Chapter 2: A Civil War Tale

That his farm sat near the Mason-Dixon line didn’t seem to matter as much as his wife’s refusal to take herself and his daughter further West where they could be safe without him. Dallas Moonbeam had gotten word late last night that the Union Army would soon descend upon the frozen fields of their land where they would then confront an equally anxious Confederate battalion trying to advance further into the North. And since there was no telling what may happen to his family should they stick around for the musket and cannon fire that would coat an already bleak Virginia sky with soot from exploding gunpowder, then he just better tell his wife that tomorrow morning was the day when they’d finally have to abandon the fruits of all of their hard work and labors and set a course over the mythical Western ridge where they could escape the collision of these two armies and rebuild their lives from scratch.

“But I don’t understand it, Dallas,” said his wife. “You still haven’t given me one good reason why you can’t come too.”

“I just did,” he said, sitting at an old oak table that his grandfather had carved by hand.

“You mean you refuse to share, is that it?”

“That’s not it at all.”

“Then what is it? You trying to prove something?”

“I’m not trying to do anything of the sort. I’m just looking after what’s best for you and Charlotte.”

“What’s best for me and Charlotte is if you come with us. I don’t really care if we starve or not.”

“There isn’t enough food for all three of us and Jethro combined. There just isn’t enough.”

“Well, maybe Jethro has to make his own way.”

“Let’s think about this for a second,” said Dallas, pressing his fingers between his eyes. “You expect me to believe that I’m going to bear witness to all we have here today being lost to some dumb war, just because I’ll be a little delayed in getting over that ridge?”

“We’re not talking about a delay here, Dallas. If any one of those soldiers catches you, there’s no telling where you’ll wind up.”

“The important thing is not where I’ll end up. It’s where the three of you will end up. Not me so much. Now as head of this family I have to make a decision here, and all of us will starve if I don’t head east and get those supplies. Simply put, if we all leave here together – and I mean every one of us – we’ll starve before we get over that ridge. Right now we only have enough for you, Charlotte, and Jethro.”

“Y’know, honey, Jethro has to find his own way.”

“I can’t believe you’re saying that. Jethro is every bit as part of this family as you or I am.”

She approached him where he sat, the flickers of candlelight against her body reminding him of how beautiful she was, her slim body underneath her bellowing nightgown representing the entire beauty of their farm and the nice things they had. And soon it would all mean nothing. All would be laid to waste.

“I know Jethro is a part of this family,” she said more consolingly. “Jethro is indeed every bit a part of this family, but Jethro is not my husband. Nor is he father to Charlotte. You are. That’s your job.”

“---And so it’s my responsibility, as your husband, to keep this family safe, which is why I’ve got to do what I’ve got to do. I’ll only be a couple of days behind you, that’s all.”

“What’s this ‘got to do’ thing?” she said angrily. “You don’t ‘got to do’ anything but leave with us at sunup. And as far as Jethro is concerned, we can all eat less then – all four of us. We don’t need to eat that much. We’ll just take turns.”

“You’ll be eating less even if I don’t go with you, which I’m not. I tell you, woman, I’m not going to argue with you, and this is for the final time. I’m not going with you, and that’s final. I’m tired of fighting about it.”

“You think you’re some kind of hero or something? Do you want to die, is that it?”

“It has nothing to do with that,” he fired back.

“Oh horseshit it doesn’t. All I ever hear from you lately is how your granddaddy did this, and your granddaddy did that, as though you’re trying to live the same kind of life they had.”

“It has nothing to do with that, I told you. I’m just being as sensible as I can be.”

“---something about how they were all men, and somehow you’re less of one, is that it? You never felt like you could measure up.”

“That’s not true! Now stop saying those things!”

His wife bent down to him as he sat at the table. Their shadows as husband and wife expanded along the curves of the sanded timber that was used to build their farmhouse. Her hand now stroked his arm, her skin like a newborn’s smoothing over the severity of burlap, and while there was much comfort in her soft palm running along the roughness of his skin, in no way would it loosen the obduracy of his plan.

