Omigosh! The End! Right here! Who said it couldn't be done? Hope you enjoy. And thanks for all who have continued to read-I appreciate you very much ;-). P.S. This piece refers to "Man Plans, God Laughs".
Chapter 14 ~ Death is Nothing at All (Part 2)
Scott turned away from the door and looked down the street, first one way then the other. His mind balked, uncertain of what he wanted to do. The vehemence in Josie's voice was fresh, too vivid for him to do anything more than stand on the cobblestone walkway that linked the houses.
He closed his eyes to hold back everything, and it stopped nothing.
The door to John's house opened on a single creak. Cautiously, he opened his eyes again, and realized his heart was hammering too hard.
"Young man…Mr. Lancer. My daughter would like to speak with you after all."
~#~#~#~
"Mother, I should like to speak with Mr. Lancer in private," Josie said, her jaw barely moving. "If you would, send word to Martha that I will be unavailable to meet with her today."
"Should I tell her why?" Her mother's voice scratchy with emotion, could hardly be heard.
Josie stared at Scott. "No."
Scott felt the color drain from his face and fumbled with his hat and gloves as her mother took them in hand and left the two of them together in the parlor. He glanced about and saw a hallway mirror covered in the same crape as outside. Curtains were pulled against the windows, a black wreath festooned with flowers upon the mantle. He had seen a few tableaus set like this, particularly when he had to deliver the grievous news of a lost loved one. But somehow, this was more somber, more significant.
She sighed, a soft breathy sound. "I thought you might come. From what John related in his letters, you seemed to be the type of man who shoulders responsibility."
Dry-eyed, Josie sat in her wing chair, grieving the loss of a loved one for whom all her tears had been spent, lips pressed firmly together, while he sat on the sofa, knees together like a schoolboy. She kept stealing looks at him, the afternoon sun cutting slantwise across her pale face through the window glass. A kitten tumbled out from a knitting bag beside her chair to jump up and curl into a ball in her lap. A tiny bit of orange and white amongst the mourning hues.
Scott couldn't read her expression; it was hooded, tucked away in reserve like a store of food in a pantry.
"Why? Why are you alive and not John?" she demanded.
In truth he had no answer. Anger was the first stop on most of his many journeys lately, especially ones that concerned any aspect of his imprisonment. Because what was left, all he had in the world, were memories. So instead of concern he felt anger, and it was always so easy, that.
As the date of the escape neared, John had gotten quiet, not putting up a fight—even over an old Thoreau versus Emerson argument—and that was perhaps a signal of sorts.
He asked what was wrong and John had told him. Three sentences, that was all, and Scott's anger turned to something else, because he heard what John wasn't saying, knew what his friend couldn't admit: a sense of foreboding had embraced them. After all, others had tried to escape, and failed. But with John it went beyond that, he knew he was going to die.
Scott swallowed hard. He dipped his head towards the floor. So what had determined his fate, aside from a Rebel welcoming committee comprised of gunfire? Was it luck? Destiny?
Josie arced her hand in the air as if to chase away the question. "I told John that no good would come of his joining up. Professors," she disparaged. "There are obligations, and then there is the past. John eloquently argued for both, but too many young men, they don't understand the difference."
That was close, overlapped and transected with what John had said one time when digging latrine trenches, about doing manual labor with a scholar's mind. Scott was quiet, staying still for a moment, wrestling down the guilt. He nodded slowly. John's death and the others couldn't be in vain.
Josie's attention was on the loops and whorls of flowers on the wallpaper, faded to muted gold from bright yellow, her face held so still Scott didn't know if she was going to yell, cry, or throw him out of the house.
Finally, she nodded once. "I had no right to say the things I did to you on the porch. My apologies, Mr. Lancer. I've been unsettled since I received the word of my husband's death." Her eyes flicked to him and away.
"John never seemed quite the archetypical military man. How did it happen?" Scott asked when she fell into silence.
Josie shrugged and pulled her shawl closer about her shoulders, seemingly cold despite the swelter of the afternoon. He would have offered to fetch the afghan from the rocking chair, except he didn't want get up from the sofa, take his attention from her words.
"A boy like you. That's what happened."
There was a time to interrupt and a time to let it continue, Scott didn't need to fill every moment with talk, even after surprising admissions like this one.
After a minute of sliding her fingers in and out of the kitten's fur, Josie set them quietly on each chair arm. "His name was Alan, John's younger brother. Full of life. And bravado. Did John ever speak of him?" She smiled softly when Scott nodded. "He loved a cause, Alan did. Had a fine sense of justice, he saw what was happening in our country and abhorred the very idea of slavery."
She stopped. Not because she was at a loss for words, but because she wanted him to understand. "He wasn't like John. He didn't want to make a bed, have a family, or stay in one place. Alan lived for adventure, he needed to keep moving." She laughed, bitter as a field sowed with lime. "He was a nomad, not a soldier, and John knew it, even if the recruiting officers didn't."
"So John," Scott started, then caught himself, unsure. What a thing to ask. Josie watched him as he tried to smile a little.
