Charlie Martz and Other Stories (22 page)

She raised her eyes briefly. “It's stopped now.”

With his chin pressed to his chest, McLean studied her profile and the dark gleam of her hair. He watched her fold a strip of the linen and arched his back when she slipped it beneath him and brought it around his waist.

“Who is he?” McLean asked abruptly.

“His name is Olin Worrel.”

“He wants to turn me over to the Yankees.”

Virginia looked up. “I didn't think you heard.”

“Every word.”

She shook her head. “He wouldn't do that.”

“I hope you're sure.”

“I know he wouldn't. He'd be afraid of involving me.”

“And himself.”

She looked at him coldly now. “Mr. Worrel and I are engaged to be married.” She was suddenly sorry she had said it and she lowered her eyes again.

“Oh.” McLean paused. “Was he in the war?”

“He doesn't believe in fighting.”

“Is that right? You just say you don't believe in fighting and that's all there is to it?”

“A man is entitled to his beliefs,” Virginia said.

“Would he help me?”

“I'm sure he'd be against it.”

McLean said, “He just waits to see who wins, then goes on like nothing's happened. Is that what he's doing?”

“I don't feel qualified to speak for Mr. Worrel's beliefs.”

“Even though you're going to marry him.”

“Which doesn't happen to be any of your business.”

McLean came up on his elbows. “Listen, my business is to get through the Union lines to the Tombigbee River and I'm trying like almighty hell to find a way!”

Virginia pushed him back gently. “You'll start it bleeding again.”

For perhaps a full minute McLean studied her in silence, watching her tie the ends of the bandage now. He said then, “Will you help me?”

“No.”

“I don't mean endanger yourself. Just show me a way where I won't have to go near the roads.”

“You got here,” she said quietly. “Go back the way you came.”

“We came from Egypt Station. But my brigade was doubling back across the Tombigbee and we were to rejoin them somewhere just north of Waverly.”

“Perhaps they'll be in Okolona tomorrow.”

“I can't lay here on a perhaps.”

“I'd say you've already done enough.”

“Look—all I'm asking is you show me the direction!”

Help me, Virginia
. Staring at McLean she heard the words in her mind, looking at his eyes and the lean, hard-boned shape of his face.

She made sure of her words before saying, quietly, without emotion, “Five days ago my brother was here, home on furlough from McCulloch's Brigade. He was here the day the Yankees came, when
their cavalry came down the road stopping at every house, and my brother said, ‘Help me, Virginia. Talk to them. Do anything, but give me time.' So I helped him. I talked to them while he ran out the back door and was shot seven times before he reached the orchard. Yes, I helped him, Mr. McLean. I helped him die instead of talking sense into him. He could have surrendered and he'd be alive today. But I helped him.”

McLean watched her closely. “You stand for Olin Worrel's beliefs but not your brother's, is that it?”

Virginia closed her eyes wearily. “I've had enough, Mr. McLean, if you don't mind.”

“Did you stand for your husband's beliefs?” Her eyes came open. “I noticed your ring,” McLean said. “He's dead?”

“He was killed at Shiloh, serving with Wirt Adams.”

“That's too bad.”

“That's too bad,” she murmured, staring at him now. “You put it very simply, don't you?”

“I'm sorry.” McLean hesitated. “I didn't know what else to say.”

“You didn't mention it was too bad about my brother,” Virginia said coldly. “Do you think it is? Or my father. My father was killed September 19, 1863, at Chickamauga. Seventeen months and eleven days after my husband was killed. Do you think that's too bad?” Their eyes held, neither of them looking away or moving.

“My mother died exactly nine weeks after my father. How bad do you think that is? She died of pneumonia, though I can tell you the pneumonia had little to do with it. She was a widow nine weeks. On April 8, I'll have been a widow for two years. That's too bad too, isn't it?” She stopped abruptly. Then, more calmly, she said, “If there is anything else you want to say, please say it now. I'd like very much to go lie down.”

McLean shook his head slowly. “All you can feel is sorry for yourself.”