“I know you have to be a man about this,” she said. “I know you have to do what’s right. You’ve always had to do what’s right, even when you try not to, but baby, going off all by yourself in the opposite direction just isn’t a good idea. It’s foolish. Those soldiers get a hold of you, and I might never see you again. So put all of that ‘got to do’ stuff behind, because right now I don’t need your granddaddy’s bravery. I don’t need a hero either. I need my husband – please, dear Lord – I just want my husband to come with us tomorrow. Please.”

“I’m sorry, honey,” said Dallas firmly, “I just can’t do that. My mind is made up.”

“Damn you, then!” she said, before running off into the bedroom and slamming the door shut.

It left him in the cold clamminess of their sitting room, wondering if he should have decided differently now that her radical ounce of female reasoning had permeated his mind, her protest implanted there like a the glow of a flame edging out the darkness of what he knew must be done to get his family over the ridge successfully.

And while his wife and his daughter slept, he knew he had yet to pay a visit to Jethro’s cottage across the front yard. Dallas looked out of his window to see if Jethro was still awake, and judging from the glow of the firelight through his windows and the hazy, muted smoke that exhaled from his chimney, it appeared that Jethro was busy making his evening supper.

He had told Jethro earlier what he had planned to do, and while Jethro disagreed, Dallas still wanted to confirm their plans one last time before he set out for the missing supplies in the morning. Dallas donned his coarse woolen overalls and a pair of old work shoes and then trod the half-mile or so to Jethro’s cottage while taking note of how cold and blustery it had become, the brittle brush on the ground snapping under his shoes as he went.

Jethro had been living in the same wooden cabin on the Moonbeam farm since his birth. Dallas’ grandfather had owned Jethro’s parents, but ever since his father became more fervently supportive and involved in the abolitionist causes that had spread down from New England, he gave Jethro’s parents the full freedom to do anything they wanted with their lives. As a young man, Jethro decided to remain on the farm after his parents had passed, and in return for his farm work and general handiness on the Moonbeam farm, Jethro shared in the profits of whatever the farm made. This wasn’t a lot of money at all, but it was enough at least to provide for what they needed day in and day out. It was a simple but hardworking life that this patchwork family made for themselves, taking only a few days out of the year to stop their work and pray together. But otherwise it was a hardscrabble and labor-intensive life that at least granted them the good fortune of contentment and protection from the harsh winters that tended to blow down from Arctic North. And regardless of how unsatisfied and unenthusiastic Dallas’ wife had been about being married to a farmer, Dallas had at least met all of her needs by preserving the same farm that his parents had handed down to him. But this was all about to end. The Union Army and the Confederate soldiers would soon descend upon their land in just a few short hours. There was no telling if he’d ever be able to sink his hands into the same dark soil ever again.

When Jethro answered Dallas’ call at the front door, his fingers were planted in the middle of a leather-bound book he was reading. Jethro smoked an old pipe that let off a pungently sweet tobacco smoke into the cold air. He looked at Dallas as if he had seen a ghost.

“Sweet Jesus, Jethro, this is no time to read,” said Dallas, stepping into the small cottage. “What is it you have there?”

“Just something I picked up a little while ago. It’s poetry, you know.”

“That stuff will just confuse you.”

“Melt, melt away ye armies – disperse ye blue clad soldiers,

Resolve ye back again; give up your good deadly arms,

Other the arms of the fields henceforth for you, or South or North

With saner wars, sweet wars, life-giving wars,” Jethro recited.

Dallas planted himself in Jethro’s old rocking chair next to the mellow fire and said quite plainly, “now I don’t know what in the hell that means, but you know there ain’t never been anything like a life-giving war.”

“Not yet,” said Jethro after closing the book and taking a seat across from him. “But it sure would be nice if there were some day, wouldn’t it?”

“Oh, Jethro. Still chasing those pie-in-the-sky dreams. I just don’t know what you get out of all that reading. I never really took a liking to any of that, and here you are – reading every book on creation – and for what? We’re losing damn-near everything in this transaction.”

