Sleeping Soldier Saturday, Chapter 3
Jul. 29th, 2023 07:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerOnward in The Sleeping Soldier!
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Preorder link
***
Caleb screamed.
Russell Krause lunged forward and slammed Caleb against the wall. He jammed a callused hand over Caleb’s mouth, then tightened his other arm around Caleb as Caleb struggled to break free. “Be quiet!” Russell hissed. “My father will kill you if he wakes.”
Caleb stopped struggling. He trembled, his ears pricked, feeling the hard skin of Russell’s palm scraping against his mouth.
Suddenly the grip slackened. Russell’s hand fell. “No one heard,” he said, puzzled, relieved; and then he let out a gasp, then a groan, and he smacked himself in the face. “Oh lord, what a fool I am! Of course Father’s dead. Only I got confused for a bit, being back in the house and all… Oh, I had better introduce myself. I’m Lieutenant Russell Krause, 14th Indiana Cavalry, and—well, this is going to sound a little strange, but you’ll believe it if you just give it a moment to settle. When I was a baby, a fairy put a curse on me, and I’ve just last week awakened from a hundred years sleep.”
Caleb stared at him. He was trying to see some sign in Russell’s face that this was a joke, a prank. But Russell looked perfectly serious, and perfectly like that photograph; and although it was perfectly impossible, slowly Caleb said, “I believe you.” And he did. “But why do I believe you?”
He was asking himself as much as Russell, but Russell answered. “That’s part of the curse, I guess. It drove my friend Owen mad that he couldn’t doubt it, for he was a great freethinker and a proud Doubting Thomas; and he had to rethink all his fixed ideas about the supernatural, because, as he said, ‘I wouldn’t be much of a freethinker if I couldn’t change my mind based on the evidence; even if the evidence is that I can’t seem to disbelieve in this curse of yours, for all it makes no rational sense!’”
As he quoted his friend his voice grew deeper, and rather petulant at the end, and he underlined the exclamation with a little stomp of his foot. Caleb laughed, and Russell grinned, a pair of dimples flashing in his cheeks.
“The fairy wasn’t invited to the christening, you see,” Russell explained, and shook his head. “What does a fairy want at a christening, when they are meant to fear crosses and holy water? But Katie said it was not the christening the fairy came to, but the ball afterward. All dressed up in silver she was, and skimming across the floor”; and as he spoke his voice took on an Irish brogue, an echo perhaps of Katie’s voice. “And she cursed me to sleep a hundred years when I was pricked with a bayonet, unless I should be awakened by a kiss of true love. Which as you can see did not happen,” he said, with a sigh, in his own normal voice with its strange accent. “And how could it, with Julia dead this twelvemonth since?”
“Julia?” Caleb echoed, with a cold stupid stab of disappointment.
“My fiancee, Julia Gage,” Russell said. “And Katie was my nurse, before you’re asking, and then our cook when I was too old to need a nurse; and then she got married, and moved to California, where she lives to this very day.”
He spoke lightly, casually, and Caleb almost opened his mouth to point out, Surely she’s dead now?
But he stopped himself. Russell would realize that in good time. Waking up a hundred years in the future had to be a lot to get used to all at once.
“And now you’re here,” said Russell, “and if you don’t mind my asking, what’s your name, Freckles?”
“Oh! I’m Caleb O’Connor,” Caleb said, and again the dimples flashed.
“It’s an Irishman you are, and no mistake,” Russell said, dipping into that Irish brogue again, and returning to his own voice to add, “Sorry I put such a scare on you.”
Skeer, he pronounced it. He didn’t seem so scary now, leaning against the newel post as he grinned at Caleb.
“I did trespass into your house,” Caleb said, and then, with a gasp of belated chagrin, “I’m so sorry! I never do things like that.” Not since he’d graduated high school, anyway. “I can’t imagine what I was thinking.”
Russell laughed, a rich loud sound that seemed to fill the foyer right up to its high ceiling. “It’s all right,” he said. “I guess you were looking for a place to stay, and something to eat maybe, and my lawyer left me with plenty, so…” But here he paused, looking Caleb over again, his gaze still friendly but sharply assessing at the same time. “But no. You’re not a tramp, I’m thinking. Or else you’re the cleanest tramp I’ve ever seen; but then everything’s so clean in the future.”
“Oh! No, I’m not a tramp. I’m a student at Hawkins College.”
Russell laughed again, that delicious booming laugh. “I should’ve guessed. I know what college boys are like.” He pronounced the oy sound as a long I: college byes. “I was one myself, before I joined the army; and I’m to be one again, for my lawyer’s signed me up at Hawkins.”
“Your lawyer?” Caleb was struggling to keep up.
“Yes. Mr. Huber’s his name. My mother hired him back in 1924, before she—died, I guess.” The slightest hitch in his words. “Mr. Huber was a young man then, in body at least, though I can’t imagine he’s ever been young in spirit. I spent Christmas at his house, and it’s the dourest Christmas I’ve ever spent—and kindly remember that last Christmas, I was eating hardtack in Georgia! This morning he said maybe I’d better stay at his place till Hawkins opened, and I said I’d just as soon camp out in the Schloss if he’d provide me with grub and firewood, and I don’t know which of us was more relieved.” He sighed, and then smiled at Caleb “D’you want a tour of the Schloss?”
