The clerk put down his copy of the Inquirer. "What's wrong?" Charles asked.
Pale, the clerk, said, "General Custer is massacred. And all his men with him."
GREAT INDIAN BATTLE.
Sanguinary Fighting in the West.
The Ground Piled with Bodies. Over Three Hundred Killed.
THE INDIAN MASSACRE.
Confirmation of the Sad News.
A General Indian War Expected.
List of the killed and missing.
Gen. Custer Heads the Roll.
His Brother Slain by His Side.
THE INDIAN WAR.
How Are the Mighty Fallen.
First Rumors All Too True.
Forty-Eight Hours' Fighting.
Rescue Arrives at Last.
Cause of the Catastrophe.
Custer Unaccountably Precipitate.
The moon washed the roofs of Philadelphia and the face of the man at the hotel window. He wore his trousers and nothing else. It was half past one. He couldn't sleep. Because of that, neither could Willa. He heard her shifting in the bed behind him.
Musing, he said, "I'm glad Magee's coming down to the ranch to visit when he gets leave. I want to know what he thinks of the massacre."
"It's upset you, hasn't it?"
Charles nodded.
"What do you think about it?" she asked.
"It's hard to decide without all the facts. The dispatches are still pretty muddled. No two agree. I'm sorry for the men who served under Custer, and for his wife, but God help me, I don't feel sadness for him. I don't know, Willa, it's like — like watching a wheel come full circle. A lot of men said Custer took us to the Washita because his reputation had suffered as a result of his discipline and he wanted public favor again. He needed a victory. He got one, but it was dirty. He never quite canceled out the Washita, and this time it sounds like he was after another victory in hopes of doing it. There's some indication that he disobeyed orders and rushed in where he shouldn't."
He let out a long breath. "I keep thinking he was hunting the presidency, not the Sioux. I wish I could say I liked the poor son of a bitch now he's dead."
She heard the confusion in his voice, the echo of bad memories. He saw her outstretched hands glimmer in the light. "I love you, Charles Main. Come here, let me hold you."
He was halfway to the bed when Gus screamed.
Wildly, he crashed the bedroom door back, lunged across the parlor and into the smaller bedroom. Gus was fighting the sheet, rolling to and fro, crying, "Don't do that, don't do that."
"Gus, it's Pa. You're all right. You're all right!" He gathered the boy in his arms and pressed him close. He stroked his hair. It was damp from sweat.
Presently Charles sat back, and Gus stared at him with a bewildered air. The scar looked black in the moonlight. Charles silently cursed all the Bents and Custers of the world.
Gus's huge, terrified eyes focused. "Pa."
Charles's shoulders sagged. The tension left him. "Yes," he said.
Virgilia's was the only white face in the small, plain restaurant. She and Scipio and Jane had come there for a farewell breakfast. Eggs, fried fish, corn bread — all deliriously hot. The other tables held some people who evidently came from the neighborhood, and there was one waiter, the cook's son.
"I'm very glad we had this chance to meet," Virgilia said as she finished.
Jane said, "I am too. I wish my husband could have seen the exhibition." There was no self-pity in the statement, merely a solemn declaration.
"I don't know as I'd wish that," Scipio said.
"Why not?" Virgilia asked.
"I'm not so sure we have much to celebrate." He folded his supple hands together and rested them on the old tablecloth. "The war ended eleven years ago. That isn't a long tine, but sometimes I think everything the war accomplished is already gone. Yesterday I saw some signs in a building downtown. Two signs, on different doors. White only. Colored only."
Jane sighed. "We don't have signs like that in South Carolina yet, but we might as well. The Klan keeps screaming 'nigger, nigger,' the white people protest the school taxes, we can't ride the public transportation again, the Hampton Red Shirts are out, the Democrats will win this fall, the last soldiers will leave — the war isn't won at all. You're right. Everything did look bright a few years ago, and now it's almost wiped away. I think we're sinking right back to 1860."
Scipio said, "I agree."
Jane covered her eyes a moment, then shook her head. "Sometimes I get so tired of struggling."
"But we mustn't give up," Virgilia said. "If we don't win in our lifetime, we'll win a hundred years from now. If I didn't believe it, I couldn't live another day."
Outside, Jane and Virgilia embraced, and Jane set off for the downtown hotel she and Madeline would be leaving today. Virgilia linked her arm with her husband's and they walked in an easy, pensive silence toward their rooms three blocks away. A baby cried in a shanty. A yellow dog with sores on his back scratched himself at the edge of a mud hole. It began to rain.
Some white boys, age ten or eleven and probably from a nearby neighborhood of immigrant Irish, skulked after them, and suddenly flung rocks and shouted, "Nigger-loving whore." Scipio ran them off with no trouble. He was startled to see his wife crying when he strode back to her.
He started to ask the reason. She shook her head, smiled at him, and took his arm again. They continued along the lane between the hovels and tilted tenements, and Virgilia thought of living near here with Grady, so many years ago. Like Jane, she was disheartened.
She tightened her hand on Scipio's arm, drawing strength from the contact. They walked on. The rain fell harder.
George had rehearsed the little speech for days. In the confusion of leave-takings at the depot, he found himself as tongue-tied as a boy. The moment he drew Madeline away from Jane, he forgot every word he'd memorized.
Color rose in his cheeks. "I hope you won't think me improper —"
"Yes, George?" She regarded him with genteel calm, waiting. He almost stammered.
"I would loathe myself if I dishonored Orry's memory in any way —"
"I'm sure you would never do that, George."
"I would like to ask — that is, would you ever consider — I mean to say — Madeline, autumn in the Lehigh Valley is a lovely time of year. Would you ever consider visiting me at Belvedere and letting me show you the, ah —" He strangled the next word like a lovesick country swain: "Foliage?"
She was touched and amused.
"Yes, I would certainly consider it. I think I would enjoy it."
He paled from relief. "Wonderful. You must bring Jane if you want a companion. Would coming this fall suit you at all?"
Her eyes warmed. "Yes, George. A visit this fall would be lovely."
71
Autumn wind swept the valley. Sunset spread orange light over the roofs of Lehigh Station, the chimneys of Hazard's, the winding river, the laurel-covered heights. Madeline's dark hair, so carefully arranged before the stroll, tossed back and forth around her shoulders.
George kept his hands in the pockets of his gray trousers. He wore a small white rose in his black lapel, in her honor. She and Jane had arrived on the train that morning.
"I'm very glad you came," he said with obvious difficulty. "I don't find it easy or pleasant to be alone all the time."
"That's exactly how I feel." She could think of nothing less inane than that. His presence, his masculinity, disturbed her in an unexpected way. She liked him and felt guilty about it.