“I know,” said Jethro solemnly. “It’s just God-awful.”

Dallas looked at him with a sadness he couldn’t define just yet. The smooth blackness of Jethro’s face, his wrinkles more pronounced and his hair graying at the temples like some prescient scholar who had been sentenced for years to their small farm, gave him the comfort, at least, of beholding someone kind and familiar, his dark face leather-worn from tilling the soil in the wind, his hands gnarled from all of his toil, and Jethro somehow chose this night of all nights to read a book that made absolutely no sense to him at the moment.

“Well, you must get something out of those books that I just don’t get,” said Dallas, “because those Yankees will be here any day now.”

“I still don’t agree with what you’re doing,” said Jethro all of a sudden.

“No one does – not my wife, not my daughter, not you, not even me most of the time – but damnit, it has to be done. News got to us late, and there’s really no choice in the matter.”

“You’re a stubborn fool,” said Jethro matter-of-factly.

“Now you’re taking her side, is that right?”

“I’m not taking sides here. Dallas. It’s just that you belong with your family – not riding around like some lunatic.”

“Really? Is that right? And are you going to tell me just how the hell we’re supposed to rebuild once we get over that ridge if you’re not there? Can you just tell me that, please?”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Jethro, taking a puff from his pipe. “What happens afterwards doesn’t matter. You’re thinking too far ahead of yourself. We’re in the middle of a goddamned war here. You should be satisfied if just the three of you make it out of here alive. And here you go thinking already about what’s going to happen once we get there. I tell you something, Dallas – we haven’t made it over that ridge yet. You three will be lucky enough if you make it there one your own – even without me.”

“I’m gonna make it if it’s the last thing I do, but we can’t do it without you, Jethro. We have to think at least three moves ahead. All great leaders think that way. There’s just no way we can do it without you.”

They sat there silently for a time mulling over their disagreement by the glow of the fire. He saw worry etched on Jethro’s face, but Dallas had already made up his mind.

“Jethro,” he said, “before we part ways at sunup tomorrow, I’ve been meaning to ask you something.”

“What’s that?”

“Charlotte and my wife.”

“What about them, Dallas?”

“Well, it will be just the three of you out there tomorrow.”

“As we’ve already established, yes.”

“Well – and this is a little hard for me to say – but I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately.”

“What’s that, Dallas?”

“Jethro, if I don’t make it back –”

“Awww hell! Nonsense!” whispered Jethro hotly. “Don’t even think about it.”

“I mean it, Jethro. Just hear me out for a second.”

Jethro was so bothered by the idea that he immediately jumped to his feet and paced the room, wringing his hands as he marched back and forth in front of his heavy bookshelves.

“I mean it,” said Dallas again. “If I don’t make it back with those supplies –”

“Then what, goddamnit?! What?! Have you truly lost your mind? Have you gone completely crazy?”

“I mean it. You’ll be the only one who’ll have to watch over them. You’ll be the head of the family if anything happens to me.”

“You’re crazy, you know that?”

“I’m just being sensible, that’s all.”

“Yeah, well, there’s nothing sensible about it. In the history of creation there has never been a human plan that’s ever worked.”

“I just wanted to make things plain to you, that’s all.”

“Well, you’re going to make it over that ridge, because if you don’t, I’ll come find you and kill you myself.”

“Better you than the musket fire from those good ol’ boys, right?”

Dallas smiled weakly at his own attempt at humor. He slapped his knee and finally peeled himself of the chair. When he reached the door, he said, “I just wanted to make things plain, that’s all. You’ll be leaving with them first thing in the morning.”

He left Jethro standing there, his poetry book loose in his fingers, his lean body curled up to the ceiling of the cottage, his gnarled fists clenched, and his eyes shut so tightly as though there wasn’t a single force, divine or otherwise, that could pry them open.

“Just get the hell out of here, Dallas,” he said in a low whisper. “I’ve had enough of you for one lifetime.”

“Hopefully I’ll be there with you for the next life over that ridge,” he said before heading back to the farmhouse.

