The wagon lurched and leaned up the crooked road to the dry bluffs. There, on ground of splintered shale and rust-colored lichen, where bull thistle twisted between the cracks of the earth, lay the disused home of Wallace Whitton\u2019s father. Wallace, atop the wagon with reins in hand, smiled at his son and motioned to the firepit-gray ocean, where he hoped the boy might wish to play. He tried to seem sincere in his enthusiasm, but gained no like response. The boy stared ahead and drummed his thin fingers in an intricate rhythm upon the wagon\u2019s rails.<\/p>\n
When they stopped before the home, Wallace kept his watery smile in place. Their former guest house had been more expansive than this, and in far better repair. He hoped his son couldn\u2019t read his disappointment, but the boy had seen so much. How could he know one truth and not grasp another?<\/p>\n
The son touched at his fingertips. Each looked as if it had been dipped into a rhubarb pandowdy. <\/p>\n
Wallace caught the boy\u2019s hands and held them tight. \u201cYou mustn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n
The boy watched the sky, its clouds smeared over an expanse as pale as memory.<\/p>\n
\u201cDo you hear?\u201d Wallace asked.<\/p>\n
The boy answered that he did.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur things are inside. Go and see.\u201d<\/p>\n
The boy climbed down from the wagon and made his way into the house. The dismal structure was all that remained of the Whitton fortune, enduring only because it had lain outside the field of battle. If only they had all been so blessed. Viridis<\/em>, the former Savannah vineyard, had been smashed, stolen, and eaten by Grant and his Hessians. While the rumble of their march faded to the south, Wallace Whitton had knelt amongst the ruins and, with his own cultured hands, dug through the cinders of his past, the cooling ashes of his family\u2019s legacy, to grasp Nettie\u2019s unanswering fingers.<\/p>\n As Wallace hefted their last load of belongings to the ground, a plinked melody of single keys struck by a single finger sounded from the house\u2019s corner room. The boy had found it. Wallace headed inside to bandage his boy\u2019s fingers before they stained the ivory. The months passed in a drab haze of impressions, each forcibly inserting itself between Wallace and what his life had been. He spent the day watching the sea and imagined Nettie reaching up from its murk. He\u2019d pull her to safety and she\u2019d smile. Her sockets weren\u2019t yawning wide and vacant; her teeth weren\u2019t blackened behind shriveled lips. Some days the boy joined him and they strolled the wet-pressed sand hemming the water\u2019s edge, but Wallace couldn\u2019t guess where his son\u2019s young thoughts wandered.<\/p>\n On a late day in March the school master arrived and tried to persuade Wallace to do the proper thing. <\/p>\n \u201cHonor his mind,\u201d the man intoned in a deep contrabasso.<\/p>\n Wallace frowned at the way the school master\u2019s beard jutted over his barrel-framed torso. He thought of boots falling like a thousand-fold hammers, the head of each poised over a coffin nail. <\/p>\n \u201cYou are a learned man yourself, yes?\u201d the school master asked.<\/p>\n \u201cNo,\u201d Wallace said. The school master seemed taken aback. \u201cI know nothing of the world.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDo not limit your young Ernest\u2019s possibilities.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhich you presume to know?\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cA proper education will\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n Wallace set a hand on the school master\u2019s shoulder. \u201cCome and listen.\u201d He led him inside.<\/p>\n An hour later the school master exited the house. His lips trembled as he climbed back up onto his gig. He eyed the studio window where he knew the boy to be, drew in sharply, and snapped the reins. He never returned.<\/p>\n Wallace watched the polished carriage until it reached the distant rise and winked away like a dying ember. He turned to the house, its every window open. Worn linen drapery caught the eastern breeze in tabbying flutters. <\/p>\n \u201cLoose him, and let him go,\u201d Wallace muttered.<\/p>\n The scullery maid had abandoned them last week. She\u2019d learned to avoid the boy\u2019s studio, especially when the lad played, but that only delayed the inevitable. There had been too many touches and pinches and whispered promises from empty rooms. On her final day, Wallace had rescued the poor girl from the larder in a state of disarray and abject panic. She offered no thanks, but had slapped Wallace hard\u2014a stinging blow that set his ears to ringing. <\/p>\n Wallace touched his cheek again. His wife had been the last to strike him. He\u2019d been carousing with the hired hands after an unusually bountiful harvest had been pulled scant days before an early frost. He\u2019d do anything to have her strike him again.<\/p>\n The windows closed, all of them at once. The whole house blinked.