Virginia's eyes showed quick surprise, but almost in the same moment she was composed, staring at him in stony silence.

“You've had enough war,” McLean said mildly. “Like your friend, Worrel, you've washed your hands of it and you sit very quietly asking yourself why did it happen to you, and what is it all about anyway and why don't the Yankees go home, and why don't people stop saying they're sorry and why don't they go home too and just leave you alone to sit and think about all the awful things that've happened . . . First your husband. You started to get over it—and don't tell me you didn't, because you can get over anything. Then your father and your mother, and you even started to get over that. But now your brother. This one is still fresh and right now it's too much because it makes you think of the others, all of them at once, and you say, ‘Oh, God, what did I do? Why did it happen to me?' Like you're the only woman in the world who's lost people in the war.”

McLean paused, not taking his eyes from hers, holding her with the raw truth of his words.

He went on, “And during this time, Olin came along. The old family friend who's all of a sudden a beau because now you're a widow and twenty years' difference between you doesn't look like so much. He got to be like a fixture, I'll bet, and you leaned on him because he was the only man close by, and one day he asked you to marry him and you said yes because you were thinking of yourself shivering with loneliness and you wanted to be held. You wanted a man to hold you and stroke your hair and say, ‘Honey, it's all over. Go ahead, cry if you want. I'll just hold you and I won't let any more awful things happen to you. I'll help you take the terrible sting out of remembering and after a while you'll just have good memories and everything will be fine.” McLean watched her. “That's how it is, isn't it?”

Virginia had not moved. She stared at McLean with a look of
patient hatred and said, “You're inhuman. No person with even a shred of feeling could say those things.”

McLean shook his head slowly. “Virginia, I'm the realest thing you know. I'm real and human enough to know how you feel. Admit that, Virginia, even if it leaves your pride feeling naked.”

Abruptly she wheeled from the sofa and he said, “Virginia!” And as she hesitated he said quietly again, “Virginia, look at my side and see if it's bleeding.” He watched her turn to him again, avoiding his eyes. She kneeled and raised his jacket and he said, “That's real, isn't it? I'm lying here holding the thing and I'll testify before God Almighty that it's real.”

For a moment her gaze softened beseechingly. “Can't you just leave me alone?”

“I'm running out of time, Virginia.”

Her expression tightened. “And I'm running out of patience!” She started to rise, not looking at him—not until he reached for her and pulled her down against him and she felt his arms around her and his hands pressed firmly over her back. She tried to push away, her eyes furiously alive and close to his face now, but he held her tightly against him.

“Listen to me!”

She stopped struggling, stunned by the sudden harshness of his voice.

“Feel sorry for yourself tomorrow,” McLean said. “Feel sorry for yourself all you want then. But not today. I don't have time to hold you and comfort you and make the numb feeling go away . . . I could do it though, Virginia, and you know I could. I don't have a wife; I haven't made any promises to anybody; I could comfort you good.”

With one hand he began stroking her hair, gently, and he said softly, “Virginia” bringing her face down to his. But said nothing more. He kissed her lingeringly and she did not try to pull away
from him. His lips moved to her cheek and she turned her head, burying it against his shoulder.

“You're alive, Virginia”—McLean's words were barely above a whisper—“but you have to do something to stay alive. Something more than just breathe and eat. You have to do something, build toward something, look forward to something; because there's no such thing as just staying in one place. Bringing it down to right now, it's like saying you're either for me or against me, Virginia. There isn't any middle ground—like letting me lie here and not doing anything because you helped your brother try to escape and he was killed. That doesn't make sense, does it? That's an excuse. You don't want to say you feel sorry for yourself, so you make up an excuse that almost sounds like a principle. Do you see that, Virginia?”

She lay against him, listening, hearing the soft-strong sound of his voice, feeling his arms around her and the rough scratch of his cheek and being aware of the damp, faintly sour smell of his coat, but not minding it. She remained in his arms, wondering how she would meet his eyes, then beginning to picture herself in his arms—

McLean was saying, “We'll leave when it's dark. You'll just take me out back through the orchard and show me how to reach the river without going near the road.” His hand continued to stroke her hair.

