't had the helmet on, Paul said.

  When did this happen?

  About an hour ago.

  An hour! She thought to herself how an hour ago, the moment when Alfred had fallen from the horse, she was holding a plastic cup of punch in one hand, and a twelve-year-old terrier named Lucky in the other. Lucky had been brought in earlier that week after his elderly owner died and the woman's only son proved allergic to dogs. He came with a red dog sweater the woman had knit, and he was wearing it that afternoon to the party.

  Laura, Paul said, and it was clear this word was going to be the first of a series of small, soothing waves, in the last hour we have walked the horse back up the hill and put her back in the paddock. We have spoken at length to the nurse at your doctor's office, and taken the appropriate medical action. And we have polished off easily a dozen of those chocolate-chip cookies we found in the tin by the toaster.

  They're good, Alfred added.

  On the television the announcer abruptly stopped speaking and the choir started to sing. Laura watched the boy and the man turn their attention from her to the screen, as if the spectacle before them were a football game.

  I always wanted to do a course on cultural pomp, Paul said. I love it. Not simply religious pomp, since religious pomp is all cultural, in my opinion. But, rather, all kinds of pomp. Religious pomp. Movie pomp. Rodeo pomp.

  Rodeo pomp? Alfred asked.

  You just fell off a horse. Depending upon the event and the severity of your fall, all kinds of wonderful ritual might have surrounded the moment had it occurred in a rodeo. Ever heard of a rodeo clown?

  No.

  They distract the animal, so a cowboy in the dirt can get out of the ring--or, if he's out like a light, be extricated by somebody else from the ring.

  She started to say something--a rebuke or a chastisement, perhaps, a plea to behave like a responsible grown-up and a responsible fifth-grader and to listen to her words--but she stopped herself. She was afraid she would sound hysterical. Then she wondered if she should prohibit the child from climbing on top of that horse ever again, or at least until he had had some lessons. Real lessons. Not the teaching and ministrations of an old man who hadn't ridden in eight or nine years himself.

  Instead, however, she found herself gazing for a long moment at the pair and she knew she wouldn't do that. She couldn't do that.

  When Paul saw her looking at him, he said, So, you plan on taking your coat off and staying through Christmas?

  She felt the corners of her mouth quivering, and then forming into a small smile. I have to go put sheets on the bed in the guest room, she said, and she stood. My parents are coming tomorrow. She glanced down once more at Alfred's forehead and carefully pulled aside his hand with the towel full of ice. He was lucky, she decided when she looked at the small bump that had formed. It could have been worse, so very much worse.

  I didn't know how you'd be feeling when you got home and saw the boy here had done a header off a horse, and so--if you want--you're welcome to come over to our house for dinner, Paul said. I spoke to Emily, and it's fine.

  That sounds very nice, she said, but Terry won't be home until seven. She realized that she hadn't set foot in the Heberts' house since before the older couple had taken their Western road trip that autumn. She and Terry and Alfred had had ice cream there one night in early September, about a week and a half after the boy arrived in their lives. Likewise, as far as she could recall, Paul and Emily had only been here in her home one time since they'd returned, and that was when they dropped by unexpectedly with the gifts of what they called the bad-for-you food they'd bought on the road--St. Louis barbecue sauce, Santa Fe bean dip--and such odd trinkets as that cavalry cap Alfred seemed to like.

  In a way, of course, Laura understood that this was exactly how her relationship with the Heberts had been for over two years. Since her daughters had died. In truth, Paul and Emily had been here any number of times in the last twenty-five months, but in each case it was on an errand of mercy. Bringing flowers and food in the days and weeks after the flood. Bringing more food during the holidays in the two years that followed, cookies and cakes and homemade breads. Bringing the family souvenirs from their trips--T-shirts, gaudy dish towels, and the magnets that clung to their refrigerator.

  In that case, why don't you go do the bed and then come watch the Vatican Mass with us, Paul said. We can all go over and join Emily for supper when it's over.

  She considered the idea. On the shelf above Alfred she saw the black, red, and green Kwanzaa mat she had started to make with the boy, using the pot holder loom they'd found at the craft store. It was one square--perhaps an hour's work--from completion. If she stayed with the two of them, she could probably finish the mat now.

  What's with the hat? Alfred asked, referring to the Pope's miter. Why is it shaped like that?

  A fine question. It goes back to pomp. Symbolism and pomp and the whole notion that in the ancient world heaven was a place in the sky, Paul began, clearly savoring the small classroom he had created for the boy. As he spoke, explaining to Alfred the meaning of the staff of Peter and the different liturgical vestments, that part of Laura that was a mother wanted nothing more than to stay and watch Alfred sitting so contentedly with this much older man.