Perhaps there was something that he secretly liked about driving the people in his life crazy. With all of his best laid plans, his farfetched theories, his good intentions that never panned out, his new inventions that never worked, his get-rich-quick schemes, his ideas that never touched the surface of any known reality, he must have driven his wife and Jethro crazy over the years. But this time there wasn’t very much to laugh about anymore. As his feet broke the short, sharp stalks that rose out of the field on his walk towards the farmhouse, he considered that there was something about his craziness that he no longer wanted. He promised to the midnight sky on his way back that he’d never again try to outsmart the way things worked. The seriousness of what he was about to do had finally worked into him, like mink oil into stiff leather, and maybe he was wrong to have a mind that wasn’t fully aligned with the way things worked – how there were no easy shortcuts to anything but only the path that gave the most resistance and not the least – or plans that were more straightforward and plain, and not the crooked or winding plans that cut corners or utilized anything other than what the scriptures had ordained. And so he no longer found his tinkering mischief very funny – those tall-tales and magic potions and inventions that usually blew up right in his face – these were no longer very fascinating or funny to him. He would no longer tease his family with them, now that there was a good chance he may never see them again, and yet he still had to give his dauntless mind one last chance. He decided that after all four of them make it over the ridge in a few days that he would listen to whatever his wife had to say from now on. The moon hovering above him somehow heard this promise as its watchful light illumined the narrow path in front of him.

When he returned to the farmhouse, he inspected the stacks of wooden crates that his family would soon take with them on their journey over the ridge. They were piled high in the living room and stuffed with nearly all of their clothing and other such belongings that could be readily transported by wagon. All of their furniture, all of it handmade, would have to stay behind for the soldiers to pillage. The house was quiet and still. His wife and daughter slept soundly. He could hear their breathing. He could only curl up with a blanket on the cushioned rocking chair and hope to get by on only a few hour’s sleep until morning.

He didn’t sleep very well that night and spent a good deal of time trying to tackle some farfetched dream in which they had all made it over the ridge successfully. But his sleep was fraught with the unrelenting twists and turns of trying to rest on a hard surface, as he didn’t want to disturb his wife’s sleep by climbing into bed with her. His wife, however, was up much earlier than he was, as his sleep had set in too late. He awoke to the smell of frying bacon, but he wasn’t at all hungry. His wife, he figured, wouldn’t want to talk to him anyway. He sensed her anger as she moved about the living room, making sure to pack the looser items that hadn’t been packed yet. He was right that she didn’t want to talk to him. She did the best she could to avoid him while preparing Charlotte’s breakfast. He heard them whispering in the kitchen as they ate. But when his daughter emerged from the kitchen after breakfast, she rubbed sleep from her eyes and weakly stumbled over to where Dallas napped in the chair. She simply climbed into his lap without saying a word and put her small arms around his neck and buried her head into the hollow of his shoulder. She didn’t want to leave. Her limp and fragile body now cradled in his arms was like an egg shell. His daughter feigned drowsiness. It was her way of silently protesting his grand plan, just like her mother protested it.

“Charlotte, come on in here and finish your breakfast,” called her mother from the next room.

Dallas found it slightly humorous how his wife didn’t invite him in to sit with them. Sometimes he liked it when she was angry with him. But his teasing her had come to an end. She would no longer engage in bantering. Their rapport had changed ever since he announced his intention to head in the opposite direction. And while he knew she loved him deeply, especially when he tried to convince her of his crazy new farming methods that would make him a million dollars, or how they should abandon the farm to sell snake-oil from town-to-town, or how he wanted all four of them to move to Mexico and dig for gold for a few years, he couldn’t be so sure how she felt about him anymore.

