The boys turned away from the house and walked down the east side of the lower hill. They would catch the train where it ran down from Brandon, the next-nearest town. “Goodbye, Mama,” Gob whispered. They had not taken twelve steps when he saw a flash of white darting among a copse of hemlocks at the foot of the hill. He ran off immediately to investigate.
“Where are you going?” Tomo called after him. “We got to hurry. We’ll miss the train.”
Gob stopped and turned around. “I saw a boogly!” he said, and ran again down the hill, tripping in his haste but rolling immediately to his feet and back into his run. Soon he’d entered the deeper dark under the trees. He thought that darting white shape was a spirit. It was his fondest wish to see one. The family business was fortune-telling; every summer they went out in a garish wagon to comfort and fleece those bereaved by the war. Gob and Tomo were frauds. In dim rented rooms they spun out sweet stories for grieving wives, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, and lovers. Whatever the loss, they would deny it, whether by claiming it had not happened at all (He is alive!) or else by claiming that the loss was meaningless (The dead are not dead — your beloved is smiling on you from his spirit abode!). But Gob and Tomo had never seen a spirit, or heard spirit music, or moved a planchette except with their mundane fingers.
Their mama, who did see spirits, said that they would see as she did, one day. “When you are men,” she said. “When you are grown up.” Tomo was a doubter — the dead, to his mind, were dead. He would believe in spirits when he saw one for himself, and that would be never. Gob was more inclined to believe. He would hold his mama’s hand and will her power into him when she was in a trance. Always he saw nothing. She’d come back to her senses and kiss him on the head. “Ah, be patient, my little man,” she’d say. But he would rather talk to famous dead personages than be patient. His mama talked with Josephine, with Bonaparte, with an ancient Greek who would not reveal his name. Gob’s imagination was always filling empty air with shining spirit bodies — his three dead aunts, Augustus Caesar, Marie Antoinette bouncing her head like a ball. He knew they were not real, but hoped with a full heart that one day they would be. As he ran past the tree trunks he imagined the spirit he was chasing to be General Jackson, still quite upset after his recent death at Chancellorsville. A hideous warbling noise assaulted Gob’s ears. Restless spirit! he thought. Miserable spirit, to complain so horribly!
But it wasn’t a spirit. It was a girl, wrapped in a white sheet, with her long blond hair let down so it dragged behind her as she ran among the trees, emitting the peculiar warbling sound. Her name was Alanis Bell. She was their neighbor. She lived at the bottom of the hill, and practiced a forbidden affection for the two boys. If her mama ever caught her talking to them, she got a beating with a splintered ruler.
“There you are,” she said, running over to Gob. The way her sheet covered her feet, it looked like she was floating. “Where are you going?” Tomo ran up beside Gob, panting and scowling.
“To the war,” said Tomo. He pulled at Gob to get him going, but Gob pushed his hand away. He thought Alanis Bell was fascinating, though Tomo hated her.
“To the war?” said Alanis Bell. She put her head back and made the warbling noise again.
“Hush up!” Tomo said to her. “You’ll get us caught!” But she kept warbling, until Tomo threw a stick at her. It struck her head, and stopped her warbling but did not make her quiet.
“I was mourning you!” she cried, rubbing her head. “I was mourning you like I mourn for Walter, but now you’ll get no mourning from me!” Walter was her brother, whose death at Shiloh had set her to running in the woods. “Now, I’ll be glad when you die! Go on! Get out of here. Go on and die! Two less Claflins in the world. Every good person will celebrate!”
“We’re Woodhulls, you goddamned idiot girl,” said Tomo. “Come along, Gob.” They left Alanis Bell cursing them in the hemlocks. They hadn’t walked for five more minutes, though, when Gob stopped.
“It’s a bad night to go to the war,” he said. “A person shouldn’t start a trip on a full moon.”
“The light’s best then,” said Tomo. “We better hurry.”
“It’s a bad thing,” said Gob, “to be cursed at the start of your trip. Let’s go tomorrow.”
Tomo stopped and turned around to face his brother. “Let’s go tonight,” he said. They had already stayed home on three other nights on account of Gob’s fretting. “Let’s go tonight or let’s not go at all.”
“Well,” said Gob. But he didn’t move as he was supposed to. The train whistle sounded in the distance.
“We got to go,” said Tomo.
“Well,” Gob said again. “We could not go, too.” It was brave of him, to make the suggestion. It was Tomo, five minutes older than he, who had always directed their lives.
“Not go?” said Tomo, immediately furious. “How could we not go? There’s not a reason in the world not to go.”
“I don’t want to go,” Gob said for the first time. He’d never said it before, not in so many words, because during all the daydreaming and planning, it had always seemed to him that they would not ever actually do it, and also because he was sure that whatever his brother wanted, he must come to want too. And yet he wanted not to go. He wanted nothing less than to go to the war.
“Well, why the hell not?” Tomo asked, very quietly, but his voice was full of anger.
“I just don’t want to,” Gob said simply. Tomo took him by the shoulders and gave him a shake. Gob said, “I’m afraid,” and Tomo shook him again.
“What’s to be scared of?” Tomo asked him. Did he think that Rebs were to be scared of? Rebs were to kill like a hole was to dig. And didn’t he know that Tomo would kill any Reb that dared bother his brother? While the train got closer, Tomo went on and on. He scolded and cajoled. He called Gob a bad brother and a false friend, he called him a yellow-bellied girl.
“You’ll run for that train before it’s too late,” Tomo said.
Gob said, “I’m afraid to die.” He closed his eyes and tried to screw his feet into the ground. “I’ll go tomorrow.”
“Will not, either,” said Tomo. He took a few steps away and said, “God damn you, then,” and he ran off. He ran towards the train, and Gob ran away from it. Gob ran past Alanis Bell’s white form, still darting and ululating among the hemlocks. He ran back home, to the birch tree that grew close up against the house. Only when he had climbed the tree to the height of their bedroom did he turn and look for his brother. He could see the smoke from the train hanging like a low cloud against the clear sky, but he couldn’t see the train, and he couldn’t see Tomo. While he was running he had been too afraid to feel regretful, but now he did feel that way. He pounded his fist against his head and cried, but though he felt very bad indeed, there was a strange elation in him. He felt a selfish happiness, a greedy appreciation of safety, there in the tree, and he could not reconcile that feeling with the noise of the train, with Tomo’s receding from him.