  But the pair seemed exactly that: A pair. A duo. A couple of mates. They were complete without her right now, and she
didn't want to risk disturbing that chemistry--a sacrifice she was willing to make because she understood that this, too, was a part of being a mother. And so she lightly kissed the gauze in the palm of Alfred's hand, and interrupted Paul to tell him that she was going to go across the street to help Emily make their dinner.

  WE WERE GOING to have a ham, Emily was saying, pausing briefly as she broke an egg into a bowl of creamed margarine. But I figured we'd have something more cheery after Alfred took that tumble.

  What if we weren't coming? Laura asked. The two women were working side by side along the stretch of kitchen counter next to the sink. One by one Laura was dredging pork chops in a mixture of bread crumbs and shortening and milk, and then placing them on a cookie sheet. Eventually, when Terry returned home, the pork chops would be dropped in Emily's two massive cast-iron skillets and browned.

  Cheery for Paul and me, in that case.

  At first Laura hadn't understood why Emily deemed pork chops more cheerful than a ham, but then Emily had gotten down a blue denim loose-leaf binder from a bookshelf full of cookbooks and removed the lined sheet of paper with the handwritten recipe. This was Peggy Noe's pork chop recipe, and Emily had gotten it from Peggy herself when she and her husband stopped for lunch that fall at Peggy's Joplin, Missouri, eatery, the Ozark Cafe. It was the best pork chop recipe Emily had ever tried. Likewise, this was Peggy's recipe for oatmeal and brown-sugar cake that Emily was preparing beside her.

  There were windows over the sink, and outside them the women could see the horse in her stall in the light from the barn. The door was still open. In a few minutes Paul and Alfred would be over to feed and bed the animal down for the night. The horse looked monstrously big to Laura, especially when she envisioned Alfred tumbling from the creature's back to the ground.

  I know lots about cats and dogs, Laura said, but next to nothing about horses. Is Mesa as big as she looks--for a horse, that is?

  She's a Morgan, not a draft horse. A Percheron or a Belgian would be a lot bigger. Stronger, stockier. Still, people ride those horses, too. But I know what you mean. An hour hasn't gone by since Paul brought that animal home when I haven't wondered if a year from now he'll be flat on his back and out like a light, because he's just had both of his hips replaced.

  I had a very grim thought walking over here: What if Alfred had broken his arm when he fell?

  Emily was wearing a red apron with the words Pop Hicks' Celebrity Diner written in white cursive letters across the front--another memento, no doubt, from their road trip that fall. She turned to Laura and said, Grim? A broken arm can be an annoyance and it can hurt, my dear, but I wouldn't call such a thing grim. Not when you're ten, anyway. Don't think like that.

  I can't help it. If he'd broken his arm, we would have taken him to the hospital right away, and SRS might have immediately assumed the worst. Child abuse. His evil foster parents had broken his arm.

  If he'd broken his arm, it wouldn't have been you taking him to the emergency room. It would have been my vaguely capricious and mildly irresponsible husband.

  I'm not sure that would have been a whole lot better. Then SRS would have discovered that I'm allowing a ten-year-old boy to go horseback riding without any training or lessons when he comes home from school--and, today, while I was away at work.

  Paul is always with him.

  Paul's a wonderful man. But he's not exactly an Olympic equestrian. And if I lost Alfred because I'd allowed him to ride a horse...She allowed her sentence to trail off, because she wasn't exactly sure how she wanted to finish it. She honestly didn't know what she would do if Alfred was taken away from her.

  Do you want us to keep him off the horse, Laura? He could still work with the animal. Feed her, groom her. You know, take care of her.

  I'm not sure I could do that to Alfred. He loves riding her, that's so clear.

  She had finished breading the pork chops, and so she rinsed what felt like plaster of Paris off her fingers. Maybe there's a stable nearby where he could get some basic lessons, Laura continued. Do you think Paul's feelings would be hurt?

  Paul? Lord, no. I'd encourage him to take them as well.

  Because I can't lose Alfred, she said again. Really, I can't.

  Of course you can't. And you won't. Why would you?

  She shook her head. Outside in the barn the horse stood contentedly inside her stall, only occasionally bothering to nuzzle the empty manger for the remaining oats or soaked sugar beets she might have missed earlier that day.