There was just a touch of wistfulness in his voice, like Caleb might say no and leave him all alone. “Yes!” said Caleb, a bit too eagerly, and then, to excuse his eagerness: “I’ve always been interested in this house. It’s so…” He paused, trying to think of a description more tactful than old and weird.
Russell grinned wryly. “I guess to you it won’t seem such a nice place. But it was fancy enough in its own time, and maybe it’ll amuse you, anyway.”
Actually, it still seemed pretty nice to Caleb. He had grown up in a postwar box of a house (not that he was complaining: his parents had both grown up dirt poor, and viewed possession of a house as a miracle), smaller than the first floor of the Schloss, with its library, dining room, parlor, and “Father’s study.” Russell opened the door to this study rather furtively, and walked into the empty room and swung out his arms and spun around and laughed, his laughter echoing off the bare walls.
All the rooms were empty, devoid of furniture, the splendor of the house visible only in its bones: high ceilings, carved lintels, tiled fireplaces. The fancy wallpaper was peeling at the corners, probably faded in full sunlight, but still rich and lovely by the light of the moon.
Then the second floor, lined with bedrooms. One still held a bed with a deep indentation in the mattress, and Caleb realized with a strange sinking feeling in his stomach that this must have been where Russell had slept for a hundred years. But Russell only closed the door gently, and Caleb made no comment, only followed him up the stairs to the attic.
The attic was as bare as the rest of the house, but far dustier. Russell tried to rub the dust off a dormer window with his sleeve, before finally giving up and simply opening the window, letting in cold fresh air that was a relief after the scent of dust and mouse droppings. “Come look,” he said. “It’s a nice view,” and Caleb leaned on the sill next to him, elbow to elbow, the warmth radiating from Russell’s body making it difficult to focus on the view of Hawkins below.
“It’s like fairyland,” said Russell, hushed. “All shining with electric lights.”
Caleb tried to see it through Russell’s eyes, as if he’d never seen an electric light in his life till just a few days ago. Floodlights lit up the stately old cupola of Main Hall and the new conservatory with its glimmering glass sides. Streetlights glowed along the campus sidewalks, the round pools of light like pearls on a string.
“Is that all Hawkins?” Russell asked. “It’s very much bigger than it was in my day.”
“Yes. All those gold limestone buildings,” Caleb said, gesturing as he spoke. “And that glass conservatory across the street. There are nearly a thousand students now.”
“A thousand!” Russell’s eyes widened. “Why in my day there were twenty.”
“Yes. The college has grown a lot.”
“What’s it like nowadays?”
“Well—” Caleb wasn’t quite sure where to start. What would be most useful to tell Russell? Thank God he always read those library displays about Hawkins’ history, so he had some points of comparison. “Well, it’s still co-educational. Lots of colleges are, nowadays. Most of them, I think. But you’ll be used to that, since Hawkins was already coeducational when you attended.”
“Oh, but it wasn’t Hawkins I attended. My parents didn’t like the idea of coeducation, so they sent me to Wabash. But I think it must be wonderful going to school with girls; to have girls as comrades and not just sweethearts. Not but what sweethearts are lovely, but it must add a whole new depth to know girls as friends.”
“Well… sure.” This was an uncongenial topic to Caleb. “And there are lots of students from out of state now. They were mostly from Indiana in your day, weren’t they? Now we’ve even got some students from out of the country. In fact—” He ran out of air suddenly, and had to clear his throat, because he knew enough about nineteenth century American racial attitudes to know this might not be welcome news. “Hawkins has a sister school in Japan. So every year we get a new batch of Japanese exchange students—”
“From Japan!” cried Russell. “Have they opened their borders, then? In my day, Japan was as closed up as a clam.”
“Yeah. Ummmm. Yeah.” That was not the part of this news that Caleb had expected Russell to fixate on. “Well, in the late nineteenth century Japan modernized really rapidly…” Caleb might wait till later to talk about Japan’s role in World War II. “So there are lots of Japanese exchange students. And American students go to Japan, too.”
“Gracious.” Russell was fascinated. “Are there students from all over the world?”
“Yeah. Yeah. Lots of students from all kinds of places. And different races.” Caleb cleared his throat again, and went on very fast, not looking at Russell. “Hawkins admits black students now. Negro, I think is the word you’d be familiar with, but that’s considered old-fashioned, and nowadays people say black. There have been black students at Hawkins for about a decade now, I think? There still aren’t very many, but there are a few. One of them lives on my floor in the dorms, his name is Thomas Audubon, he’s a senior. He’s very nice.”
In his anxiety, he had been babbling. Now he risked a glance at Russell, and found Russell looking at him intently. After a long pause, (or maybe it only felt long to Caleb), Russell said, in a bright firm surprised voice, “Well, I think that’s wonderful.”
