“Lord, look out, it’s Farmer Charley! You plan on doing your own butchering?”
“I don’t think Lillie will let me get away with that. We’ve already had a scene or two over the chickens. I told her she could stop naming them or stop eating them, her choice, but they’d still show up on the table. But for the big livestock, I can see I’ll need to ship that off somewhere else for the dirty work.”
“Oh, but she takes after you. I remember she used to drag that big watering can around the yard. She couldn’t lift it, but she’d tip it over to water the plants. A little farmer girl.”
“She loves it. Even in the cold and wet, she’d still rather be outside in her slicker and muddy boots she calls them. I’m glad to see it. I hope it’s an antidote for the other nonsense.”
“What other nonsense?”
Charley rubs at the back of his neck and considers his beer. “It’s the oddest thing, Joe. It’s like Emma’s afraid of Lillie growing up. She’s miserable that Lillie started school this year, because that means she’s not a baby anymore. But her solution seems to be to treat her like she’s a doll. At least once a week, there’s some new outfit she’s had made, and I swear each one is more elaborate and ridiculous than the last one. You should have seen this creation she was parading around in the other night. It was all ruffles and lace and ribbons and beads, and to me it looked exactly like she was being swallowed. And there’s Emma, all proud of how much money she’s spending, ticking off to me what everything costs—the more expensive the better—as though that’s the most important thing! She’s like a human abacus!” Charley seems a little taken aback by his own outburst, and downs half his beer in one swallow. “I reminded her that vanity is a sin, and she draws herself up and says, ‘Our baby isn’t vain!’ and I say, ‘I wasn’t talking about Lillie.’ She’s never had an ounce of vanity for herself, Joe, but with Lillie…good night! I can’t stand to think that she’s going to encourage her to become one of those empty-headed girls who flounces around in all her finery, acting superior! It’s, it’s…!” Charley takes a breath and sips some of his beer to calm down, then chuckles. “Well, it’s enough to make a fellow stammer.”
“It does seem surprising. I remember you telling me that you married the most practical, level-headed woman on Earth.”
“I did; she was. Now it’s like the whole world has shrunk down to this tiny circle with Lillie at the center. When McKinley got shot and died, she never once even remarked on it. If you asked her the most important thing that happened all of last year, she’d say it’s that the church opened in Brightwood.” He chortles into his beer. “The old Emma would at least have had something to say about T.R. being younger than she is. ‘When did they start letting schoolboys be president? I’ve got stockings that are older!’”
Joe laughs with him; the imitation is a good one. “Well, you’re still Lillie’s papa; she’ll listen to you if you tell her you don’t like flouncy, superior girls.”
“Well, and I’ve got her grandmother in my corner, too. She’s the second most practical woman on Earth, and she and Lillie spend a lot of time together. Maybe between the two of us and her being in school now, we can fight the flouncy.” But his laugh is half-hearted and his gaze is distant.
“Charley, you’re actually worried.”
“Maybe I’ll just add to your toast from before.” He raises his glass. “A man’s own family: his greatest source of comfort. And upset.”
Jubal’s March
1902
“Be careful, Lillie. Don’t fall. And don’t spoil your dress.” Mary watches from a few feet away as Lillie negotiates the decaying earthworks, scrambling up the steep slope using the toeholds that have been carved out by others before her. At the top, she laughs in triumph as she looks out from her high vantage point to the streets below. If it were Emma, there would have been no climbing at all, at least not in her school dress. Charley, on the other hand, would have been right behind her, watching in case she slips and egging her on to try the steepest part.
Mary has been waiting for Lillie at the school doorway. She often walks up to the Brightwood School as it lets out for the day so that the two of them can walk home hand-in-hand while Lillie tells her all the latest classroom drama. Today is so beautiful that Lillie has dropped Mary’s hand to run the circumference of the big grassy area behind the school, to consider the unnaturally uniform hillock jutting up to surround the grass semi-circle, and finally to clamber up onto the highest point. Mary stands on one of several crumbing stone platforms that are arranged at points along the earthworks and is looking over the hillock now, too.
“What’s that, Grandma?” Lillie asks, pointing to the platform.
Mary’s gesture includes all the platforms. “These are where the cannons used to be.”
“Cannons? Why?”
“Because this was a fort, Lillie. Fort Stevens.”
Lillie is confused. She and Charley make snow forts in the winter and tree forts in the summer. This is nothing like either of those. None of her forts have cannons. “It’s a fort?”
“Yes. There are forts all around the city. Soldiers used to be here during the war.”
“Oh.” She still doesn’t understand but is afraid that she is supposed to.
“Do you remember we told you that your Grampa was a surgeon in the war?”
“He was here?”
“No, not right here. The war was everywhere. But do you know who was right here? Almost right where you’re standing?”
“Who?”
“President Lincoln! He was right here during the attack on the city.”
“President Lincoln,” she echoes in wonderment. She knows about him: he was ten feet tall and the smartest and best man ever for saving the union. The meaning of that last part is still fuzzy to her, but she knows it’s somehow very important.
“He got his tall hat shot off because he kept standing up to see what was happening during the battle.” Mary stands on her tiptoes at the earthen wall and cranes her neck to scan the landscape, mimicking what the president might have been doing when the hat was attacked.
Lillie laughs at the pantomime, but still feels confused. “Who was shooting at him?”
“The Confederates. The Johnny Rebs.” It’s clear that Lillie has no concept of what she’s talking about. “Here, let me show you. Can you get down by yourself?”
Mary walks to an open spot of dirt near the end of the semi-circular hill, picking up a stick along the way. She rests herself against the earthworks while Lillie crouches down to see the map that Mary starts to draw. First, she pokes dots to outline a large circle. “See, there are forts that go all the way around the city. This is Stevens, but there’s Totten, Reno, Marcy, DeRussy. Many more.”
“Why?”
“Well, this city is the capital of the whole United States. When bad people want to hurt the country, they attack the capital. So it’s important that we defend the city against those people.” She draws a line straight down the center of the circle. “And this is the Seventh Street Road,” pointing from the line in the dirt to the road below, to indicate that they are one and the same. She continues to draw. “When your Mamma was just a little younger than you are now, Jubal Early’s army came marching down that road from the north, planning to claim Washington City for the Confederates. And our army, the Union, came marching up from south of the city to fend them off.”
Lillie’s eyes are big. “Did they come to our house?”
“Well, our house wasn’t even there yet. This was far out in