  LATER THAT NIGHT, she knew, she would open the door to his bedroom and she would watch him sleep in the bed that had once belonged to Megan. She would stand in the frame first for a long moment to make sure that he was indeed asleep, and then she would walk softly to the side of the bed and she would gaze for whole minutes at the gentle roundness of his cheek as he lay on his side, and the way he seemed to sleep with a half-smile on his face. His breathing would be even and slow and serene. He might wake at three or four in the morning--periodically she had heard him stirring in the middle of the night, sometimes turning on the lamp on the bureau before climbing back into bed--but he seemed to sleep deeply until then.

  She had watched both her girls this way. Sometimes she would begin in Hillary's room, and sometimes in Megan's. Sometimes Terry had been with her, but even then this had usually been a ritual that belonged only to her. She alone would tuck in the girls' sheets and pull their quilts up to their chins. She alone would move out of the way the stuffed animals that were hogging the pillows and might interfere with her children's sleep at some point in the night. She alone would close the book that might still be open atop Megan's bed.

  In Alfred's room there would be no stuffed animals to move, but there would still be blankets to pull tight and a second pillow to fluff. There would still be a shade to draw closed. There would always be something to do that would give her an extra moment to stand by his bed and simply smell the soap on his skin from his bath or watch the quilt rise an incremental quarter-inch with each silent inhalation.

  "Apparently, we were very close to the village. If the marauders had been even three-quarters of a mile upriver they would have crossed and we would have followed, and I hate to think of the surprise that would have greeted us in another few minutes of riding. Incidentally, we learned today that the older girl is actually the mother of the two young ones, and not their sister."

  SERGEANT GEORGE ROWE,

  TENTH REGIMENT, UNITED STATES CAVALRY,

  LETTER TO HIS BROTHER IN PHILADELPHIA,

  MAY 17, 1876

  *

  Terry

  He told her about the cans of Ensure, not surprised that this was the first memory he recalled when Phoebe asked him about his father's death, but the first he was willing to offer in return for what she had shared about her own mother's passing that summer.

  I used to play golf, he began, and Russell used to play softball. Still does, really. He's good. But I haven't picked up a golf club in over two years. The bag just sits in the far corner of the laundry room. Anyway, the night after the funeral, once Mom had gone up to bed, Russell and I were standing in her kitchen. We each had a beer, and we both saw the Ensure at the same time. Two cases on the floor beside the old refrigerator, and at least another ten or twelve cans on the counter. Leah--

  Your sister?

  My sister. She wasn't married yet, and I don't believe she had even met Rick back then. She was upstairs in bed, too.

  Where was Laura? And your girls? They must have been in, what, first grade?

  They'd just finished kindergarten. Young things. Laura took them home after the reception, and Russell and Leah and I stayed with Mom in Saint J. That was our plan. The three of us kids would spend the night at Mom's house so we'd all be there when she went to bed, and we could all have breakfast together the next morning. Then we'd all go our own separate ways. Now it was pretty late. Somewhere between midnight and twelve-thirty, I guess, because Russell and I didn't get to the golf
course until quarter to one in the morning. We parked in the lot right by the pro shop and the old caddy shack, and then we each took a case and as many singles as we could carry and walked out to the second hole. Par five, four hundred and ninety yards. Nice long fairway--not that we needed it. We had my dad's ancient clubs, and we'd slipped an old baseball bat we found in the basement into the bag. In truth, it was all a lot of effort for a couple moments of pleasure. But it was very satisfying.

  She leaned forward and punched him lightly on the arm. Kind of like sex, she said, smiling broadly. Lots of foreplay to get what you really want.

  It wasn't that good. Trust me. But it was fun. We teed the little eight-ounce cans up one at a time, and found we could whack one, oh, forty yards with the driver, and maybe thirty with an iron.

  No tests with the putter?

  Absolutely not. This was good old-fashioned, testosterone violence. Tee 'em up and swing. Blast 'em. These were the cans of protein shakes our father used to vomit up, after all, and so nothing said cancer to us like Ensure. Nothing. I mean the stuff doesn't taste half-bad--I actually like the chocolate--and it's very smooth. But...well, we were angry.

  My mom used to drink strawberry, Phoebe said. Ensure Plus Strawberry. Extra calories, extra protein. Yum.

  The worst thing to watch was how much it hurt him when he threw up. The radiation had burned the living shit--pardon me--out of his esophagus, and so it was pure agony for him when the stuff would come back. We'd hear him gag, and then he'd spray this watery brown gruel into the toilet, or the lobster pot he kept by the couch. But some days that was the only thing he had even a prayer in hell of keeping down. The only thing.