“Yes, isn’t it?” Caleb was relieved. “I’m glad you think so. I know that people a hundred years ago sometimes didn’t approve of… well, we call it integration. Of black and white people attending school together, for instance. Well, that’s still controversial today,” Caleb added, and reined himself in from nervously chattering out the whole history of Brown versus Board of Education. “Lots of people still don’t approve.”
“People at Hawkins?”
“Most Hawkins students believe in integration.” Caleb frowned, remembering the uproar last year after Thomas Audubon danced with Linda Cartwright (a gorgeous blonde) at the Valentine’s Dance. “At least,” he corrected himself, “they know they ought to. Listen,” he said, “race relations have changed a lot since your time, and…”
He floundered, searching for a polite way to say maybe you should just not talk about it for at least six months. Russell grinned. “I’ve been the new boy before,” he assured Caleb. “I know it’s my place to keep my mouth shut and my ears open, and try not to ram any torpedoes by mistake, and I guess the biggest torpedo in American life has always been…” He gestured, as if searching the air for a word.
“Racism?” Caleb suggested.
“What’s that?”
“Prejudice based on race. You didn’t have a word for that?”
“I bet fish don’t have a word for water,” Russell said wryly.
There was a little pause.
Then Russell sighed, and shifted. “It’s a good thing I met you,” he said, “for Mr. Huber never thought to mention that, or anything else of much importance, except how he’s kept an eye on my mother’s money all these years. Do you know I asked him if the United States is still in one piece, and he couldn’t understand why I had to ask? Well, we’d almost tore it apart in my day, so you can see why I wondered!”
“Yes,” Caleb said, and added, “And it is. In one piece.”
“Yes, he told me eventually. But he never did understand why I asked. And he never did exactly answer whether we’re at war.”
“We aren’t,” Caleb said, and then backpedaled. “I mean, only kind of.”
Russell’s dark expressive eyebrows rose. “And how can you be kind of at war?”
“Well… We’ve committed troops in South Vietnam,” Caleb said. “Vietnam is a small country close to China. Our troops are there to protect South Vietnam from the aggression of North Vietnam, which is backed by Communist China…”
“What now?”
“Well… in 1949, the Communist party took over China…”
“You know what,” Russell interrupted, “I think we will leave that for right now. All I need to know is, is there any reason to worry there’ll be troops firing the Schloss in the morning?”
Caleb cracked a grin. “No.”
“Well, good. Good. I’m mighty tired of war, I’ve got to tell you. A few years of peace would suit me down to the ground.”
Should Caleb tell him about nuclear bombs? And oh, God, the draft… But no, there was no reason to tell him about that tonight. His college deferment would protect him as long as he stayed at Hawkins.
For a little while they looked over the campus in silence. Then Russell gestured at the Main Hall. “They’ve finished the cupola,” he said. “It looks just how it did in that picture Professor Hiram had, an architect’s drawing I guess. And that must be the chapel,” he added, pointing to a building with a steeple, “and is that the library, that building by the river with the Greek columns?”
“No. That’s the Union. They built it after World War I. Oh, World War I was…”
“Oh, I’ve heard of World War I. Mr. Huber gave me some history books and I’ve been working my way through.”
“Oh good.” Caleb loved old books and old houses, but he’d never been good at the names and dates and causes-of-war parts of history. “That’s the new library,” he said, pointing.
There was a shocked pause as Russell regarded the floodlit building, a modernist monstrosity that vaguely resembled a grater. Then Caleb said apologetically, “It’s the latest thing in architecture, apparently. I know it’s awful.”
Russell whooshed out a laugh. “Thank God you know! I was trying like hell, pardon the language, to think of something admiring to say about it. Well, I’m glad you people are bad at something. It makes you a little more human.” He smiled, and then frowned, and paused, gnawing at his lip. “So this library. Do you still have… books?”
“Oh!” The question startled Caleb, but he could see the logic in Russell asking. So much had changed; why not books too? “Yes, we do. Come by and I’ll show you some time. In fact…” He glanced quickly over at Russell. “If you’d like—well, I could give you a tour of campus this evening, if you want.”
“Really?” Russell beamed like a Cheshire cat. “Yes, I’d like that very much, Mr. O’Connor.”
Caleb laughed. “You can just call me Caleb.”
“Can I?” A sudden smile. “Do college students mostly call each other by their Christian names, then, in the future?”
“By their first names. Yes.”
“The girl students, too?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, how wonderful. I’m glad Americans have kept that informality, anyhow.” Russell was leading the way down the attic steps, speaking over his shoulder. “In books from England, relations between the sexes are so stiff and formal. Let’s see, I had better get my coat before we go…”
Caleb had gotten so used to Russell’s Civil War uniform that he had almost forgotten it. Now it struck him forcefully now how odd it would look out on the street. “Do you have any other clothes? Any modern—”
Russell looked embarrassed. Caleb was mortified. Of course Russell would be wearing modern clothes if he had them.
But then Russell said, “Yes. Mr. Huber bought me a whole trunkful practically. Only I feel so queer wearing them, like I’m going to a masquerade, so when I got back here I changed into my own clothes. But of course if we’re going out, I’d better wear the future costume.”
“You don’t have to. Campus is basically deserted right now.”
