A raft of yodeling old-squaws suddenly flapped their wings and took off inland. “Running from the storm,” said Miss Suter. The wind had been blowing hard for the past three days. Salt-encrusted fisherman types in the village were predicting “a great big blow.”
Her father had been into the village, to buy a lightning rod for the roof of the shed. He was installing it when Maci and Miss Suter walked up to the house. He waved to them and said to Maci, “You have a letter, my dear!” Miss Suter toddled over to shout encouragement up at him while Maci went inside. She was sure the letter would be from Rob, but it wasn’t. It was from Private Vanderbilt.
There were instances in her life upon which she would later reflect and hate herself. When she was five years old, she had eaten two pounds of chocolate cake, then crawled into a corner and gotten sick like a dog. In the weeks following her mother’s death, Maci had considered how she’d broken under no real strain — her children were healthy and she lived a life of privilege — and she had hated her mother for being weak. Later, she would appreciate how anything could break you, how we are all breakable, and she would hate superior, weakness-hating Maci as certainly as she hated five-year-old gluttonous Maci. In this way, she would hate blithe, carefree, stupid Maci, who thought Private Vanderbilt was writing to make love to her. She sat in front of his portrait and read.
Dear Friend,
I know you will have heard by now of your brother Rob’s death on the 17th of September, before Antietam Creek. I thought I should write and tell you of his last days. He was my friend, though he was an officer and I am only an enlisted volunteer. It was my great honor to know him. He saved my life on the very day he died. Crossing Antietam Creek, I became mired in the mud and would have drowned had Rob not returned for me under heavy fire, taking a wound in his scalp as he fetched me. He bound it with a strip of cloth and would not go back. From the creek, we were ordered forward, and we lost men at every step. Our color guard was mowed down three times in succession, but at last we drove the Rebs over a stone wall, and they fled towards the town. We were ordered back not long after that, for we had used up all our ammunition and there was no relief for us — no one could support us in our far-flung position. This order did not sit well with the men of the Ninth, and some of them pursued the fleeing enemy. Your gentle brother was among those pursuers. I was with them, too. We ran into their strength. Just two of twenty-five men made it back to our lines. Those two were I and your brother, but his wounds were such that he did not last the night. I was with him when he died. He spoke no words — his wound was in his throat — but I do not doubt that his thoughts were with you at the last. He spoke of you so often, I feel I know you well. I hope you will call on me, after we soldiers bury our guns. I live in Manhattan, at Number 10 Washington Place.
It is a sorrow that men should find it necessary to take one another’s lives to establish a principle.
Your friend,
George Washington Vanderbilt.
* * *
Maci kept the news to herself for hours because she could not articulate it. In the end, she walked up to her father and presented the letter to him. He read it with a stern face and said, “My darling. He has passed over into the Summerland. Let us celebrate for him.” Maci slapped him, striking his sweet, bewildered face with the strength of her whole arm, then fled to her room, where she would not open the door for him when he came knocking.
The next day, numb habit took her into the village. She stopped before the post office, sat down on the ground, and stared bleakly at the building, a small white house with a roof of cedar shakes. She wanted to weep, but did not. The postmaster saw her sitting there in the street and came out to ask what was the matter. She only said she was tired, and had to rest a little. He brought her inside, where he had mail for her. There was a letter from Rob, and a package that he could have sent up to the house if she wished. Though she ought not to go back up there, he said. Didn’t she know there was a storm coming? It seemed to Maci that the big blow was as lazy as Miss Suter’s unborn principle. It was waiting politely offshore, as if for an invitation to come in and ravage.
Maci did not read Rob’s letter, which had been mailed before Private Vanderbilt’s letter, until much later, after two men had pulled up and unloaded Rob’s trunk like a coffin from their wagon. At her direction, they put it in her room. Inside, on the very top, were her letters to him. The last one she’d sent was unopened — maybe the Private’s dear hand had laid it inside the trunk when it arrived too late for Rob to read it. In the trunk there was an extra uniform, two fezzes, three good wool blankets she’d sent him herself before she’d become poor, and his officer’s sword. There were many drawings, including many of her. There she was boating on Potter’s Pond. There she was standing by the cliff, hair blowing like a madwoman’s. There she was walking down a rose-shrouded path with Miss Suter, who was fatter and prettier in the drawing than in real life.
The trunk reeked of him. She put on his uniform and lay on the bed for a little while with her face in her arm, and then she read the letter.
Sister,
I think I have found my madness. God save me from the noise of breaking bones. Do I worry you? I did not mean to. No pictures for you today — we are in battle. This is just a note to tell you I am alive and well.
Please go to Boston. I think it is the only safe place on the earth.
When Miss Suter heard of Rob’s death she said, “Too late!” and struck her fist against her belly. Then she got very pale, and fell back on a sofa, and claimed that she was in labor. For a day and a night, and then again for a day she lay on a bed downstairs and moaned. And all through the night of the storm, she cried out over the creaking of the little house. “Joy!” she screamed. “Love! O, Peace!” Maci watched from the staircase as her father tended to Miss Suter. Occasionally he consulted with the spirits he saw clustered around the sofa. Which one is Mr. Franklin? Maci wondered. Every so often she left her post on the stairs to go and pet Miss Suter’s perspiring head, or else to venture to the shed, or else to go upstairs and finish her packing. Early in the morning, after the storm had departed and left a brilliant dawn in its wake, the baby finally came. Maci imagined it twice perfectly: Miss Suter gave a last cry, and an ordinary miracle proceeded from her body, a plain old baby boy who squalled his rage at being deposited in the world. Miss Suter and Maci’s father would have stared despondently at each other, wondering what to do with this little baby who was the ruin of their hopes.
Or, Miss Suter gave a last cry — a mixture of exultation and agony — and her big belly flattened. An odor like pine filled the room, but nothing visible proceeded from her, except hysteria. Then Miss Suter and Maci’s father would have made such noises of rejoicing as are made by people who think they have delivered the world from suffering. Her father would have rushed upstairs and pushed open Maci’s door to tell her the good news, to take her arm and proceed triumphantly to the shed, where he would show her the Infant, who would be living now, breathing out peace into the formerly troubled world.