My letters? Yes, we’d all sent our notes to him, and I’d written Mama’s words for her on a slip of paper, then added my thoughts, and I’d mailed them. It would seem like they were all my letters.
The man was still talking. “It seemed fitting to the colonel to return the remains to your care. May I extend my own sincere condolences, ma’am?”
At that moment, Granny started toward the wagon, moving faster than I’d seen her move in many a day. Albert’s rig pulled up beside it just before Granny got to the wagon. She stood at the foot and stared in for a long while. Savannah and Albert spoke to her, then came toward the yard. We all waited, stuck in our places, until Granny at last bowed her head and turned aside. The uniformed man nodded to the wagoner, and he proceeded slowly to the yard, all the while with Granny walking beside, holding the side of the wagon.
They stopped at the porch, and we gathered around. Someone remembered to whistle to Charlie that all was well, so he joined us. I read the paper the man had handed me. My brother Ernest, his remains at least, sent in care of me. I’d known it all along, but it shot through me that it was better before I had proof. Better to keep the hope going for our mama, even when I didn’t believe. “See that tree yonder, the one with the flowers on it?” I said to the driver. Then I turned back to the soldier. “We’ll set him down there. First, though, you come in and have something to drink. Your driver, too.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” said the driver, “but I’ll stay with the wagon awhile yet.”
By that time, Albert and Savannah’s brood had joined us, and we were a somber little crowd in my parlor. Willie looked purely shocked and dismayed. He never said a word, didn’t go to the wagon, didn’t make a sound. Just followed me into the house like a hurt puppy. When I tried to put a comforting hand on his shoulder, though, he pulled away. Standing just out of my reach, his eyes disbelieving, his chin taut, he looked from one of us to the other accusingly, breathing hard. Willie fidgeted with his hat, then slapped it back on his head and took off through the house and out to the back porch. I heard the screen door’s familiar old creak and then the bang as it shut.
The man stood with his hat in his hands while everyone else came in. He cleared his throat twice, and said, “Udell Hanna, Mrs. Elliot. U.S. Army, master sergeant, retired. At your service.”
Savannah and the girls wept softly, except for Mary Pearl, who stood at the window, staring after Willie. Albert sat on the floor by Granny, talking softly to her. I went to the pump with a pitcher and started working the handle. “Mr. Hanna,” I said over my shoulder, “I’ve had a little experience with the army. How is it they’ve got a master sergeant running errands like this?”
He said, “It’s my last mission, ma’am. I’ve retired, but I was coming this way. Things, well, after the war, they’re less formal. I told the colonel I’d be heading this way, and he asked me to bring this last soldier home. We all knew of those Arizona boys. Rough Riders, they called them. I told the colonel I’d be proud to see him to his rest.”
“You were heading this way?”
“Yes, ma’am. The rest of the stuff in that wagon is personal possessions. Got some land to look at, and maybe set up my farm like I did before the war. Mrs. Elliot, you folks got the telegram, didn’t you?”
“No, we didn’t get a telegram.”
Mr. Hanna’s face fell. “I’m sorry. It was never our intention to spring something like this on the family. They sent telegrams.”
I said, “I’m sure they did. I know the army, as I was married to it for quite a while. Likely it’ll come day after tomorrow, or next week, or maybe next year. Did you know my brother at all?” Granny suddenly got up from her seat and went outside again. I watched her through the window as she walked back to the wagon. Willie was beside her.
Mr. Hanna said, “No, I’m sorry to say. My brigade was behind San Juan while those boys were under fire. Corporal Prine was the smithy when we weren’t fighting, and I knew of him that way. Heard he was good at his job. I—I wish I could say more.”
Albert said, “Sergeant Hanna, do you know how he died?”
“Yellow fever. It ran through the garrison down there every few weeks. Took three-fourths of the casualties. If I never see another tropic island, it’s all right with me.”
Albert nodded. He said, “Reckon we’d better cobble up a little service, and do it quick.”