<\/p>\n In the studio, Wallace pushed back deep into the couch cushions and allowed himself to drift. The boy\u2019s music had progressed from motifs to melodies to grand soundscapes. His fingers had caught up with his ambitions, perhaps\u2014they seemed not to be lacking. Wallace relaxed and tried to ignore cool draughts that came and went without cause. The chairs had pulled away from the walls again and circled about the boy at a polite distance.<\/p>\n \u201cErnest,\u201d Wallace said. \u201cCan you play something\u2014more\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n The boy pulled his hands away from the keys and rested them in his lap. He kept his back to his father.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat I mean to ask is, my boy, can you craft something bright? Something cheery? Remember when the four of us picnicked upon the high hill?\u201d<\/p>\n The boy did remember, but was his father certain he wished to hear?<\/p>\n \u201cWithout a doubt,\u201d Wallace said.<\/p>\n The boy\u2019s fingers again fell to the keys, building impressions around a shifting theme. Swells of melody counterpointed a sublime accompaniment. The music rose and fell. It flowed as speech and whispered like the wind. <\/p>\n Wallace saw that day clear before him. He felt the family\u2019s measured pace over a wildflower hillside and tasted air sweetened with aster and hop clover. The blanket, held at a corner by each one of them, was laid under the bough of a wide magnolia. As he and Nettie reclined near one another, Ernest and Franklin explored a nearby stream. Wallace felt the mist of rippling eddies, slickened stones, and a yielding carpet of moss. It was as if he were with the boys at the waters.<\/p>\n \u201cHave you ever thought of our having a daughter?\u201d Nettie asked.<\/p>\n Wallace chuckled as Ernest slipped from a stone and soaked his leg up to the shin. \u201cHave you?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n \u201cSometimes.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAnd what do you see?\u201d <\/p>\n Wallace idly wondered how the boy had heard the conversation.<\/p>\n \u201cShe\u2019d have your hair,\u201d Nettie said. \u201cCurling and the color of molasses.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt hardly curls.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAnd my smarts.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIs that so?\u201d<\/p>\n Nettie laughed. \u201cI\u2019d teach her to be a proper lady.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAre you implying I\u2019ve faltered with\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOf course not. I\u2019d make her dresses.\u201d Nettie rested her head on Wallace\u2019s shoulder. \u201cDresses of violet and buttermilk yellow with pearl buttons.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou can bury her in them.\u201d<\/p>\n Wallace seized at the voice, not his own. The music\u2019s memory didn\u2019t lie. It came from right nearby. It had been a breeze before, a susurration easily ignored, yet the keys gave it voice.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd if it\u2019s a boy?\u201d Wallace asked.<\/p>\n \u201cAnother?\u201d Nettie lifted her head and pressed her mouth close to his. \u201cShe won\u2019t be.\u201d <\/p>\n He held his palm to her cheek. She closed her eyes and her lips parted. She kissed the sole of a desiccated foot. A series of diminished arpeggios raced up the bare leg to the bloodied and beaten body of the stripped negro hanging above them, his noosed neck snapped clean through.<\/p>\n \u201cBe down in the ground, soon \u2018nough,\u201d he whispered. He spun slowly with the wind. He never quit weeping. Tears dripped from the tip of his nose. \u201cAin\u2019t worth the bother.\u201d<\/p>\n Wallace found himself at his boy\u2019s side. He yanked the boy\u2019s hands from the keys. \u201cStop it!\u201d<\/p>\n The boy blinked rapidly and made to turn back to the keyboard.<\/p>\n \u201cHow dare you lie! On her<\/em> memory of all\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n The boy interrupted.<\/p>\n \u201cNo,\u201d Wallace said. \u201cThere was nothing. There was\u2014\u201d <\/p>\n The bough, as thick as a man\u2019s waist, had been worn smooth at a convenient spot, at a lethal height. The boy had seen it when they arrived\u2014Wallace had too, but had forced the fact away.<\/p>\n From the darkness of the studio came a low growl. Shadows shifted and the air drew close, as if Wallace were standing in a very small space. A sigh of floorboards issued from the left, the right. <\/p>\n \u201cPlay,\u201d Wallace whispered. \u201cIf it keeps the Devil at bay, then play to the end.\u201d<\/p>\n The music started again, spilling forth the runaway\u2019s prophecies in forbidden chordings. They foretold the elder brother\u2019s demise at his first battle. He would lay weeping in the mud, his body curled and fetal. As a cavalry charge churned his blood and bile into the earth, he cursed his father\u2019s name. Later, the mother would plead with men who slouched in blue uniforms. She was with child, she cried, but the soldiers, drunk on Wallace\u2019s own label, didn\u2019t let that hamper them. In a fit of shame at himself and his remaining son, the father would grasp a blade, the saber of his fallen eldest, and hold it to his own throat. <\/p>\n \u201cI hate this world,\u201d Wallace said. The music yielded to his words. His each syllable fell lyrically with the meter, as if the song had been written with his interjection in mind. \u201cNow I have nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n From the darkness, a chorus hummed the tale of their own demise, cheated out of living.