Читать книгу THE BETTER PART OF VALOR - Morgan Mackinnon - Страница 29

Chapter 22

Fairfax, VA

After the initial couple of days, Cresta was sure Keogh was comfortable enough around her home to start encouraging him to hit the books in her library. He was astonished at the history that had taken place in the space of just 127 years. Technology had grown by leaps and bounds, a proliferation of highways and automobiles, two wars involving the entire world. Cresta didn’t really want to start him off with what was basically his death sentence, so working him gradually forward from 1860 into the present, less the Indian Wars, would make more sense. She knew he’d been involved with much of the Civil War, so she recommended he begin there.

Cresta didn’t have a lot of books on the Civil War and the ones she did have were pretty much outlines of the basic battles and time points. She knew Keogh would want information about what history had made of him, so she ordered specific titles to do with Generals Buford, Stoneman, Shields, and McClellan, for Keogh had served with all of them as a staff officer and aide-de-camp. There were also a few biographies of him, which she withheld for they mentioned his death, and she didn’t want him knowing anything about that for now.

There was enough information on Myles Keogh to be referenced in the Civil War to keep him busy—he found it to be unbelievable on one hand and terribly flattering on the other. History thought enough of Myles Keogh the Soldier to have recorded some of his deeds and that was more than he could have hoped for. Cresta could see his chest swelling with pride when he read the praise-filled reviews from his superior officers, saying he was the most promising young officer in the war, he had dash and bravery, and that he was very gallant and efficient. His fast rise to Lieutenant Colonel was practically unequalled except for the rising star of Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer. In fact, Keogh immersed himself in the Civil War volumes to the exclusion of all else for several days. Cresta finally took to bringing him meals in the library/office and hoped he’d have the good sense to go to the bathroom when nature called. She also decided Keogh needed some distraction, so she introduced him to leggings.

Tuesday morning, Cresta came downstairs dressed, not in a suit or in trousers (which he considered “bad enough”); she had on navy blue leggings and a long-sleeved T-shirt proclaiming Battle of Cold Harbor, May 31–June 12, 1864, Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant. Keogh stared.

“What…but…why…you are dressed most immodestly. If I may be so bold. What is the attire you have on, and is this standard for this time? Cold Harbor? People make these shirts to remember battles? I do not understand.”

“Got your attention. You need a break from all your reading. I thought perhaps showing what the current female casual looks like would do the trick. You find it indecent? Because the leggings are too revealing, right?”

Keogh didn’t know what to say. It was like a lady being naked with blue skin. And this was the fashion? He studied Missus Leigh critically and, since he was not in a position to order her to change, decided perhaps he should just enjoy the view. If she were his wife, things would be different, and she would accept his instructions to put on something less revealing.

Having caught his attention, Cresta insisted it was time for him to take a break. Take a shower, get some sleep, go out for a meal. There were so many “first experiences” for him. Pizza—he liked pepperoni and sausage but not anchovy. Mexican food—the tacos were his favorite, although he was also fond of enchiladas and chimichangas. Strangely, given what he’d sometimes eaten during the Civil War, he didn’t care for sushi. He felt that as he was now in the present, his meals should be cooked. Cresta also smiled to herself when she noticed he was beginning to order his steaks medium rather than rare.

“Cresta? Have I told you about hardtack?”

When she shook her head, he elaborated that hardtack was fashioned out of flour and water and then baked at least twice until it was hard as stone. It would last for months so long as it didn’t get wet. Biting into hardtack was like trying to chew rock, so most soldiers tried to soften it in water or coffee before putting it in their mouths and swallowing. She laughed when he told her hardtack also contained its share of protein in the form of bugs and worms, and the men joked when they tried to throw it away, it sometimes slithered back to them.

In addition to hardtack, there was beef jerky and bacon; outside occasional fresh beef and whatever they could hunt, meals were basic and designed simply to keep a soldier’s belly full and him on his feet.

“I was captured near Macon, Georgia, with General Stoneman. He was a fine General, and I respected him very much. We had been fighting and trying to destroy the Confederate rail lines near Macon, when we learned there were many Union prisoners being held at Macon and at Andersonville. General Stoneman said we would try to liberate them if we could. We were surprised by a large contingency of Confederates and trapped. The General said he would hold the line as long as he could and those companies who wanted to try and escape could make the attempt. Most of two brigades got away, but Stoneman was nearly done and I stayed with him. We fought until we could fight no more. The Confederates took five hundred Union soldiers captive as well as thirty officers including myself and the General. We were held in the same prison we had set off to liberate. The situation was dire. Very little in the way of rations, sometimes nothing. Scant food was available if one had the means to pay for it. Stoneman and I both had some money secreted in our clothing and while wanting to ease the suffering of the other men, agreed that as the leaders, we must try to keep ourselves alive so we ate a little first and then shared out the rest. I will not tell you about the contents of the rations. I estimated later we both had the pleasure to pay nearly eight dollars a day to keep on our feet. We were exchanged in two months after General Sherman made a bargain with General Hood. A few days later, our fortunes had increased so much we were having dinner with General Sherman in Atlanta.”