Mr. Hanna took the water I handed him. After he drained the cup, he said, “There was a little patch of mud where we interred all the men we could, near Santiago. What the army’s done, now that they’re strictly occupation, is located the families of as many as they could, and dug them up to be shipped home. It’ll be all right, if you want to wait a spell.”
Granny came in just then. She looked purely stricken. “My boy,” she said. “My boy’s gone.”
I’d always missed Ernest. Missed the way he could take a simple thing that everyone had seen, but talk about it in a way that made it silly and more fun. I hadn’t seen him since a Thanksgiving years ago, when my children were small. Mary Pearl was just over a year old last time I saw Ernest. Lands, it had to be at least fifteen years. Still, seeing how hard Mama was taking it, I had to hold up for her sake.
“Folks,” Mr. Hanna said, “thanks for the water. I don’t want to intrude on your family. My son and I will wait outside until you decide where you want us to dig.”
Just then, Willie came crashing in, looking wild-eyed and red-faced. He stood, hunched over, his arms to his sides like he was fending off blows from all directions. He hollered, “That ain’t my pa. My pa is coming after me. Ma told me last time he wrote he was coming to get me, and we’re going to take over the land the family was keeping care of, which we owned. He’s coming home! You’re a bald-faced liar. That ain’t him.”
Everyone in the room backed up a bit. Albert said, “Son, we know you’re upset. But you can’t go calling a man a liar when it’s obvious he isn’t.”
“He is a liar!”
“Willie!” I said. “Hush. Come here, son. Sit down and get hold of yourself.” I didn’t want him making Mama more upset than she was, and I sure didn’t want him to start some other kind of row right there in the parlor. You could call a man a lot of things without getting more than a bloody nose for it, but “horse thief” or “liar” was another matter. No one would have stopped Udell Hanna from knocking some sense into the boy.
Yet Mr. Hanna only held up his hands. “What’s your name, boy?” he said quietly.
“Willie. Ernest William Prine, Junior—but I goes by Willie.”
Mr. Hanna motioned toward the door with one hand. “Come on out there with me, Willie. I’ll tell you what I know was said about your pa. I didn’t know him personally, but others spoke highly of him. Always saying he was a good man. I’m sure he wanted to come get you.”
Willie pulled off his hat and threw it across the room with all the force he could muster. It sailed over a table and landed against the wall, nearly sending a lamp to the floor, except for Clove catching it. “He didn’t know me at all. My ma made up those lies. I knew it all along. Telling me he was coming home to get me.” Willie was starting to cry. Big embarrassing tears streaked down his red face. “’N even she threw me out.”
The man-sized boy stomped toward the door in his battered fancy boots, strings and strips of colored leather and yarn dangling off them like the leg feathers on a chicken. He nearly tore the door off its hinges as he left the house. It hung open, no longer swinging shut on its own. Savannah’s girls began weeping louder then. Mary Pearl just looked mad.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Hanna,” I said.
“He’s taking it hard, is all. It’s understandable,” the man said. “I lost my own pa when I was twenty. I remember.”
I nodded. “I was seventeen,” I said.
Chess came in the door Willie had just left swinging. He tried to close it, fiddling with the latch. He said, “I told Tucker and Flores to dig us a grave. Hope you don’t mind wh
ere. I had them dig next to Mr. Reed.”
A few seconds passed while we waited to see if anyone would say a word against that plan. “It’s all right, then,” I said. “Mr. Hanna? Did you say that was your son out there, the driver? Why don’t you tell him to come on in and rest a spell while we get ready?”
“He’d probably like that,” he said. “I’ll stay with the wagon while he does. Thank you, ma’am. Folks, I’m truly sorry you didn’t get the telegram first. Would have saved the commotion, I believe.”
When he left, Savannah said, “Why wouldn’t he just call his son into the house?”
Peering through the window glass, I watched them exchange places on the wagon seat. I said, “Orders, most likely. Someone watches the coffin at all times until it is delivered.”
The boy who stepped inside was a taller, thinner version of the father. “Pop said you didn’t get the notice. Our apologies, folks,” he said. “Name’s Aubrey Hanna. We’ve brought three men home, and this is the last one. We’ll help with the burying.”