<\/p>\n \u201cA pistolshot to the brain isn\u2019t enough for a despot!\u201d Wallace cried. He spun to all sides. Their cold gaze was upon him, he knew. \u201cThey should all burn for what they\u2019ve done. If there were any justice, if Providence smiled upon its children, they would be made to suffer as I have. As we have!\u201d<\/p>\n Wallace fell to the floor and sobbed. The music went on, pulsing with each inhale, metronomed to his heartbeat. The song of his failings would never end. <\/p>\n Cold hands tucked themselves around him and bore him to his feet. The others had heard the ballad of his past. They understood his earlier intrusion and, as brothers, they forgave. Wallace sagged forward but didn\u2019t fall. As they dragged him toward his bedroom, his feet trailed loose over the dusty floor. <\/p>\n The next season arrived and Wallace sat slumped and ragged on the south edge of the porch. He watched his boy down by the waters, playing his tiny drum and marching up and down the beach. Wallace hadn\u2019t wanted to return the instrument to him, but too much was in motion. At this point he wasn\u2019t sure he could say no. It had been difficult to coax the lad away from the house, but the boy relented when Wallace explained the reasoning. The boy\u2019s audience went with him.<\/p>\n \u201cMistuh Whitton?\u201d<\/p>\n Wallace looked up at the piano tuner, a slight man with a feminine face, one whose youth was beginning to seep into crinkled corners. The tuner leaned in the doorway and folded a long strip of felt into pleats. He placed it in a leather pouch. The tuning wrenches holstered along his belt jangled lightly.<\/p>\n \u201cAre you done?\u201d Wallace asked.<\/p>\n \u201cYeah. Fine instrument.\u201d<\/p>\n Wallace nodded and turned back to the shore.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019cha boy?\u201d the tuner asked.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s my youngest.\u201d<\/p>\n Luckily the wind carried the beat of the boy\u2019s drum away. There was no telling what it could possess a man to do.<\/p>\n \u201cSaw some of his scribblins upon the music stand,\u201d the tuner said. \u201cQuite remarkable.\u201d<\/p>\n Wallace didn\u2019t answer.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a long ride,\u201d the tuner said, \u201cand I was wonderin\u2019. I won\u2019t reach home \u2018fore nightfall, but it would be worth it to me, I think, if you\u2019d call him up to play.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cTrust me. You don\u2019t want to hear.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOh, but I do!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI sincerely doubt that.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not meant in jest, suh. I\u2019ve heard things concernin\u2019 him.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAnd what have<\/em> you heard, pray tell?\u201d Wallace glared sideways at the man.<\/p>\n The tuner rubbed at his fingers. He came close to Wallace and sat. \u201cHe paints with sound. He\u2019s a genius, they say.\u201d<\/p>\n Wallace scoffed. He thought of all the potential gossips who\u2019d visited the home\u2014the school master, the one-time maid, the delivery boys. The minister had come by once. That hadn\u2019t gone well.<\/p>\n \u201cI meant it as a healing tool,\u201d Wallace said. \u201cErnest always loved music.\u201d He scowled at the distant beach. \u201cI didn\u2019t think it would lead here. I thought it would help him to . . . forget things.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHow long\u2019s he been playing?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAlmost a year.\u201d<\/p>\n Down at the shore, the sand kicked up in a mile-long swath and the waters churned. One would think it to be an insistent gust from the sea, but Wallace knew that wasn\u2019t the case. The air along the waters buzzed like a ball of hornets, but not on account of the weather. How many were there? Fifty abreast, sixty? How far back did they go? Wallace mentally tallied columns.<\/p>\n \u201cRemarkable suh,\u201d the tuner said. \u201cSelf-taught, they say.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYes. He learned at the Battle of Manassas,\u201d Wallace said. \u201cHe saw and he heard and it changed him forever.\u201d<\/p>\n The tuner fiddled with his pipe. \u201cI don\u2019t follow.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMy eldest, Franklin, joined Stonewall\u2019s forces. He took Ernest with him, so that they could both revel in glory.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBit young.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cYes, and done without my approval, mind you. Though I blame myself for encouraging him, both of them really. I say things sometimes I shouldn\u2019t. My wife, she used to scold me.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSure \u2018nough. Bet he was good though.\u201d The tuner gave his pipe a few strong puffs, working up a thick cloud.<\/p>\n \u201cHe kept their attention.