“No, I’d better. I’ll have to get used to it and I may’s well start. Will you come down and have a look-see at what I’ve got? I don’t seem to put them together just right.”
So Caleb trooped down after Russell into a cavernous kitchen. A fire burned low in the stove. With a few sharp pokes and the addition of a log Russell had it crackling merrily again, filling the room with a delicious warmth. “D’you want something to eat?” Russell asked, opening up the cupboards. “Mr. Huber loaded me down with vittles. There’s a ham, and a loaf of bread, and canned soup—what the boys would have given for that on the march. Or do you want coffee? I can make a mean cup, Katie taught me how. Or flapjacks, she taught me how to make those, too. Or there’s some cookies—”
“I’ll take a cookie,” Caleb said. Russell snagged a packet of Oreos from the cupboard, and they both munched away as Russell unpacked a suitcase onto the table. A gray flannel suit, a black wool coat, some nice slacks, a couple sweaters. Button-down shirts in old-fashioned patterns. No jeans, no t-shirts except thin white undershirts like old men wore.
“Are they all right?” Russell was looking anxiously in Caleb’s face.
Caleb almost lied. But he swallowed that first impulse, and said, “Some of them are out of date. I guess they’re the kind of clothes that Mr. Huber wears, probably. But it doesn’t matter for tonight,” he added. “There’s no one on campus. The college doesn’t open again till after the New Year, and we can stop at Ayres to buy you a few extra things before then.”
“Ayres?”
“The department store.”
Russell opened his mouth to ask, apparently thought better of it, and asked instead, “What should I wear?”
Caleb picked out an outfit: chinos, white button-down shirt, blue sweater, black coat. Without further ado, Russell started shucking off his clothes: first his coat, then his shirt, leaving him bare-chested but for an oval locket on a chain.
Caleb stared, and looked away, and thought that looking away was probably even more obvious, and fussed at Russell’s new clothes to give himself something to do.
Of course Russell didn’t have any physical modesty around other men. All those 19th century paintings of men swimming naked together, clearly men in the past just stripped off…
God, it ought to be illegal for anyone to be that beautiful. He had lovely broad shoulders, beautifully molded upper arms. He was very lean through the chest, with his ribs showing at his sides. He had been working hard on short rations for a long time.
There was a long scar on one side, and Caleb blurted, “How’d you get that scar?”
Russell touched it, a touch that was almost a caress: he was proud of it. “Grazed by a bullet. Another inch and it would’ve been the end of me. Who wouldn’t be a soldier, huh?”
Then Caleb saw another cut, half-healed, on his left forearm. “And that?”
“Oh, that’s just the bayonet wound.”
“Bayonet wound!”
“Well, like I said. That’s what set the curse ticking. Only a scratch,” he added, “which is just as well, for it’d be pretty bad to sleep a hundred years and wake up just to die because you’ve been stabbed in the gut, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes. Is it—? Have you—?” Caleb was trying to think of a polite way to ask if he’d cleaned it, because he knew Civil War medicine had been pretty rough.
“Yes, Mr. Huber put iodine on it, which must’ve done me good, because it burned like the fires of Hell.” Russell took off one boot, and Caleb saw that he had small feet, and the thought popped irrepressibly into his head: was it true that small feet meant small…? “Are these boots all right? Or had I better wear the boots Mr. Huber bought me?”
Russell gestured as he spoke at a pair of army surplus boots over by the table. Caleb fixed his eyes on them. “Yes, you’d better wear the new ones.”
Apparently Caleb wasn’t going to learn the answer to his question, because Russell didn’t take off his drawers. They were the old-fashioned kind, so long they were practically another pair of pants, not giving anything away like tighty-whities.
Russell pulled on the chinos, fumbling a little with the zipper, which after all he must have seen for the first time just a few days ago. He managed the fly after just a couple tries, thank God, so Caleb didn’t have to offer to help. The rest of the clothes posed no problems, and soon he was slinging his army belt around the waist of his coat.
Caleb lifted a hand. “You’ll have to leave the revolver behind.”
Russell’s hand went to the gun. “Why?”
“People don’t usually walk around armed these days. I think you’d need a permit to carry it, actually.”
“A permit.” Russell sounded astounded. He hesitated a long moment, then shrugged and unslung the belt. “Well, I guess Aurora’s not full of secesh bastards who want to shoot my head off,” he said, a little uneasily. “Do I look all right?”
“Yes.”
“Just like anybody else?” Again there was a touch of wistfulness in his voice.
“Yes.”
“Till I open my mouth anyway. I sure sound foreign, don’t I?”
“I guess times have accents just like places,” Caleb said. “Are you ready to go?”
“I just need a hat.”
“People don’t always wear hats these days.”
“I’ve seen. But it’s cold out there, and I don’t intend to let my ears freeze off!” Russell found a stocking cap and plunked it down on his head, and inspected his dim reflection in the window. “Do I look like a college student?”
“Yes.”
“More than I look like a fisherman?” Russell sounded so doubtful that Caleb couldn’t help but smile.
“Yes,” Caleb assured him. “You look fine.”