Then she was up, spilling the offended kitten off her lap. She went to the fireplace mantle and adjusted a picture frame as Scott watched. After a few moments collecting himself, he swallowed, sure of the question.
"John followed Alan?"
She stopped fussing with the frame, set it off to one side and braced both hands on her hips. Her lips clamped for a moment, and it was like a boil needing lanced, infected and painful.
"Alan died in a skirmish at Fisher's Valley in the Carolinas. Life as a teacher held no meaning for my husband after that day. Whereas Alan had many causes, John only had one—to take care of his brother. Do you have siblings, Mr. Lancer?"
He shook his head. The closest he had was Carter, but he often wondered what it would be like to have grown up with a real brother beside him. Would he feel the same for his brother as John did for Alan? Would his father have wanted them both in California instead of Boston? He savagely pushed the thoughts away. It was folly. There was no brother.
"I don't know if you can understand then, but John would have done anything for Alan, even follow him into battle."
"But he waited…why?"
She stared at the daguerreotype on the mantle. "Me. We had been newly married, I asked him to stay. I had no right, but I asked anyway." Josie fingered the black button at her throat. "What could I do?" she asked after a long pause. "I was scared. For him, for us. Then Alan died and still very much wrapped in his grief, John enlisted. The only difference was that he had my blessing this time. I let him go," she whispered.
He must have made some noise, because Josie roused herself. She stared at him, eyes shuttered, unreadable. He looked away.
"You reminded John of his brother, after a fashion. Stalwart. Opinionated. The same but different, because he saw more in you. A young man who eventually became a fine leader for his soldiers. And someone who John felt had become a brother. Not a surrogate for Alan, but a brother nonetheless. That spoke volumes to me, Mr. Lancer, and I will always thank you for that."
With an awful hollow yearning, he wished for John to be back, laughing at how slow the Army acted, chastising him for allowing Mortimer to chew his shoulder boards, arguing that Emerson was a pale imitation of Thoreau. Whole, clean. He just wanted it the way it was, that's all.
When he finally raised his head, the look on Josie's face moved from puzzlement to understanding to concern in under two seconds.
She gasped, her hand at her mouth. "That wretched escape, you think it's your fault, don't you? Those words on the porch—please—they meant nothing. I was distraught."
Scott steadied his breath. "I led the escape. I'll always feel responsible."
She wiped the corner of her eye, attention on her fingers like she'd found something there. She was quiet. And lurking behind the quiet was a string of lonely months stretched like hung laundry across time.
She said nothing for a time and when she spoke, her voice was no more than a whisper. "I forgive you."
A wave of sadness bubbled up. "I don't deserve your forgiveness."
"Yes, you do. We all do. God…"
"God isn't listening at the moment."
"Well then, I forgive you. As someone who is a friend, if I may be so bold." She gripped his hand, sandwiching it between hers, anchoring him as her words and voice penetrated. "Scott, I forgive you."
She studied his face, holding his hand, nodding her confirmation to the question he couldn't quite bring himself to verbalize. It was just him and Josie. No one else to see him wipe his eyes.
"How long are you going to punish yourself? A few months, a year? Two? How long will be enough? You didn't choose this outcome. You didn't live so you could lead this type of life. John and the others are dead, but you aren't." Her brown eyes rounded. "How happy are you?"
Scott couldn't utter a word, had been speared through as efficiently as though Josie was armed with an issued Union sword. Happy? What did that have to do with anything? He was alive, and that's all that mattered, wasn't it? Her question about his happiness left Scott exposed like a tatty sail in a typhoon. Maybe after a few years the hole would close up, maybe he would be all right, but it wasn't good. No good at all, depending on something as capricious as time. The idea of happiness and loss were so keen and intertwined that he had to keep his eyes on his hands.
She looked away, not frail, but deep in memory, which left her open. Her eyes were full, he realized, brimming, and maybe that's what she'd been scratching at earlier, knowing that tears would be shed. Her mouth opened, and shut. Then Josie settled back into her chair. And began to talk about John.
He listened, taking it all in, saying nothing—except when she told him about their wedding day and the dance that went horribly wrong.
"A Schottische? Are you serious?" Scott laughed full-on, straight from his belly. "Oh, what I wouldn't have given to see that!"
"Well, he was terrible at it," Josie confided with a grin. "He could have been wonderful, but he was stubborn and unwilling to learn. Willfully ignorant. But he knew how important it was to me, so he did it. Not well, certainly not happily, but he did it."
It brought memories of a cold winter camp, ankle deep in snow, dancing with a shadow. He'd been embarrassed to find John watching him by a tree, but within a few moments, his friend had slid into his own jerky waltz. Their intent had been identical.
Her face shone in the odd half-light from the window, eyes bright, and Scott could almost see, superimposed on top of that face, a younger one, what she had been before, waiting for John to return from the war, the light of life glowing beneath the surface. The hope.
"And then word came," Josie's voice faltered, the first time it had done so since she started talking. "That he had died while attempting to escape." She shook her head, but her eyes were clear. "It felt like some sort of terrible justice, for when I kept John from Alan. Perhaps they both would have lived."
