May the Road Rise Up to Meet You: A Novel (50 page)

So he told Ethan and Marcella over dinner one night. They told him to stay with them, of course. And he felt good that they would make the offer. Like they were his real friends and not just employers. But he had his mind set on a nice room at the boardinghouse in town. Getting as much carpentering work as he could. And Marcella said he should put a small advertisement in
The Freeman’s Journal
. So folks would know what he could do. Only one hitch to that.

All the advertisers have a surname too. She said. Knowing that they’d talked about the very thing some weeks before. And her telling him that it was a thing to take pride in, the chance to decide for himself what he’d be called. Not something to be ashamed of, certainly. Said she’d had her Daddy’s name, then got her husband’s name. Without anybody ever asking her how she felt about it. And he’d often thought about it since then, taking some pride in the chance to choose for himself. Figured that the name he chose would be something from the man he was. And represent the man he was still workin’ on becoming, too.

And so he smiled at Marcella and Ethan to let them know he’d figured it out.

Well, I was figurin’ on doin’ that very thing, puttin’ a notice in the newspaper, he said.

Is that right? Marcella asked. And did you choose a surname?

Mmm-hmm. He said. Waited a second for effect. I like the sound of Micah Plowshare.

And from the looks on their faces he could see that his friends did too.

In the weeks that followed, Micah Plowshare would stop by most days to help out with little patching-up jobs around their house. After he was done with whatever chicken coop or hayloft or stable door he’d worked on someplace else. He’d finish those jobs as fast as he could. Always with the usual quality though. And then he’d pass by their house, just outside the main part of town. Maybe say that he’d noticed last time he was there that the back-door steps needed some mending. Or the stable stalls, even though there weren’t any horses inside them.
And he’d fix it with Ethan, talking about the books Ethan had given him to read.

Marcella would always insist that he stay for supper. Her cooking wasn’t improving as fast as Ethan’s carpentering, but Micah enjoyed the company a great deal. Two three four times a week, Micah’d come by. Just like that. Through the rest of October. Always with his tools at first, ’til Marcella told him that if he insisted on doing all this work they’d have to start paying him again. Said she knew her cooking wasn’t much in the way of compensation. And Ethan was quick to agree with that, then got himself slapped on the shoulder with an oven mitten. And all three of them smiled.

So that started a regular thing of Micah going to their house for supper a few times a week. Sometimes they’d have other folks over too. The Stimsons mostly. And he’d listen to Marcella speak her mind like no woman he’d ever met, even more than Olivia. On abolition. Women’s rights. Or just the proper way to set the dinner table. Didn’t matter, she had an opinion on all of it and wasn’t shy to speak it. And then Ethan might argue a little, or make a joke. And she’d come right back at him. And it reminded him of what he and Mary had back in Richmond. The playfulness Mary liked so much, and he did too. ’Cause it had made him playful for the first time since he was a little boy. Or maybe ever.

And at night back at the boardinghouse. When he wasn’t reading to keep his mind from such things. His thoughts would drift south, to Richmond or Charleston or wherever it was his Daddy had ended up. Only different now from the mournful nights along the Blue Ridge. Not all alone like he was then. Not a mule either. A free man. Mister Micah Plowshare, carpenter.

Da had been the one to suggest it to Mrs. Harrison, and it seemed strange indeed for him to say such a thing, and even stranger for him to
volunteer himself to come along with Ethan. But there was no refusing, not when Ethan heard how Harry’s mother had lit up at the idea of it, and not when his Da seemed so anxious to come along.

Ethan had received Da’s letter just a week earlier saying how Mrs. Harrison would come to visit far more than she used to and they could hear the sadness in her voice. And it was never sadder than when she mentioned the dedication of the Gettysburg cemetery that was soon to take place, and her far too old and with the bad feet and all, unable to see such a thing, to see where her only boy would be buried. And Ethan could hardly refuse Da’s offer to go in her place. Besides, Marcella wanted to tell them the news in person, of her being
in a family way
, as she figured Mam and Aunt Em would want to hear it.

