Mankillers

Before Ruth could answer she heard a heavy knock on the outside door. A moment later, the black man appeared. “Mr. Jeffcoat, sir, Mr. and Mrs. Grayson have arrived.”

“Show them in. At once.”

Dolfus didn’t get a chance. A short, plump woman in a black taffeta hoop dress, bustled around him and marched directly to the women. She extended gloved hands to Ruth and Sarah. “Oh, my dear Ruth. Mr. Jeffcoat’s informed me of your loss. I’m so dreadfully sorry. These difficult times. . . . All our losses—” She stopped, brooded for a moment, then recovered her resolve. “But you’re among friends now. I’ll see to it that everything that can be done will be. Oh, this is so terrible, so tragic.”

She turned abruptly to her husband. “Augustus, Ruth and her daughter are our house guests and will be sitting Shiva with us.” She sighed. “We remain a house in mourning. So much mourning.”

Only then did she acknowledge Buck’s presence. “Elijah.” She wrapped her arms around his waist and rested her cheek gently against his chest. Then, with a final squeeze, she pulled away. “I’m sorry we can’t offer you the hospitality of our home right now.” She bit her lip and her eyes brimmed. “But you’re back. Thank God for that. If only Harry and Bert were here too.” She wiped a tear from her cheek.

“Miriam,” her husband whispered, “don’t—”

“I’m going to have Janey clear out Bert and Harry’s rooms. Our guests will stay there,” she declared uncompromisingly.

“Honey, are you sure?”

She fluttered her hand. “Ruth and Sarah will remain with us for as long as they wish.”

“Yes, my dear.” He nodded and for a moment his dark eyes became glassy, before he too bolstered himself. “I’ll walk Buck over to the Sand Hills Hotel and see to it he’s given their best accommodations. By the time I return Rabbi Mendelssohn should be here and you can complete the necessary arrangements for tomorrow.”

“The surrey and the mare,” Buck remarked, “belong to the stagecoach company, but the gelding’s mine.”

“Put your mind at ease, doctor,” Jeffcoat interceded. “I’ll see to it they’re delivered to the hotel livery as soon as possible and arrangements made for their proper care.”

Buck stood and turned to Miriam. “Please ask your family physician to examine Sarah’s wound as soon as possible and redress it.” Without thinking of the propriety of his action, he took Sarah’s hand and gently caressed it. “I’ll see you and your mother tomorrow. Rest well.”

While the banker was giving his carriage driver instructions to wait for the ladies, Buck sized up his old friend. Augustus Grayson was clean shaven, dressed in obviously expensive but worn clothes, and still athletically fit. The fifty-year-old’s sole concession to the passage of time seemed to be the silvering of his hair and the crow’s feet at the corners of his hazel eyes.

“God, it’s good to see you, Gus,” Buck said as they proceeded down the street on foot. “But once again, I seem to be bringing a world of trouble.”

“You’re home. That’s all that matters now.”

Buck had to struggle to keep up with the banker’s rapid pace as they marched toward the hotel. At the corner where only chimneys of houses remained, they turned to the right.

“Gus, you’re as fit as ever. How do you do it?”

“Well, I still walk to and from work every day, weather permitting. Miriam limits me to two cigars a day if I have any, out of her presence, and she watches what I eat like a hawk. Of course, as she’s fond of pointing out, that isn’t much because I usually have my foot in my mouth.” He chuckled. “Lord I love that woman.”

He slowed his stride when they approached a large brick-built two-story house. At first glance it appeared undamaged. As they passed by, however, Buck realized it was no more than an empty burned-out shell.

“The Wilson place.” Gus shook his head. “Good friends. All died in the fire. So many deaths.”

Buck couldn’t hold back any longer the question he’d dreaded asking. “What happened to Bert and Harry, Gus?” It was clear to him they were dead.

His friend continued on several more paces before answering. “Franklin. Te

“God damn this war.” Buck’s jaw tightened. He knew what each size of munitions could do to the human body, from the ragged tears of the minie-ball to the multiple punctures of the Gatling gun to total destruction by mortars and ca

“I’m sorry, Gus, for them, and for you. Bert and Harry were good men who did you and Miriam great credit. They were honorable men and devoted sons. My family and I adored them.”

They were also a study in physical contrasts, Buck reflected, one short and stocky, the other tall and lanky, with complimentary senses of humor. How they loved to laugh and play off each other, so full of life. It was difficult for Buck to imagine them being gone.

“Miriam wanted to visit their graves,” Gus said after they’d continued on for another devastated block. “I had to tell her there weren’t any. For a while I thought she’d never speak again, then she threw herself into her causes and educating her maid Janey. Slowly that good woman came back to me.”

“And now I bring you more sorrow.”

“It’ll never end, Buck. But as Miriam would say, the world, which was made for us, abides; but we, for whom it was made, depart. Sometimes it seems to me, though, we’ll be in mourning for the rest of our lives. All Miriam and I . . . All any of us can do now is hold on to each other.”

They walked on side by side for another half block, before Gus commented, “My boys were fighting for state rights, you know, not slavery.”

It was hairsplitting, Buck had long realized. The state rights they were fighting for was the right to own slaves.

“I think you’re aware of my feelings about the peculiar institution,” he reminded his friend, “and the rift it caused between my father and me.”

“You’d be surprised how many families around here were split over it, but it was a matter of economics. It bothered me to have to lend money to plantation owners to buy slaves or to accept the cash value of their slaves as collateral for loans. Here I was supporting an institution I detested by day and helping undermine it by night.”

“Undermine it? What do you mean?”

Gus paused a moment, then on a deep breath said, “At last I can tell you, but I do so in the strictest confidence, Buck, for there’re people who would happily wreak their vengeance on us if they knew.” He paused again. “For years Miriam and I have been active conductors on the so-called Underground Railroad.”

Buck stopped short, aware his mouth was hanging open but unable to close it. “You were aiding runaway slaves?”

“So they could get to Canada or other safe havens.”

“My God, Gus. You could have been shot if you were caught. And Miriam.”

“It was a chance we had to take. Slavery is . . . was wrong. Owning people the way one owns a dog or a horse is immoral, not to mention the way some of them were treated.”

“By white trash like Saul Snead,” Buck offered belligerently.

“He was as bad as any of them, worse,” Gus agreed.

Buck shook his head. “In these past war years I thought I’d seen the bravest of the brave, but you two top ‘em all.”