“It’s a fine thing you’re doing, Aubrey,” I said.
Mary Pearl had started for the kitchen when Aubrey came in the door. Savannah saw her, and said, “Mary Pearl, will you please fetch Mr. Hanna some water?”
Mary Pearl’s face grew sullen, like she was feeling pecked at, having to fetch first one thing and another for people. I was about to offer to get it, when we heard a loud crack outside. Albert was out the door in a second, with us on his heels, and there on the porch floor, sprawled and holding his right foot up almost to his chest, was Willie. He was groaning. My porch rail was cracked and splintered, making a big V in the middle.
“That does it,” Albert yelled, swooping at Willie, his arms waving. Well, Albert gave him a tongue-lashing that sent him running, and I might have been worried he’d go on to his Granny’s or Albert’s house and do some damage, but he just went off into the desert.
Clover and Josh were right on Willie’s heels, hollering at him not to go off that way and get lost. Willie took to running, and Clove said, “I’ll trail him a ways back and make sure we don’t have to send out a search party before the funeral.”
Mary Pearl ignored all the fuss; she just took a big tin cup full of water and held it toward Aubrey. I watched something snap between them as loud to me as the breaking of the porch railing had been. That boy Aubrey took the cup and froze solid, staring at Mary Pearl’s face like he’d never seen a girl before. He turned dark red in the neck and ears, then tried to say thank you, but no sound came out. He took a drink from the cup, choked a little, and nearly dropped it.
Mary Pearl herself stiffened up when she saw him blushing. I declare, she all but sneered at the boy. He tried to take another drink, and choked on it, which set him to coughing. I saw her pause at the doorway to the kitchen and turn her head ever so slightly, then keep on going.
Well, there’s no one around that would say Albert and Savannah don’t have a passel of fine-looking girls. Not a one of them, to my mind, is near the beauty Savannah was as a girl, except Mary Pearl. She is the spitting image of Savannah’s sister Ulyssa. Ulyssa was the most beautiful of the four Lawrence girls. Where any one of them was pretty enough, she could have sat for a portrait. Ulyssa was purely lovely, the kind of face only conjured up in poetry and books. Mary Pearl has her outdone.
It appeared that no one else noticed but me. They were all out on the porch by then, fretting over the cracked railing. To me, there was so much going on, what Granny distracted and Willie acting a fool, and the dry lightning coming from Miss Mary Pearl Prine, that I didn’t have any room left to fret over the railing. Aubrey was still trying to drink his water, and he seemed to be having a terrible time with it. At last, he turned it up and drained it. Since I was the only one in the room but him, he said to me, “Thank you, ma’am. Will you thank … her for me, too? Please?”
I nodded.
“Thank you.” He put his hat on his head, and it went on backward, so he had to set it again. He said, “I’d better get going, help Pop take that up to the hill. See if they’ll need help with the digging.” He quit moving again, frozen stiff in the hundred-degree heat. Sweat dripped from his temples, and he mopped it with his forearm.
“Well,” I said, “you go ahead, then. We’ll be along when we’ve changed into proper mourning clothes.”
“Yes, ma’am. You will thank that girl for the water, won’t you?”
“Yes, I will,” I said.
A while later, we gathered around yet another open grave on the rise above my house. This graveyard had a simple beginning long ago. Jimmy Reed was the first one here. I kept the horse that killed him for a couple of years, then sold him in an auction lot. I never would let anyone ride him after that. Albert and Jack and Rudolfo Maldonado fought Apaches right here, along with some men from the Sixth Cavalry. Ever since that time, Albert’s face has sloped a little to one side. Rudolfo’s brother Ruben was killed, and he was buried here. The soldiers that didn’t live through it went in next to Ruben. Now Ernest would lie next to Jimmy, my first husband, who built my house with his own two hands. I remembered watching him work so hard at it, and feeling so excited and proud. I don’t mourn for him much anymore, just a little regret.