"Josie." He reached out, touching her cheek briefly, just with his fingertips, then drew away.
"Scott, my husband—our John—wouldn't want this. You owe it to him to go on. He'd expect no less." He slumped at that, acknowledging the truth in her words. She looked at him then, and he saw the beauty that John had described, and the bleak days that ached in her eyes made him want to run in the opposite direction.
Scott inclined his face for a moment. He took his time to consider her words because they true and right; when he spoke it was with resolution and conviction. "A debt owed then. For the both of us." So low, and Josie let out a sob.
He nodded to her, and Josie nodded back. "Thank you," he said softly.
The small weight in his coat pocket tipped forward when he sat down, reminding him why he had come, in part, to Worchester in the first place. Scott reached in and brought out the tattered Thoreau. For the longest time he couldn't bring himself to look at it, yet now it was a thing to be cherished. He rubbed his thumb down its spine for the last time. Then handed it to her.
Josie took the book as if it was made of expensive china, mouth parted in wonder. He watched as she carefully opened it and found John's handwriting, tracing it with her own finger as she read. She hesitated for a moment, longing and fearful. Scott recognized the expression, had seen it on his own face a few times, when something was wanted so badly it was a weakness beyond reckoning, an exposed wound.
"John was lost until he found you." Josie closed the book and met his eyes, solid and steady. "I'm so very glad he did."
And Scott felt he could begin again, that it was allowed.
Epilogue
Alone with a glass of brandy in Grandfather's study and the letter, he couldn't help but smile. Josie was doing well and thanked him again for coming to her in her hour of need. He wasn't sure who was the neediest those several months ago, he or Josie, but in the end it didn't matter, they had saved each other, in a way. He was grateful.
What he wasn't grateful for was the colder November weather. Since his summer in Virginia it seemed he grew chilly at the very mention of snow. He cocked his head when he thought he heard someone below at the front door. Carter was expected and, per his usual flair, late. He always did like to make an entrance. Perhaps after Grandfather's soiree, they would leave to celebrate something of more import, namely the start of Carter's medical rotation at the hospital. Unable to attend surgery, the clinical side of medicine seemed to satisfy his friend almost as well.
The start of school again had been at once a harrowing experience and a mind-numbing bore. What could compete with sabers, horses and uniforms? Not Old Fitzroy's Latin. It was all so inoffensively normal.
At Harvard, he knew a boy named Franklin Abbott, whose banking father owned several transportation companies. Franklin's father, the son of a merchant and an Irish maid, used astute judgement and blind luck to make his first fortune, afterwards he went on to make several more. At one memorable party a few weeks ago, Franklin smoked fine El Plantador cigars, drank his way through several strong whiskeys, and he told Scott that his two brothers worked for his father. Franklin waggled his eyebrows at the word work. His brothers laughed at their father's often-told stories of the old country, said nothing when the old man shouted too loud at the race track and looked away when Father stuck his finger in the back of his mouth to clear away the food behind his molars.
Franklin was drunk, and by that time Scott had consumed his own share of drink. So he'd asked: "What are you going to do after school?" Franklin had replied, "I'm going to see Europe on Father's ship then come home, put on an expensive suit, and marry a brunette from our side of the city who will bear my progeny. And I will carry Father's bags to the train station and laugh at his stories."
That evening, he was tipsy, which had the effect of making him sleepy and patient, but Scott had listened carefully to Franklin's family story. And while he'd always thought the thin, pock-marked boy who lived in the student hall next door was not terribly interesting, he felt a little sorry for him. Franklin genuinely believed he had no choice in life but to follow his brothers' bitter-sounding path. It was nonsense to think that he of all people had no choices in life. But after spending the evening with him, Scott began to understand that what mattered was not what you could do, but what you believed you could do.
In his own dormitory, there was Carter Willoughby, his friend since childhood. When Carter decided he wanted to be a physician, his parents threw him a party because like father-like son, he was following in the family tradition. During dessert, as he cut into the cake, Carter took several sips of brandy, eyebrows pulling together at the burn. He announced to everyone there, black eyes glittering with liquor, that he'd become staff surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital by the time he was twenty-five. At such a bold announcement, his father and mother gathered their breath like children before birthday cake candles. And now, Carter was left with one arm and no surgical residency.
This was what he wanted to know: When life didn't go your way, was it because it wasn't meant to be, or because you didn't have faith, or was it that you couldn't make it so by the labors required of you? He thought about the offices of Garrett Enterprises on Tremont Street, and feared for his own conclusion.
He took another sip of his drink, losing himself in his thoughts until a voice from down the hall prodded him.
"Scotty? Scotty?"
He blinked. Grandfather was calling his name.
He was restless, unusually so. He'd had a dream last night, one that was well known to him, however infrequently it made its appearance. The dream remained the same—he was desperately looking for someone, yet unable to see the way ahead. Here he was surrounded by people he'd known and loved his entire life, and all he wanted…
Ignoring Grandfather's voice for the time being, he stared out the window, searching for the answer.
All he wanted was to…
He didn't know. That was the problem. He didn't know what he wanted.
He just knew that it wasn't here.
The End
8/'17