“Well, then,” said Russell, and gestured onward expansively. “Virgil, lead on.”
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Preorder link
***
Caleb screamed.
Russell Krause lunged forward and slammed Caleb against the wall. He jammed a callused hand over Caleb’s mouth, then tightened his other arm around Caleb as Caleb struggled to break free. “Be quiet!” Russell hissed. “My father will kill you if he wakes.”
Caleb stopped struggling. He trembled, his ears pricked, feeling the hard skin of Russell’s palm scraping against his mouth.
Suddenly the grip slackened. Russell’s hand fell. “No one heard,” he said, puzzled, relieved; and then he let out a gasp, then a groan, and he smacked himself in the face. “Oh lord, what a fool I am! Of course Father’s dead. Only I got confused for a bit, being back in the house and all… Oh, I had better introduce myself. I’m Lieutenant Russell Krause, 14th Indiana Cavalry, and—well, this is going to sound a little strange, but you’ll believe it if you just give it a moment to settle. When I was a baby, a fairy put a curse on me, and I’ve just last week awakened from a hundred years sleep.”
Caleb stared at him. He was trying to see some sign in Russell’s face that this was a joke, a prank. But Russell looked perfectly serious, and perfectly like that photograph; and although it was perfectly impossible, slowly Caleb said, “I believe you.” And he did. “But why do I believe you?”
He was asking himself as much as Russell, but Russell answered. “That’s part of the curse, I guess. It drove my friend Owen mad that he couldn’t doubt it, for he was a great freethinker and a proud Doubting Thomas; and he had to rethink all his fixed ideas about the supernatural, because, as he said, ‘I wouldn’t be much of a freethinker if I couldn’t change my mind based on the evidence; even if the evidence is that I can’t seem to disbelieve in this curse of yours, for all it makes no rational sense!’”
As he quoted his friend his voice grew deeper, and rather petulant at the end, and he underlined the exclamation with a little stomp of his foot. Caleb laughed, and Russell grinned, a pair of dimples flashing in his cheeks.
“The fairy wasn’t invited to the christening, you see,” Russell explained, and shook his head. “What does a fairy want at a christening, when they are meant to fear crosses and holy water? But Katie said it was not the christening the fairy came to, but the ball afterward. All dressed up in silver she was, and skimming across the floor”; and as he spoke his voice took on an Irish brogue, an echo perhaps of Katie’s voice. “And she cursed me to sleep a hundred years when I was pricked with a bayonet, unless I should be awakened by a kiss of true love. Which as you can see did not happen,” he said, with a sigh, in his own normal voice with its strange accent. “And how could it, with Julia dead this twelvemonth since?”
“Julia?” Caleb echoed, with a cold stupid stab of disappointment.
“My fiancee, Julia Gage,” Russell said. “And Katie was my nurse, before you’re asking, and then our cook when I was too old to need a nurse; and then she got married, and moved to California, where she lives to this very day.”
He spoke lightly, casually, and Caleb almost opened his mouth to point out, Surely she’s dead now?
But he stopped himself. Russell would realize that in good time. Waking up a hundred years in the future had to be a lot to get used to all at once.
“And now you’re here,” said Russell, “and if you don’t mind my asking, what’s your name, Freckles?”
“Oh! I’m Caleb O’Connor,” Caleb said, and again the dimples flashed.
“It’s an Irishman you are, and no mistake,” Russell said, dipping into that Irish brogue again, and returning to his own voice to add, “Sorry I put such a scare on you.”
Skeer, he pronounced it. He didn’t seem so scary now, leaning against the newel post as he grinned at Caleb.
“I did trespass into your house,” Caleb said, and then, with a gasp of belated chagrin, “I’m so sorry! I never do things like that.” Not since he’d graduated high school, anyway. “I can’t imagine what I was thinking.”
Russell laughed, a rich loud sound that seemed to fill the foyer right up to its high ceiling. “It’s all right,” he said. “I guess you were looking for a place to stay, and something to eat maybe, and my lawyer left me with plenty, so…” But here he paused, looking Caleb over again, his gaze still friendly but sharply assessing at the same time. “But no. You’re not a tramp, I’m thinking. Or else you’re the cleanest tramp I’ve ever seen; but then everything’s so clean in the future.”
“Oh! No, I’m not a tramp. I’m a student at Hawkins College.”
Russell laughed again, that delicious booming laugh. “I should’ve guessed. I know what college boys are like.” He pronounced the oy sound as a long I: college byes. “I was one myself, before I joined the army; and I’m to be one again, for my lawyer’s signed me up at Hawkins.”
“Your lawyer?” Caleb was struggling to keep up.
“Yes. Mr. Huber’s his name. My mother hired him back in 1924, before she—died, I guess.” The slightest hitch in his words. “Mr. Huber was a young man then, in body at least, though I can’t imagine he’s ever been young in spirit. I spent Christmas at his house, and it’s the dourest Christmas I’ve ever spent—and kindly remember that last Christmas, I was eating hardtack in Georgia! This morning he said maybe I’d better stay at his place till Hawkins opened, and I said I’d just as soon camp out in the Schloss if he’d provide me with grub and firewood, and I don’t know which of us was more relieved.” He sighed, and then smiled at Caleb “D’you want a tour of the Schloss?”