Jimmy was the first one here. Jack was the last, until now. We’d had a long respite from grave digging. For that, we could be at least a little thankful. As long as I didn’t look at Jack’s grave, I could get through without crying. If I so much as looked in the direction where he was, I’d not be able to carry on and have it be Ernest’s burial and not Jack’s all over again. One thing I’d learned from all the burying I’d attended was that sometimes it’s hard to pay attention. Burying someone you know will set your mind down some distant trail, as the one you’re really on is too painful to view.
So we all sang “On Jordan’s Stormy Banks,” and we tried to tell ourselves he’s on the other side. I know in time I’ll come to think of him that way, the same as all the others, but that kind of thinking doesn’t come quick. At times, it’s better to think of exactly what is happening right in front of you every second, rather than going through things from the past in your mind. It’s the only way I can keep standing.
Granny stared into the grave, silent and gray-faced. I reckon she was all done with crying. The rest of the family shed some tears, though, even Mr. Hanna, and he asked if he could say a prayer, too. He was real kind about Ernest, and prayed for him to have peace and comfort in the bosom of Abraham. Willie slipped around outside the rest of us, although there was plenty of room for him to stand beside anyone he chose to. He just couldn’t bring himself to stand still and listen. Finally, men got on both sides of the box, holding on to ropes stretched underneath it, and they went to lower it carefully into the grave.
Willie started fidgeting, and pretty soon he was calling out, “No! Don’t put him down there. No, no, no! Don’t bury my pa!” He threw himself down on the pile of dirt and looked over the edge at the top of the coffin. When they started pushing the dirt in, he tried to hold it back, scoop it from the edges with his hands, and keep it from going in. He was hollering and crying just like a little child.
Granny was the one who surprised me then. She went over to Willie and pulled on his sleeve, saying just as loud as she could, “Get up from there. You got no call to go acting a spectacle. Have some respect for your papa, and act like he’d want to see you behave, standing up like a man. Get on up, and stand. I’ll tell you right now that ain’t the worst you’re going to feel, you live long enough. Wipe your clothes off, and do your crying on your feet. It’ll kill you doing this.”
“Leave me alone,” Willie sobbed.
Granny held on to his sleeve. “It’s going to kill you if’n you don’t stand up.”
“I want to die.”
“No, you don’t. You want to live, and that’s why you’re fretting that someone else died. You just better do as I say.” She jerked at his sleeve, and the boy stood.
I t
ook hold of his arm, and for just a second he rested his head on my shoulder, but then something came over him and he pulled away. Willie tumbled down the hill and out through the fence that bounds the graveyard, scuffing his fancy boots, flinging his arms and legs about him, wild, like spokes on a wheel, heading toward my barn.
Well, there hadn’t been enough warning to have the neighbors come in and bring potluck for us, so we pulled together our own funeral supper. Rachel went out to the barn to get Willie, but she said he didn’t want any dinner. The Hannas stayed and ate with us, too. Udell told us more about the war, and what he knew of Ernest’s service before the war, which was all pretty much the same as letters I’d gotten. Granny went to lie down and nap in the bedroom. After awhile, Albert and Savannah left in their buggy.
My sons and Albert’s took the little boys out to play some catch, Chess and Mason took up chairs on the front porch to sleep off their lunch, and the girls went to the back porch, where we had hopsack strung. They went out there to talk about whatever young girls talk about, I suppose. They probably had little feeling for an uncle they didn’t remember ever meeting. I wish April could be here, too.
In the quiet parlor, I pointed to an empty place on the settee, then sat in my rocking chair. I said, “Where are you from, Mr. Hanna, originally? You said you were coming this way—are you here to stay?”
He sat himself down, and Aubrey took a place beside him. He said, “I was born and raised in Wyoming Territory, but I’m tired of the wind and cold and the prairie. One thing I decided when I joined the army was that I was going to find someplace that suited my family better when I got done. Not much luck so far. I didn’t care for the lowlands I came through in the South. Swampland and mosquitoes was most all I saw there. And Texas is, well, Texas. I figure to keep south and cut through the territories, away from where it snows come winter, and if I don’t find a place suitable for ranching, I’ll keep going to California. I’ve been told that south of here, toward Mexico, is some pretty country.”