“It's just a matter of making up your mind, Virginia. After you do that it's easy.”

She pushed up and away from him, knowing he wasn't expecting it, and ran from the room, feeling his eyes following her and already she was thinking:
You made a fool of yourself! Lying there, showing your weakness—

She went up the front stairs to her bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed to look out at the gray late afternoon light, at the trees lining the muddy road and the pines that formed a silent dark wall along the far side of the meadow.

She wanted to look at something or do something, anything, but do it quickly to erase the picture still in her mind: seeing herself in McLean's arms, awkwardly half kneeling, half lying over him with his arms around her. She closed her eyes, feeling the restless urge inside of her; then threw herself back on the bed, turning to her side, then to her stomach with an arm up in front of her face.

And now she pictured herself running across the meadow, running with the wind in her face, with the hissing sound of it drowning out McLean's voice, running through the pines and beyond, and beyond that, running and falling and running and finally she would fall and not get up. She would sleep for a long time, lying in a pine grove, and even asleep she would be aware of the clean pine smell and the crisp air that was fresh and brought only whispers of sound.

She would be alone—beyond the solemn serious funeral voices offering sympathy; beyond the irritatingly persistent offerings of Olin Worrel (She told herself that he was a kind, generous, prosperous man who was wise enough to stay out of the war altogether. “Virginia, I'm not angry at those Yankees,” he would say. “Why should I go fight them? Just because they talk funny?”); beyond picturing things that used to be and would never be again; beyond the Yankees in Okolona and the silent dark house and the man in the sun parlor; beyond seeing herself in his arms . . .

O
LIN WORREL SAID, “VIRGINIA
, I'm sorry. Were you asleep?”

She stood with one hand on the door, the other holding a lamp, holding it high so that its light cast a pale yellow glow over Worrel's face, clearly sharpening the drawn expression about his mouth, bringing out the untrimmed, wiry texture of his mustache and the glistening trace of perspiration across his forehead.

Beyond him, the trees lining the road showed ghostly in the
dusk. “I thought I had just dozed off when you knocked,” she said. “But I must have slept for hours.”

Worrel's gaze darted past her into the darkness of the parlor. “He's still here?”

Virginia nodded. “Yes.”

“Is he any better? I mean can he move without it killing him?”

“I suppose—”

“I want to talk to him.”

“Why?”

“Virginia, don't waste time, please.”

It was in her mind:
He was a way to end this. He's thought it out and made a decision and whatever he does it will be out of your hands and you won't have to think about him or worry about his wound or—That's enough.

“All right, Olin.” She stepped aside to let him in, then closed the door and led him through the dark rooms to the sun parlor. The lamplight spread over McLean and she saw him raise himself on his elbow, saw his body twist suddenly with his left hand crossing over and digging under the pillow.

“Don't move!” Olin's voice. “You bring out a gun, I'll kill you. I swear to heaven I will!”

Virginia had set the lamp on the side table. And now she saw the derringer in Worrel's hand. McLean was on his side, still with his hand beneath the pillow. “Get his gun.” Worrel's voice again.

Her eyes went to McLean's now, to his quiet, accusing gaze, and she felt a heat come over her face. “Olin, you said you wanted to talk to him.” She said it earnestly, but her tone sounded weakly apologetic.

“I'll talk to him,” Worrel said, more sure of himself now. “First get his gun . . . and you sit up.” Holding the derringer almost at arm's length, he waved it at McLean. “Come on, swing your legs over.”

Slowly McLean pushed himself up. When he was sitting, Virginia
moved toward him, keeping her eyes from his; but as her hand went under the pillow, touching the heavy metal of the revolver, McLean murmured, “Now you think it won't be on your conscience.” And she glanced at him quickly, seeing the quiet awareness in his eyes and the gaunt hollows of his face.