\u201d<\/p>\n The boy had sent the men into a frenzy. He struck out rhythms that drove them mad, turned the most sheepish into demons. It was his hand that guided each blade, his finger that pulled each trigger. By proxy, he had slain a thousand.<\/p>\n Wallace watched the beach. The waves washed the footprints away, but they reformed the moment the waters receded. He hoped the tuner hadn\u2019t noticed that fact. <\/p>\n \u201cAfter Manassas, the brass never allowed him back on the field of battle,\u201d Wallace said. \u201cI\u2019m not sure, but I think they feared him.\u201d<\/p>\n The tuner let the conversation wilt away. Perhaps he found it too much of a struggle to maintain his part in such an odd discourse.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re not gonna let him play for me, are ya?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNo. I like you. I want you to come back for the next time. You\u2019re Cajun?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cA touch. Transplanted from Baton Rouge, after.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI thought so. I left your payment on the front table along with a thank you Ernest wrote for you. A short sonatina, I believe. I told him to keep it light.\u201d<\/p>\n The tuner\u2019s eyes lit up. \u201cThank you, suh.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cLight, I told him. If it seems off-key, you should burn it.\u201d<\/p>\n The tuner slipped his tools back in his saddlebags and carefully laid the gifted pages within. With a farewell tip of his hat, he took his horse up the north road at an easy pace. Wallace felt a pang of regret. He hadn\u2019t considered sympathetic bystanders, but then again, neither had innocence shielded his own family.<\/p>\n The months of music had trained Wallace\u2019s eyes as well as his ears. If he ever again approached that lone magnolia on the hill, he would see its forgotten occupant. He\u2019d notice that forever twisting body the same way he spied the reconnoitering troops hustling past the tuner\u2019s mount, the same way he heard the stamp and press of the furious masses climbing the far bluff, each soul brimming with a shared rage for that which they\u2019d lost.<\/p>\n The boy stood before the porch with his drum slung over one shoulder and lashed around his waist. Wallace had tried to talk him out of this and promised to have the piano tuned\u2014a loose bribe to keep the boy here\u2014but knew it wouldn\u2019t work. He could say that he\u2019d tried, though he\u2019d never meant to succeed.<\/p>\n \u201cErnest.\u201d Wallace placed a hand on the boy\u2019s shoulder. <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s for Ma and Frankie and everyone else.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cFor us,\u201d Wallace said.<\/p>\n \u201cEspecially for us.\u201d<\/p>\n Wallace\u2019s eyes brimmed with tears. A part of his youngest had been lost with the oldest. Wallace needed to listen to the dead to hear him clearly. This young boy with ancient eyes echoed Wallace\u2019s own thoughts, yet once this was put into motion Wallace had no idea how it could be stopped. <\/p>\n \u201cCome back to me,\u201d Wallace said. \u201cIf I lose another\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNaught shall touch me.\u201d <\/p>\n As if in response, the double phalanx of spirits about the boy glowered out of the ether. The air burned like salt in a wound. Wallace knew they offered only the merest taste. Their true power would blister a body into paste. <\/p>\n \u201cFollow the beach for the entire night,\u201d Wallace said. \u201cTurn in at Herring Bay and you\u2019ll reach Annapolis by this time tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re behind enemy lines. My scouts will guide me.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYes, they will at that.\u201d<\/p>\n The boy turned to his troops. He sounded a long roll upon his drum and ended with a snap. Wallace found himself sitting ramrod straight. The call couldn\u2019t be resisted.<\/p>\n The boy, conductor and general, cried out, \u201cThe South shall rise again!\u201d<\/p>\n A half-million boots cracked heel to heel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The wagon lurched and leaned up the crooked road to the dry bluffs. There, on ground of splintered shale and rust-colored lichen, where bull thistle twisted between the cracks of the earth, lay the disused home of Wallace Whitton\u2019s father. Wallace, atop the wagon with reins in hand, smiled at his son and motioned to …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15501,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,1411],"tags":[1412],"class_list":["post-43117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-tcl-18-winter-2016","tag-the-colored-lens-18-winter-2016","entry entry-center"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/15501"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43117"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43117\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":139544,"href":"http:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43117\/revisions\/139544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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