There was just a touch of wistfulness in his voice, like Caleb might say no and leave him all alone. “Yes!” said Caleb, a bit too eagerly, and then, to excuse his eagerness: “I’ve always been interested in this house. It’s so…” He paused, trying to think of a description more tactful than old and weird.
Russell grinned wryly. “I guess to you it won’t seem such a nice place. But it was fancy enough in its own time, and maybe it’ll amuse you, anyway.”
Actually, it still seemed pretty nice to Caleb. He had grown up in a postwar box of a house (not that he was complaining: his parents had both grown up dirt poor, and viewed possession of a house as a miracle), smaller than the first floor of the Schloss, with its library, dining room, parlor, and “Father’s study.” Russell opened the door to this study rather furtively, and walked into the empty room and swung out his arms and spun around and laughed, his laughter echoing off the bare walls.
All the rooms were empty, devoid of furniture, the splendor of the house visible only in its bones: high ceilings, carved lintels, tiled fireplaces. The fancy wallpaper was peeling at the corners, probably faded in full sunlight, but still rich and lovely by the light of the moon.
Then the second floor, lined with bedrooms. One still held a bed with a deep indentation in the mattress, and Caleb realized with a strange sinking feeling in his stomach that this must have been where Russell had slept for a hundred years. But Russell only closed the door gently, and Caleb made no comment, only followed him up the stairs to the attic.
The attic was as bare as the rest of the house, but far dustier. Russell tried to rub the dust off a dormer window with his sleeve, before finally giving up and simply opening the window, letting in cold fresh air that was a relief after the scent of dust and mouse droppings. “Come look,” he said. “It’s a nice view,” and Caleb leaned on the sill next to him, elbow to elbow, the warmth radiating from Russell’s body making it difficult to focus on the view of Hawkins below.
“It’s like fairyland,” said Russell, hushed. “All shining with electric lights.”
Caleb tried to see it through Russell’s eyes, as if he’d never seen an electric light in his life till just a few days ago. Floodlights lit up the stately old cupola of Main Hall and the new conservatory with its glimmering glass sides. Streetlights glowed along the campus sidewalks, the round pools of light like pearls on a string.
“Is that all Hawkins?” Russell asked. “It’s very much bigger than it was in my day.”
“Yes. All those gold limestone buildings,” Caleb said, gesturing as he spoke. “And that glass conservatory across the street. There are nearly a thousand students now.”
“A thousand!” Russell’s eyes widened. “Why in my day there were twenty.”
“Yes. The college has grown a lot.”
“What’s it like nowadays?”
“Well—” Caleb wasn’t quite sure where to start. What would be most useful to tell Russell? Thank God he always read those library displays about Hawkins’ history, so he had some points of comparison. “Well, it’s still co-educational. Lots of colleges are, nowadays. Most of them, I think. But you’ll be used to that, since Hawkins was already coeducational when you attended.”
“Oh, but it wasn’t Hawkins I attended. My parents didn’t like the idea of coeducation, so they sent me to Wabash. But I think it must be wonderful going to school with girls; to have girls as comrades and not just sweethearts. Not but what sweethearts are lovely, but it must add a whole new depth to know girls as friends.”
“Well… sure.” This was an uncongenial topic to Caleb. “And there are lots of students from out of state now. They were mostly from Indiana in your day, weren’t they? Now we’ve even got some students from out of the country. In fact—” He ran out of air suddenly, and had to clear his throat, because he knew enough about nineteenth century American racial attitudes to know this might not be welcome news. “Hawkins has a sister school in Japan. So every year we get a new batch of Japanese exchange students—”
“From Japan!” cried Russell. “Have they opened their borders, then? In my day, Japan was as closed up as a clam.”
“Yeah. Ummmm. Yeah.” That was not the part of this news that Caleb had expected Russell to fixate on. “Well, in the late nineteenth century Japan modernized really rapidly…” Caleb might wait till later to talk about Japan’s role in World War II. “So there are lots of Japanese exchange students. And American students go to Japan, too.”
“Gracious.” Russell was fascinated. “Are there students from all over the world?”
“Yeah. Yeah. Lots of students from all kinds of places. And different races.” Caleb cleared his throat again, and went on very fast, not looking at Russell. “Hawkins admits black students now. Negro, I think is the word you’d be familiar with, but that’s considered old-fashioned, and nowadays people say black. There have been black students at Hawkins for about a decade now, I think? There still aren’t very many, but there are a few. One of them lives on my floor in the dorms, his name is Thomas Audubon, he’s a senior. He’s very nice.”
In his anxiety, he had been babbling. Now he risked a glance at Russell, and found Russell looking at him intently. After a long pause, (or maybe it only felt long to Caleb), Russell said, in a bright firm surprised voice, “Well, I think that’s wonderful.”
“Yes, isn’t it?” Caleb was relieved. “I’m glad you think so. I know that people a hundred years ago sometimes didn’t approve of… well, we call it integration. Of black and white people attending school together, for instance. Well, that’s still controversial today,” Caleb added, and reined himself in from nervously chattering out the whole history of Brown versus Board of Education. “Lots of people still don’t approve.”