Jethro’s demeanor that morning matched his wife’s in many respects. When they met outside and began loading the crates into the wagon, he acted as if Dallas weren’t there. Jethro kept silent as he methodically helped him move crate after crate into the back of the wagon. He didn’t even look at him while loading, and as a result, he didn’t know quite what to say to the man who was now taking responsibility for the wellbeing of his family. And when his wife and Charlotte walked across the hard frozen field, their feet balancing themselves over the muddy patches of soil that were more like divots in an otherwise smooth field, they too remained silent, as though Dallas were merely a strange ghost who was already a part of their memories and in no way touched the future life that existed for them over the ridge. It didn’t anger him so much as sadden him that they reacted so childishly towards him. And when the horses were ready and the musty blankets were thrown over the crates and secured tightly with rope, there was nothing he could say or do to ease what he perceived to be their premature bereavement over his loss. As Jethro struck the reigns, the horses, with plumes of hot breath streaming through their wet, runny snouts, stepped ahead, and the wheels of the wagon jutted forward and turned in the frozen mud. Dallas’ entire life was heading in the opposite direction. But there were no tearful goodbyes. There were no kisses or hugs from Charlotte. Dallas was simply exposed to the back of Jethro’s head, a head that refused to turn around to bid him farewell. And then there was his wife who sat in the seat next to him. She did turn around, finally, but only to offer a cold stare from her icy blue eyes that had reified their many years of marriage in this one singular act of betrayal on his part, a betrayal that she would never forgive, and what’s more, Charlotte did the same. She was growing up to be just like her mother. The two women simply looked upon him with the kind of ruthless disdain and detachment that could only be explained as the innate cruelty of women for all the right reasons.

‘She’s just like her mother,’ thought Dallas as he watched the wagon drift farther beyond the boundary of their farm and through a trail that snaked through the forest. And when they were finally out of sight, he could only sigh into the open air as if to tell his wife that she took life much too seriously and that one day, after he had finally retrieved the supplies and had met them over the ridge, they would all be able to sit down in front of the fire they had made with stronger and more durable kindling and laugh over his ridiculous and dangerous plan that had actually worked for a change. He imagined saying, ‘I told you it would work,’ as his family gazes into the farfetched fire with him, Jethro’s sweet tobacco smoke as pungent as ever as they all laugh and slap their knees at having forever outsmarted conventional wisdom – just as it used to be. But he would first have to make it over the ridge himself to have the luxury of proving that they should never take things so seriously as they had that morning and that a man could slip his way out of anything if he simply had the capacity to a smile and laugh more than he wept and despaired.

Such a proposition took lifetimes to prove, he figured, as he breathed in the air of his country farm one last time. He gazed at his farmhouse as though trying to engrave it properly into the depth of his memory. It was a weak ceremony. He then walked behind the house and saddled up the old, reliable horse that would lead him in the opposite direction of where he wanted to be, towards that vast flatlands that lay to the east. He would try to make it to the supply depot in two-day’s time. All he had with him was a change of clothes, some camping gear and food he prepared, and his rusty old shotgun to protect himself from thieves and bandits that he may encounter on the road. All of his belongings were now with his family, and now that he was left all by himself, he carefully reviewed the pre-plotted route he would take. And quite honestly he didn’t know what to expect – only that he should move quickly to avoid any confrontations and simply slip through the remainder of the day like a fish insulated by its own twitching cartilage, pulsating and warm within the slick of its cold scales, its independence and freedom from all of the things he had ever known twisting, turning, and slipping itself loose from the predatory forces that the never-ending circumstance of war had brought.

