Chapter 59

Storms

Lying on my bed, wishing for a cool breeze from that high window, I ponder on what Mama and Daddy would expect of me. Must I crawl back to Grandpa?

I fall asleep and wake to a darkish room. Thunder rumbles. Black clouds roll across the sky. Wind billows the treetops and bangs a loose shutter against the bricks. Dim daylight struggles to penetrate the gloom. I light the oil lamp. By its flickering light, I stand tiptoe on my bed, stretching to close the window just as rain lashes the house.

I turn to see Mrs. Grome in the doorway, her white hair and pale face looking bodyless in the dark. I all but lose my balance on the mattress springs. She emerges ghostlike from shadows into the light—a bent-body ghost in a flowered apron.

I ease my bare feet to the wood floor. “I’m sorry I stood on the bed. It was the only way to reach the window.”

“I use a stick.” She waggles a slender rod in front of me. With lamplight wavering across her face, she looks more gnome-like than usual. I edge back from the stick in her hand.

“It’s raining hard,” she says. “Tough to be out in.”

“Is Chance out in it?”

“He’s downstairs closing windows. His ma is pacing my parlor, worried about Mr. Redmond at the Camp.” Unblinking, her eyes flare in the lamplight, until I grasp her intention.

“Grandpa. Where is Grandpa?”

“So you finally give thought to him.”

“Is he in the storm?” I head for the door, but her window-closing stick slashes down in front of me.

“He’s somewhere dry, but a storm’s raging in his heart.

“How do you know what’s in his heart?”

“I know. When I first met your grandpa, he was a frightened boy caught up in a war he wanted no part of.”

“What?” Fog descends into my brain.

“He was here after the battle, he and his friend Wendell.”

I recall the name on the attic chimney. “The two you found in your shed! Why didn’t you say it was Grandpa?”

She doesn’t answer my question, but says, “They turned up when I was tending young Jamison.”

“I thought the Yankees had already left.”

“All but Jamison. He was too weak. My Union boys wanted to take him to a hospital, but I talked them out of it. Hospitals had sprouted up all over town, and there weren’t doctors enough to look after the wounded. I took better care of him here.”

My brain-fog is lifting. “And Grandpa showed up in your shed?”

“They slipped in to hide from Union patrols. The battle was over and the Rebel army retreating. But your grandpa stayed to look for his brother’s body.”

I lower my eyes and shake my head. “He never found him.”

“He saw him shot, and pulled him off the field, but it was too late. Tore him up something awful, losing his brother like that. Tore him up even more when the battle was over and the body was gone. I heard him praying. You know what he prayed for?”

“What?”

“Death. He begged God to take his life. It scared me, him praying like that. Until the wounded soldier got better. Your grandpa was at Jamison’s bedside when he rallied. ‘Ma’ll be so relieved I ain’t dead,’ Jamison said. ‘She already lost two sons to this war. I’m her only chance for grandbabies.’ Those words lit a fire in your grandpa, gave him reason to live. He went back to his army determined to survive.”

“So Grandpa has worried on grandbabies for fifty years? Did you know he came here to find me a husband?”

“Not until yesterday.” She flexes her fingers grasped around the stick. “You know who Longstreet and Pickett were, right?”

“Two of Lee’s generals that fought here. Both dead now.”

“They have descendants at the Reunion. When I told Mr. Kent, he talked about bloodlines and said you’re the last chance to preserve his.”

“I’m not his only chance. Mama’s having another baby.”

“He didn’t tell me that,” Mrs. Grome says, “just said he hoped to find you a husband.”

“He went far beyond hoping to find one. He up and asked Chance to marry me, embarrassed Chance all to pieces.”

“So you both got embarrassed. Not a tragedy. I lost my husband in a war that burned through men like flames through dry straw. I might’ve been glad for a grandpa to find me a husband.”

I can’t imagine that headstrong lady letting anyone choose a husband for her, but I don’t say so. A different question pecks at my brain.

“Why do you reckon you had to tell Grandpa about Pickett’s and Longstreet’s descendants? Why wasn’t he at the Camp finding out for himself? He came all this way. Why doesn’t he go there?”

She scrunches her eyes and taps her window-closing stick against her palm. “I figured he’d go to meet young Pickett, but he didn’t. That Camp fills him with dread.”

“That makes no sense. A camp full of veterans who fought same as he fought. What’s to dread?”

“It’s more than I can reason.” She snaps her stick over her shoulder like a rifle and leaves the room.

Why doesn’t Grandpa go to the Camp? Is he truly afraid?

                     *    *    *

Thunder and lightning give way to a clear sky, but nothing is clear for me. I open the window with no answer to the Grandpa question.

Having missed dinner, my stomach craves supper. Do I feel brave enough to face Chance at the table?

My thoughts are interrupted by a loud Crack! More thunder? Back home, I would never confuse that sound with thunder, but here in Gettysburg, I’m not used to hearing rifle shots. I don’t know why the sound grips my heart as it does. Could it be Mrs. Grome’s words about Grandpa praying for death?

I jump up and race downstairs.

Chance and Mrs. Grome stand at the patched screen door, looking out. I elbow past them until my nose presses the screen.

In a spot near the corn patch, Grandpa lowers his rifle, removes his hat, and snaps to attention, his squirrel rifle at his side. His eyes rise slowly to the sky.

Back home, I’d have realized right off. I’ve seen it every July second since I could walk. Grandpa’s tribute to Fred on the anniversary of his death.

Tears gather in my eyes and clutch at my heart. This ritual is a piece of my family and our history. But this year I feel apart from it. Grandpa’s doings have changed me.