So she’s in Brooklyn while Ethan and his Da are both here for a day that seems to be turning into far more than a simple dedication of a battlefield cemetery. They’d arrived the day before, and that was when Ethan took the pictures of Harry’s tiny tombstone, smaller even than the one Aislinn had and laid flat on the ground just like hers, though it was hard to hold such a thing against the government, considering how many there were of them to be made. And then he’d taken several more of the view in every direction, knowing Mrs. Harrison would want to know what her only child would have to look at for as long as it took him to get to the Ever After.

That night they’d had to travel twenty miles out of town, back toward New York, just to find a hotel room for themselves. Ethan’d suggested that they just stay on the train and go all the way back home that night, but Da wouldn’t hear of it. And then there was this morning, with masses of people packed onto every railcar, and this tiny farming town overrun for the second time since July. The President will be in attendance, and Ethan tells his Da to go and watch the parade without him since he’d like to set his camera up by the podium where he’ll soon address the crowd. After all, he’d met the man those years before, but still has no picture of him.

As the parade begins to close in on the cemetery, he can see another photographer setting up more than thirty feet away, back behind the crowd quickly swelling into the thousands. There’s no sign of Da amidst such a throng, and he smiles to think he’s lost his assistant after all.
When the ceremony finally begins, it moves with all the haste of the Army of the Potomac approaching Richmond, which is to say, it hardly moves at all.

There are songs from the band and greetings from the master of ceremonies, and an invocation, and more songs, and then the featured speaker, Edward Everett, who trudges on for nearly two hours, pressing patience to its limits, until at least half of the vast crowd dissipates into the surrounding areas while he’s still speaking. Da manages to slip his way up to the front beside Ethan, and they roll their eyes at each other every time it appears Mr. Everett is about to wrap up but then is moved to further eloquence.

Until at last he’s done and the band does what it can to stir some life back into the survivors. The President’s introduced, and the crowd offers enthusiastic applause as he walks to the front of the platform and begins to speak in a voice still familiar to Ethan from a few years before at Cooper Union, but firmer now, deeper, with the resonance of all that he, and the Nation, have endured.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal …

Ethan can tell right off that this is a speech destined for far greater things than Mr. Everett could hope to achieve, and he’s mesmerized by the poetry Mr. Lincoln, President Lincoln, has added to his searing prose of nearly four years ago. And he freezes for a moment, not a photographer, just an admirer, as he was back at Cooper Union.

But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract
.

And in the midst of these dignified words, it takes his Da to rally Ethan from his stupor, handing him a glass-plate negative from the satchel. After a few seconds to get the camera ready and the lens focused, Ethan takes the picture, just as the President looks out over the crowd, as if beseeching them to something more than just the rah-rah of a fine band and a blustery speaker.

 … that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth
.

The crowd pauses, perhaps surprised that this speech of less than three minutes is all the answer the President has to the two hours that preceded it. When they do break into applause, it’s first as if they’re expressing their relief for his brevity, but it builds in a steady crescendo, becoming jubilation, as they begin to understand just how good it was.

The band begins to play again, and then there’s closing remarks and a prayer and more music, but for Ethan there is one line from Mr. Lincoln’s speech that reverberates through his guilty thoughts, until it grows into a haunting.

It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they have thus far so nobly advanced
.

The crowd soon disperses in every direction, some to tour the battlefield, some back into town following the President to the rail station. But Ethan and his Da stay there for many minutes more, his Da listening to one of the militia guards describe how the battle proceeded. The way the man speaks to his small admiring audience, Ethan knows he’s either a General or wasn’t anywhere near the damn battlefield. And when one of the young boys listening asks where he was stationed during the battle, Ethan’s suspicions are confirmed.

Over in that direction, the militia guard says.