As a light snow began to fall over the sullen landscape, the amber stalks short and sharp like a balding scalp, his horse and wagon flattened the grass beneath as it lurched forward. The sun became a blurry white spot in the sky that shed no warmth, the heavy clouds girdling it refracting dull light over the bare trees that had fallen on either side of him. For a while there wasn’t a human soul in sight. Although he cherished such an independence, he couldn’t help but wonder what he would actually do with such a freedom, now that he was set loose upon the world. There wasn’t much to think about without his wife by his side. There weren’t any plans he could concoct or intensely imagine, as his purpose was as clear as the trickling brooks and tiny meandering streams that the wheels of his wagon bridged and now crossed over, his steady movement towards the next village like the steady movements of a clock, a methodical push along the ground that didn’t require any extraordinary skill, just a slow dependability and a progress towards a destination that had been measured by the clomping of his horse’s hoofs in a monotonous, linear pattern, his rotating mind empty and inspirationless, as though he wandered alive through all that had already died. The wilderness gasped and suffocated under the weight of increasing snow, his hands getting cold and his horse like a great solitary engine fixated on its rote task. He couldn’t help but feel exhausted, even though his horse did all of the work. He couldn’t help but feel as weak-boned as the creaking vacancy of his wagon that rolled along the dips and ascents of the trail he was on. And while he had looked forward to this day where he would finally be free for a time, he had to admit that the romantic lust of being all alone remained as unfulfilled as the hollowness of the logs that had fallen to the forest floor.

He actually missed Jethro and the damned stink of his pipe smoke, as scent that was now buried into the fibers of his clothing. He missed the way he had always quoted lines from his senseless poetry books that only introduced other-worldly confusions in their simple minds and distracted them from their singleness of purpose of working on the farm. He missed his family, damnit, and he was only a few short hours into the journey, the white of the snow reminding him of the pallor of his daughter’s cheeks when they drained of blood when she didn’t know whether to side with her mother or her father during a routine argument at the dinner table. It seemed like a blow to his dauntless mind just then that he should miss these people. It was a blow to the carefully constructed manhood of the fathers who came before him. He thought of it as a weakness that he would have to overcome if he were to rejoin his family over the ridge.

The sky slowly darkened as the day dragged on and the wagon moved forward. He decided that he should make camp soon, but only if he could push a little bit farther into the wilderness he could make better time. It wasn’t until he had to make water that he did stop. He steered his horse to the side of the trail and tied it to the bark of a rotted tree. He then humped and stomped through the snow to an area deeper into the forest that had sprung up on either side of the trail. The sounds of the forest had returned, as he had been conditioned only by the sound of his horse’s clompity-clomp along the trail and also by the creaking of his wagon. But all of a sudden the forest seemed much more alive to him. Squirrels raced atop the branches that hung over the trail. They scurried through the blanketed surface of the forest. Even a raccoon or two moseyed lazily between their lairs at the base of tree trunks, protecting themselves, he figured, from the plummeting temperatures. As he relieved himself, he stepped on a dead branch that immediately startled a flock of snow finches, their light, feathery bodies erupting and then darting from one naked bush to an adjacent one, their tiny claws and short wings grazing the top of his head as they flew. It made his heart jump a little. He recognized that his ride to the east was no longer a solitary journey at all but a part of the wilderness around him. Perhaps he was guilty of being too self-involved to notice how he was now an interactive player in all that occupied the spaces around him. He usually thought of himself apart from nature, as the trail that carved out the space was already too well-defined to give the wilderness too much credit. But now he thought differently.

As he finished and thought for a quick second how fascinating it was to have the warmth inside of him color and melt through the crust of the snow’s surface, he thought he had stepped on yet another dead branch. He prepared for another flock of snow finches to erupt and fly passed him, but this time nothing moved. It wasn’t a branch that he stepped on, he recognized after a moment or two, but there was definitely the click of something that he couldn’t quite place. He turned around slowly and found himself facing the round hollow of a musket aimed directly at his head.

“Easy there, boy,” said the Southern voice on the other end of the musket.

The soldier’s gray uniform was threadbare. His moustache was untamed around his mouth and covered with wet ice.

“Just easy does it there, boy,” said the soldier again, his eyes squinting down the length of the musket, his finger tense on the trigger.

Dallas’ insides sank suddenly, as though his being discovered gutted all of his bodily organs and sent them crashing through his lower extremities. He carefully raised his hands up in a show of surrender.

“Now just hold on there, brother,” said Dallas. “I’m unarmed. You can see that, can’t you? I have no weapons on my person. Just take it easy, brother, okay?”

The man continued to press the steady aim of his musket at his head. Luckily, though, the soldier, perhaps feeling a little differently about him, uncocked his gun and moved it away from his head.