Chapter 26

The Amazing Automobile

Morning is warm and sunny. The clouds have clean-cut billowy edges, like God painted them with a fine-tipped brush.

As we set out, pain pesters my hindquarters where I reckon I slept on a rock. Walking eases it, and I crave to hear more about Grandpa, Fred, and the war.

I kick a pebble. “So you and Fred fought with Jackson before he was called Stonewall.”

“That’s right. We was there when he earned his famous nickname.” Grandpa’s eyes never stray from the road, but he seems to see a heap more than its hard-packed dirt. “Was early in the war. First battle at Manassas.”

“My history book calls it Bull Run.”

“Yankee name,” he snaps. “It was Manassas. And we held our line no matter what them Yankees throwed at us. Held it like a stone wall. The name stuck. He was Stonewall and we was the Stonewall Brigade.” Grandpa sounds proud, but pride isn’t the only feeling I hear in his voice. Sorrow seems to wrap around every word.

Before he says more, a wagon driver offers us a ride. My feet are right grateful to sit on a wagon bed, and my hands are glad to set down the suitcase. But that wagon full of fence posts jostles us over every bump and crack in West Virginia. And rekindles that pain in my backside.

Grandpa insists on helping the man unload fence posts. By the time we’re on our way again, the sky is changed. No more perfect clouds, they’re slap-dashed across the blue like God used the sky to wipe his brushes.

Grandpa is changed, too. No matter how I beg, he tells no more stories. When I mention the war, he grunts. It vexes me how the talkingest man I know can turn so silent.

Without his yarns, walking is a drudge. Each hillside looks like the last, and the sun seems to nap in place.

A strange sound startles me. Sort of a cough like Mr. Crutcher’s when he was sick. And a rumble, too.

Then I see it! An automobile! It bounces toward us, its snub nose set between its unblinking eyes. I’m so awestruck I scarcely have sense to move from its path. It rattles, shakes, and bounds past us, the driver gripping its steering wheel with both hands, his collar unfurled like a flag.

The automobile’s hull is coated with dust, and after it passes, so are we. But I don’t care. I stare open-mouthed as if a newspaper picture came to life and drove right off the page!

“Danged horseless buggy,” Grandpa mutters, making a show of brushing off dust.

He tugs my arm, and I walk beside him, watching over my shoulder until the automobile is gone and its dusty cape settles. I don’t let him see me spit out dust that found my open mouth.

When we make camp, I clear the ground beneath the tent of even the smallest pebble. Grandpa is quiet, but my mind conjures up things to keep it busy. Instead of being flummoxed by his silence, I fancy myself in an automobile. How fast could we get to Gettysburg in one?

                          *    *    *

For three more days, Grandpa and I trek through valleys shaded by trees hundreds of years old. We pass treeless hillsides where bare stumps resemble the stubble on Daddy’s face when he doesn’t shave. Grandpa shakes his head and makes clicking sounds with his tongue.

We walk side by side along wide roads. On narrow paths, I fall into step behind him, paying mind not to get my face slapped by branches pushed aside by the tent across his shoulders. My feet move from habit now.  

A full day’s walk is no longer a chore, and my hands wear calluses from toting the suitcase. My pinned-up hair stays pinned, and fixing it in the morning takes no longer than straightening my dress and tying my bonnet. 

We spend evenings by a fire, Grandpa staring into its flames, quiet. I dig my flute from the suitcase. The few songs Daddy taught me sound better now. Or the open air makes them seem so.