Chapter 2: Momma

"Who was that you were talking to out there?" Seth's mother glanced at him as she put down her ladle and began slicing carrots into the soup pot.

"That's what I was trying to tell you, Momma." Seth watched the orange rounds plop into the bubbling soup, the slices getting larger as the carrot got smaller. "He's a soldier. A cavalryman, a rebel soldier, Momma." Seth watched his mother for some reaction, but she kept chopping carrots without missing a beat. "And he cut the telegraph wires out front."

His mother picked up another carrot and scraped it into the pan where she collected scraps for the rabbits. 'Did he?" She made a noise in her throat that Seth knew meant she was not pleased about something. "I saw that he used the privy. Didn't look like he was wearing much of a uniform to me. What were you two talking about all that time?"

"Nothing much, Momma. He wanted some oats or some such for his horse; he calls his horse 'Mac," but I don't think it means McClellan." The boy licked his lips. "I tole him Uncle Luke might have some..."

"You did what?" His mother's voice leapt an octave. She turned and glared at her son. Seth saw a growing line of crimson appear on her thumb.

"You've cut yourself, Momma. Look."

"Never mind that. What have you done?"

"I only told him..."

"Seth, why on earth would you do such a foolish thing? I really thought you had better sense. You know what people have been saying about your uncle and the trouble he's been in." She turned quickly and stepped to the pantry. Seth, left standing in the middle of the kitchen floor, did not know what to do or what to say. His mother was usually very calm and quiet. He heard her ripping a strip of bandage, and she returned tying it around her thumb and pulling the knot tight with her teeth and other hand. Her eyes were red and her cheeks were wet with tears. She went back to working on her soup, wordlessly.

"What did I do wrong, Momma? He jus' wanted to feed his horse. You always taught us to be..." Seth stopped. He could see that his mother was not listening.

"What in heaven's name is a rebel soldier, dressed like a farmhand, doing in our backyard on a Sunday morning?" Seth's mother turned to the boy. "Soldiers can't go around out of uniform, Seth. That's wrong; it's spying. Old Miss Vidy told me that one of the Peter boys and a cousin of his were hanged out somewhere in Tennessee or Kentucky last year for spying, one of the Peters. When your brother went off to war, now, I know you thought he was wrong and all, and I certainly believe that war is a terrible thing, but when Robert went, you remember, he went honestly, in his uniform. And when he was captured, he was as a soldier fighting for his country, for what he believed in. Now that man you were talking to, well..."

Seth's mother shook her head in obvious disapproval and pushed at a few strands of hair with the back of her hand. She sniffed, and Seth knew from long experience that the subject was closed. "No sense crying over spilt milk, is there?" She made a small smile, and Seth fought down a lump in his throat and forced a weak face in return. He felt at the worn floorboards with his bare feet. "Run over to your uncle's store," said his mother, "and tell him exactly what you have done, what you said. And tell him you are sorry, if he seems upset. Oh, and tell him about the telegraph lines, too. He should know that. Find out, no, just let it be, just tell him and don't dally. Go on."

Seth went out the back door and started toward the well-worn path that led across the sun-seared pasture to his uncle's small store. He had only gone a few yards when his mother called him back.

"Get me five pounds of white flour, Seth. Have him put it on our account. Look," his mother put her hand on his shoulder and stared into his eyes, "I know you only did what you thought was right, was charitable, but your Uncle Luke's been in serious trouble already. He can't afford to feed a Confederate horse, much less have any dealings with a rebel spy or whatever that man is. If that soldier is there, if you see his horse outside, don't go in. Just come straight back home." She squeezed his shoulder. "Get along now. Don't forget the flour."

Seth trotted halfway to the store before the heat slowed his pace. He stopped, panting, and wiped the salty sweat from his eyes. We sure could use some clouds and some rain, even a thunderstorm. The grass looked burnt, and the corn patch wilted and stunted. In bare places that had been mud puddles in the spring, the ground was cracked like some crazy puzzle. Dust devils chased each other down the shoulders of the old turnpike.

Seth watched his shortened shadow move across the stubble and wondered again how tall he would grow. The steadily increasing amount of ankle and wrist sticking out of his clothes proved he was still growing. Every time the ladies came to sew and gossip at his house, they always exclaimed over how much he had grown since the last time they saw him as he squirmed away from their lavender embraces and pinching fingers.

Somehow old Caroline French had jumped ahead of him in that department. At Eastertime she had been about two inches taller than he was. He had refused to stand back to back with her after the church services despite Grandmother Axminister's repeated requests. He didn't want to feel her shoulders and rump against him, especially since she was some taller. Uncle Luke was a big man, and his sons were certainly tall enough, nearly six feet. Seth could not remember much about his father, and his mother would only say that he had been just average, neither short nor tall. Seth knew he could not trust his fading recollection of the strong-handed man who had been his father. His only vivid memory was of the doctor's row of black knots on his father's thin, white leg. Seth realized that again he had been looking for the rock his father's scythe had hit. He thought he would know it somehow. There should be something special about a stone that kills a man.

Then there's Momma, but I'm almost as tall as she is now. I wonder if she has looked for that place, for that rock. Sometimes she just stares out across the field. Did she see him do it?

He pictured Robert, tall and spare in his dark blue uniform with the bright buttons. Seth recalled peeking through the corncrib slats and watching his brother stride up the rise and out of sight. Wonder what he looks like with a beard. In one of the few letters his mother had received from Robert since he had been taken prisoner, he wrote that his beard had come in kind of reddish. I will be at least as tall as Robert. The thought made him smile, and he pushed out his skinny chest and dug in his bare heels and tried to march across the field like the officer who had come to arrest his uncle. He swung his arms up and back. The ground was baked too hard. It hurt his feet, and he stopped marching and went back to shuffling and kicking a dirt clods.

Seth hurried through the side door of the stuccoed store that gleamed white in the blazing July sun. Many times, full of King Arthur stories, he had leapt a make-believe moat to attack the two worn steps of this rampart and assault this creaking door, this well-defended portcullis. Not this time. Then he remembered the rider and listened, standing as still as he could and taking in all the familiar smells. Just buzzing flies and dripping water, no voices.

Even with the doors wide open, the store was tropically hot and attic stuffy. Nothing stirred the sticky paper spiraling from the cross beams. The dust barely shifted in the shafts of dim, orange light that penetrated the dirty, fly-specked windows. While Seth waited for his eyes to adjust to the gloom, he sniffed the musty chicken feed, the pickle brine, the leather dressing and the spilled beer. His uncle was not really open for business on Sunday, but then he was not actually closed either, should a paying customer come along needing something important on the day of rest.

The dark wood counters, shelves and drawer faces seemed to glow in the heat. His uncle had brought up several small pieces of ice from the straw of his deep, dark, low-roofed ice house. They sat, matted with sawdust, in a metal tub along with a small keg of beer and some fresh meat wrapped in pink-stained brown paper and tied with a soggy white string. Near the tub Seth's uncle leaned back on a high, wooden stool with a large, green-bound ledger on his lap. Sunday, Seth knew, was the day the broad-faced man caught up on his bookkeeping. His sleeves were rolled up, and he wore no collar or tie. He fanned his sweating face from time to time with cardboard fan that carried advertising for a patent medicine that claimed to cure everything from cancer to gout and from female complaints to ingrown toenails. Flies droned above the sugar barrel, and the cat slept wedged against the corner of the windowsill with his head upside down and eyes half open. Big Luke Williams slapped half-heartedly at a fly with his limber fan. His feet were propped up on the counter near an almost empty glass of beer. He did not look up when Seth came in.