On Little Round Top? the boy asks.

No … not quite there—back behind the ridge … guarding the supply lines.

Ethan shakes his head, then smiles to think of what Harry might’ve had to say at such a moment. And then he’s reminded of the four of them, once together, with only himself and Smitty left now, and Smitty minus an arm, and he feels ashamed to think that he’s been the one to come through it with just what lingers of a hitch in his step and a shoulder that sometimes tells him a few hours ahead of time when it will rain. And the haunting of Lincoln’s words, to serve as judge and jury … 
to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they have thus far so nobly advanced …
’til he begins to think that there’s still more he could do, supply lines he could guard or caissons he could drive or … even bedpans to empty and stretchers to carry … 
the unfinished work
 … 
the unfinished work …

And every manner of foolishness drifts through his embattled
mind until Da comes up beside him unseen, wrapping an arm around Ethan’s shoulders and pulling him tight to him for a moment.

What you lads went t’rough, he says, shaking his head. I thank th’Lahrd for sparin’ ya, son. Sure I do … now more than ever … and I will for all my days remainin’. But now let’s go home, lad. You’ve done enough.

IN THE DARKROOM AT THE
back of Mr. Hadley’s studio the next afternoon, Ethan develops the glass negatives as methodically as ever, making large imprints of Harry’s tombstone, and a panoramic collage of the view all around it, seamlessly pressing the landscape photos one beside the other, and Harry’s stone beneath them, until the picture is nearly three feet long side to side and two feet high, and creates the effect of actually being there on the hill outside of Gettysburg in a way that only a true artist and master craftsman could elicit from the limits of two dimensions. He stands a few feet away from the great drying image before him, and allows himself just a hint of a smile, thinking that this will be a fitting tribute to his great friend and, somehow, to all the lads as well.

Then there is the final picture he took, the one of Lincoln, and he holds the undeveloped negative between his fingers for several long moments, pondering what best to do with it. But the words do not haunt him as they did just the day before, and he smiles with greater satisfaction than he’d even allowed himself at the sight of the masterpiece he’d just created. Carefully, he slides the plate back into its thick cotton sleeve, to be stored away with all the other negatives that actually became pictures. And he allows himself to believe, at long last, that maybe he
has
done enough.

And sure isn’t there plenty of other unfinished work that needs lookin’ after …

For the longest time you thought you would’ve been better off to have married as an orphan. Surely there wasn’t anything in your heritage,
nothing tangible to the living, to represent you in any sort of presentable way to your in-laws. Even Abuela could hardly redeem your family line, since she had admittedly come to her senses only in her fading years, and even then only after a lifetime of submission—and luxury. What manner of woman was she, or Mrs. Carlisle even, compared to a mother-in-law and her sister who were veritable mountains of fortitude in comparison? And still they had accepted you, willing somehow to overlook such a blemished family line as if they believed you were still salvageable.

You knew there had been times when Miguel and Bartolomé accosted Seanny when they saw him on Wall Street, always asking after you but then turning quickly to business before Seanny could even answer them. You had only learned anything about these meetings when you overheard a Christmastime conversation between Ethan and his brother, with Seanny confessing,
“I don’t know what to tell’m, Ethan. None of the men I work wit’ trust that man or his sons.”
And later,
“I told’m Marcella was expectin’ and they didn’t so much as bat an eye, just asked whether I knew anything about the contracts on the Navy Yard.”

A week after that you received a response to your Christmas letter to your mother, mentioning only that it would be a fitting tribute to name the child, if it was a boy, after Papa.
“Maybe then he will be happy to receive you here again,”
your mother wrote, and then spent two more pages talking about Pilar’s upcoming wedding. You had often heard Ethan’s Mam talk about how protective she was of her children, and you realized that day that you would have to protect this child from your family, quarantining them as best you could like the deadly fever they would surely be. And all it took was to simply stop trying to include them in your life.