Keogh would remember these incidents and recite them to Cresta with that strange look in his eyes. That faraway look as if he could still smell the gunpowder and yet even now see the blood. She’d playfully sock him on the shoulder or touch his arm, and he’d return from whatever dream he was in, but everything he said, she carefully noted.

Myles did not ask Cresta to find him a Catholic church so he could attend mass, and she did not broach the subject. He would come to it on his own. Instead, on Sundays when the Washington Post came, they’d separate the sections and spend the day reading through various articles. Cresta would prepare brunch at around noon or one o’clock, which consisted of Eggs Benedict, pancakes, or omelets along with bacon or sausage, shredded fried potatoes, muffins or sweet rolls, orange juice, and coffee. Sometimes they ate at the kitchen table, and other times, they took their plates to the library rug and ate on the floor amongst newspaper pages. Keogh didn’t care for the sports or fashion pages, but he did enjoy reading US and world news. The comics he ignored because he didn’t understand the humor involved. Dogs called Snoopy on doghouses?

On one such day, he leaned back against the bottom of the sofa and asked Cresta about her name. “’Tis an unusual name. Is it common in the family?”

Cresta shook her head. “No. Mother wasn’t always as snarky as she is now. That means hurtful and sarcastic. The seventies were a time of free love, a time when few people really thought about using contraception. You needn’t blush. I know you had methods of contraception in your day as well. Anyway, Mother at that time was a sweet young rebel with long, wild blond hair, bell-bottom pants, midi tops, and couldn’t wait to finish high school so she could raise some hell. What? Oh, well I’ll show you what bell-bottoms and midis are later. She got married when she was nineteen to my father and got pregnant shortly thereafter, had me in nineteen seventy-one, and named me Cresta.

“See, the sixties and seventies were also the decades of protest. People, especially young people, were protesting the Vietnam War, which lasted twenty long, miserable years. It was very unpopular and ended in a stalemate in nineteen seventy-five. Protests were also held in the form of marches in southern towns like Selma, Alabama, over black segregation. The Ku Klux Klan were dead set against integration between whites and blacks and tensions ran high. I’ll let you learn all about that when we get to that point in your history reading. And yes, I do see the irony of you fighting to free the blacks and then hunting the Ku Klux Klan—when I was born in an era where the Klan as we called them, were still making horrible racist rants and killing innocent black people because of their so-called white supremist philosophy.

“You asked about my name. There was a movie…a…I haven’t introduced you to television yet, but let’s just say technology has advanced so that something like a Broadway play can be captured on film like a picture but with all the movement and color and costumes. We call these moving pictures, which are just that—pictures that move, or movies. Normally they are produced to be shown to audiences in a theater or can be offered on devices called videocassette tapes to be shown on your television screen. There was a movie filmed in nineteen seventy called Soldier Blue. It was supposed to depict the Sand Creek Massacre of eighteen sixty-four where a Colonel in the US Army named John Chivington led a several hundred-man troop of Colorado Volunteers into a Cheyenne and Arapahoe village and massacred mostly women and children. Most of the braves were away at the time. The…carnage according to history was…”

Keogh broke in. “Yes, Cresta, I know. I have heard of Sand Creek and of Chivington. At first, he was a hero and paraded the scalps of the women and children in Denver. It was also said some of the soldiers displayed the private parts of women on their hats and on their saddles. It did not take long for the army to denounce Chivington’s actions as cowardly and inhuman. I heard he had resigned from the army in eighteen sixty-five.”

She nodded. “Yeah. He escaped punishment but wasn’t successful in any enterprise for the rest of his life. He died around eighteen ninety-one or thereabouts. The movie though, is quite graphic and, to this day, is still known as one of the most violent western movies ever filmed. The heroine is a character named Cresta Maribel Lee and the army soldier she falls in love with is named Honus Gant. She calls him Soldier Blue.

“It’s a strange movie, one you either love or hate or perhaps both at the same time. Neither side was totally right but neither side was totally wrong. I think the Indians get more points than the soldiers. I believe what struck me so much was it begins with an Indian attack against white soldiers and ends with the soldiers massacring the Indians. In a juxtaposition between the two is a beautiful, haunting melody that just sticks in the mind forever. I was mesmerized. It’s been years since I watched the movie, but I can still hear that tune in my subconscious.

“My mother told me one time after too many cocktails that she and my father had made it like rabbits watching that movie over and over for hours on end. The movie came out in October of nineteen-seventy, and I was born at the end of July in the next year. She thought it would be fitting, since the family name was now Leigh, to name me after the heroine and cleverly add the name of a grandmother and an aunt. Cresta Mary Belle Leigh. You know, I think you are the first person to ask me where my odd name came from.”

Myles Keogh was listening intently. “This…movie. You say it can be watched on your vision device?”

“Television.”

“Television. Do you have this Soldier Blue?”

Cresta gazed at Keogh with concerned eyes. “Yes, I have it. If you think you’re ready for it. I’d much prefer you begin with My Fair Lady.” She wasn’t sure where to fit in Gone With the Wind. That was a movie she didn’t think Myles would appreciate.