“People at Hawkins?”
“Most Hawkins students believe in integration.” Caleb frowned, remembering the uproar last year after Thomas Audubon danced with Linda Cartwright (a gorgeous blonde) at the Valentine’s Dance. “At least,” he corrected himself, “they know they ought to. Listen,” he said, “race relations have changed a lot since your time, and…”
He floundered, searching for a polite way to say maybe you should just not talk about it for at least six months. Russell grinned. “I’ve been the new boy before,” he assured Caleb. “I know it’s my place to keep my mouth shut and my ears open, and try not to ram any torpedoes by mistake, and I guess the biggest torpedo in American life has always been…” He gestured, as if searching the air for a word.
“Racism?” Caleb suggested.
“What’s that?”
“Prejudice based on race. You didn’t have a word for that?”
“I bet fish don’t have a word for water,” Russell said wryly.
There was a little pause.
Then Russell sighed, and shifted. “It’s a good thing I met you,” he said, “for Mr. Huber never thought to mention that, or anything else of much importance, except how he’s kept an eye on my mother’s money all these years. Do you know I asked him if the United States is still in one piece, and he couldn’t understand why I had to ask? Well, we’d almost tore it apart in my day, so you can see why I wondered!”
“Yes,” Caleb said, and added, “And it is. In one piece.”
“Yes, he told me eventually. But he never did understand why I asked. And he never did exactly answer whether we’re at war.”
“We aren’t,” Caleb said, and then backpedaled. “I mean, only kind of.”
Russell’s dark expressive eyebrows rose. “And how can you be kind of at war?”
“Well… We’ve committed troops in South Vietnam,” Caleb said. “Vietnam is a small country close to China. Our troops are there to protect South Vietnam from the aggression of North Vietnam, which is backed by Communist China…”
“What now?”
“Well… in 1949, the Communist party took over China…”
“You know what,” Russell interrupted, “I think we will leave that for right now. All I need to know is, is there any reason to worry there’ll be troops firing the Schloss in the morning?”
Caleb cracked a grin. “No.”
“Well, good. Good. I’m mighty tired of war, I’ve got to tell you. A few years of peace would suit me down to the ground.”
Should Caleb tell him about nuclear bombs? And oh, God, the draft… But no, there was no reason to tell him about that tonight. His college deferment would protect him as long as he stayed at Hawkins.
For a little while they looked over the campus in silence. Then Russell gestured at the Main Hall. “They’ve finished the cupola,” he said. “It looks just how it did in that picture Professor Hiram had, an architect’s drawing I guess. And that must be the chapel,” he added, pointing to a building with a steeple, “and is that the library, that building by the river with the Greek columns?”
“No. That’s the Union. They built it after World War I. Oh, World War I was…”
“Oh, I’ve heard of World War I. Mr. Huber gave me some history books and I’ve been working my way through.”
“Oh good.” Caleb loved old books and old houses, but he’d never been good at the names and dates and causes-of-war parts of history. “That’s the new library,” he said, pointing.
There was a shocked pause as Russell regarded the floodlit building, a modernist monstrosity that vaguely resembled a grater. Then Caleb said apologetically, “It’s the latest thing in architecture, apparently. I know it’s awful.”
Russell whooshed out a laugh. “Thank God you know! I was trying like hell, pardon the language, to think of something admiring to say about it. Well, I’m glad you people are bad at something. It makes you a little more human.” He smiled, and then frowned, and paused, gnawing at his lip. “So this library. Do you still have… books?”
“Oh!” The question startled Caleb, but he could see the logic in Russell asking. So much had changed; why not books too? “Yes, we do. Come by and I’ll show you some time. In fact…” He glanced quickly over at Russell. “If you’d like—well, I could give you a tour of campus this evening, if you want.”
“Really?” Russell beamed like a Cheshire cat. “Yes, I’d like that very much, Mr. O’Connor.”
Caleb laughed. “You can just call me Caleb.”
“Can I?” A sudden smile. “Do college students mostly call each other by their Christian names, then, in the future?”
“By their first names. Yes.”
“The girl students, too?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, how wonderful. I’m glad Americans have kept that informality, anyhow.” Russell was leading the way down the attic steps, speaking over his shoulder. “In books from England, relations between the sexes are so stiff and formal. Let’s see, I had better get my coat before we go…”
Caleb had gotten so used to Russell’s Civil War uniform that he had almost forgotten it. Now it struck him forcefully now how odd it would look out on the street. “Do you have any other clothes? Any modern—”
Russell looked embarrassed. Caleb was mortified. Of course Russell would be wearing modern clothes if he had them.
But then Russell said, “Yes. Mr. Huber bought me a whole trunkful practically. Only I feel so queer wearing them, like I’m going to a masquerade, so when I got back here I changed into my own clothes. But of course if we’re going out, I’d better wear the future costume.”
“You don’t have to. Campus is basically deserted right now.”
“No, I’d better. I’ll have to get used to it and I may’s well start. Will you come down and have a look-see at what I’ve got? I don’t seem to put them together just right.”
So Caleb trooped down after Russell into a cavernous kitchen. A fire burned low in the stove. With a few sharp pokes and the addition of a log Russell had it crackling merrily again, filling the room with a delicious warmth. “D’you want something to eat?” Russell asked, opening up the cupboards. “Mr. Huber loaded me down with vittles. There’s a ham, and a loaf of bread, and canned soup—what the boys would have given for that on the march. Or do you want coffee? I can make a mean cup, Katie taught me how. Or flapjacks, she taught me how to make those, too. Or there’s some cookies—”
“I’ll take a cookie,” Caleb said. Russell snagged a packet of Oreos from the cupboard, and they both munched away as Russell unpacked a suitcase onto the table. A gray flannel suit, a black wool coat, some nice slacks, a couple sweaters. Button-down shirts in old-fashioned patterns. No jeans, no t-shirts except thin white undershirts like old men wore.
“Are they all right?” Russell was looking anxiously in Caleb’s face.
Caleb almost lied. But he swallowed that first impulse, and said, “Some of them are out of date. I guess they’re the kind of clothes that Mr. Huber wears, probably. But it doesn’t matter for tonight,” he added. “There’s no one on campus. The college doesn’t open again till after the New Year, and we can stop at Ayres to buy you a few extra things before then.”
“Ayres?”
“The department store.”
Russell opened his mouth to ask, apparently thought better of it, and asked instead, “What should I wear?”
Caleb picked out an outfit: chinos, white button-down shirt, blue sweater, black coat. Without further ado, Russell started shucking off his clothes: first his coat, then his shirt, leaving him bare-chested but for an oval locket on a chain.
Caleb stared, and looked away, and thought that looking away was probably even more obvious, and fussed at Russell’s new clothes to give himself something to do.
Of course Russell didn’t have any physical modesty around other men. All those 19th century paintings of men swimming naked together, clearly men in the past just stripped off…
God, it ought to be illegal for anyone to be that beautiful. He had lovely broad shoulders, beautifully molded upper arms. He was very lean through the chest, with his ribs showing at his sides. He had been working hard on short rations for a long time.
There was a long scar on one side, and Caleb blurted, “How’d you get that scar?”
Russell touched it, a touch that was almost a caress: he was proud of it. “Grazed by a bullet. Another inch and it would’ve been the end of me. Who wouldn’t be a soldier, huh?”
Then Caleb saw another cut, half-healed, on his left forearm. “And that?”
“Oh, that’s just the bayonet wound.”
“Bayonet wound!”
“Well, like I said. That’s what set the curse ticking. Only a scratch,” he added, “which is just as well, for it’d be pretty bad to sleep a hundred years and wake up just to die because you’ve been stabbed in the gut, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes. Is it—? Have you—?” Caleb was trying to think of a polite way to ask if he’d cleaned it, because he knew Civil War medicine had been pretty rough.
“Yes, Mr. Huber put iodine on it, which must’ve done me good, because it burned like the fires of Hell.” Russell took off one boot, and Caleb saw that he had small feet, and the thought popped irrepressibly into his head: was it true that small feet meant small…? “Are these boots all right? Or had I better wear the boots Mr. Huber bought me?”
Russell gestured as he spoke at a pair of army surplus boots over by the table. Caleb fixed his eyes on them. “Yes, you’d better wear the new ones.”
Apparently Caleb wasn’t going to learn the answer to his question, because Russell didn’t take off his drawers. They were the old-fashioned kind, so long they were practically another pair of pants, not giving anything away like tighty-whities.
Russell pulled on the chinos, fumbling a little with the zipper, which after all he must have seen for the first time just a few days ago. He managed the fly after just a couple tries, thank God, so Caleb didn’t have to offer to help. The rest of the clothes posed no problems, and soon he was slinging his army belt around the waist of his coat.
Caleb lifted a hand. “You’ll have to leave the revolver behind.”
Russell’s hand went to the gun. “Why?”
“People don’t usually walk around armed these days. I think you’d need a permit to carry it, actually.”
“A permit.” Russell sounded astounded. He hesitated a long moment, then shrugged and unslung the belt. “Well, I guess Aurora’s not full of secesh bastards who want to shoot my head off,” he said, a little uneasily. “Do I look all right?”
“Yes.”
“Just like anybody else?” Again there was a touch of wistfulness in his voice.
“Yes.”
“Till I open my mouth anyway. I sure sound foreign, don’t I?”
“I guess times have accents just like places,” Caleb said. “Are you ready to go?”
“I just need a hat.”
“People don’t always wear hats these days.”
“I’ve seen. But it’s cold out there, and I don’t intend to let my ears freeze off!” Russell found a stocking cap and plunked it down on his head, and inspected his dim reflection in the window. “Do I look like a college student?”
“Yes.”
“More than I look like a fisherman?” Russell sounded so doubtful that Caleb couldn’t help but smile.
“Yes,” Caleb assured him. “You look fine.”
“Well, then,” said Russell, and gestured onward expansively. “Virgil, lead on.”
