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A Novel
by Jon Clinch
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"So when did the creature expire?"
"Shortly after dawn. Suddenly."
"We should expect no miracles from it, I suppose."
"Father?"
"No resurrection, I mean. After three days of mourning."
"Father, I shall miss him and I shall miss his song."
"The trees are full of birds," says the colonel, taking up a drumstick. He dismisses her with a wave of its greasy stob. "Now away with that one, before you spoil my digestion entirely."
Julia wonders if the young lieutenant will visit today. She knows that she has no right to make even so light a claim upon him, no right in all the world, but she wonders all the same. Her mind does the knowing and her heart does the wondering and there is no clear way to reconcile the two.
She steps out onto the porch and takes a seat on the swing. Its chain creaks under her weight but then it always creaks, even in the littlest breeze. The sound of it is a constant around here, like work. She places the bird beside her and idly caresses his little round head with one finger. In life, Birdie had no patience for such treatment. That she can accomplish it now is a broken dream come true, and it draws a tear to her eye.
She dabs away the tear with the back of her hand, wondering again or perhaps still if the young lieutenant might be planning to visit today. He could be on his way even now. Anything is possible. He first came to White Haven at the invitation of her older brother, Fred, his roommate at West Point. Fred thought the world of the lieutenant and said so by way of introduction, and Julia has thus far found no reason to differ. In recent months the lieutenant's appearances have become increasingly frequent—two or even three times a week, whether her brother is on the premises or not, he will ride the five miles from Jefferson Barracks so as to pass a pleasant hour or two—and although he always pays his respects to the colonel, she is becoming quite certain that visiting with him is not his only aim. Far from it. The truth is, he enters her father's presence with the sturdy gloom of a man going into battle, and he takes his leave like a prisoner set free.
She dares not think that he might be coming on her account. She dares not think it, and yet think it she does. She thinks it and she desires it and she wishes it with all her bereft and birdless heart, squeezing her eyes shut and gritting her teeth and sending that message out into the ether as if the lieutenant might possess some mystical receptor that would let him detect it and interpret it and, based upon its urgency, stir himself to the heroic action of her rescue.
It takes him until the middle of the afternoon. She is upstairs, looking out her bedroom window, the bird wrapped in its white linen and lying on the sill. He arrives without ceremony astride an anonymous army horse that seems to know her way and to be in no special hurry, judging by how she idles along the farm lane, nosing at the bits of grass that sprout up around the fence posts. She turns in at the gate and makes for the wooden trough alongside the barn, and her rider permits her. He sits the horse while she drinks her fill and then he dismounts and ties her up loosely and proceeds to the house. Everyone knows him and he greets them all one after another, hired man and slave alike. He glances at one point toward her window but she cannot tell if he sees her or only the reflected world. The look upon his face in that instant—in half shadow beneath the brim of his hat—is impossible to read.
"Lieutenant Grant," cries Jule from the foyer at his knock, and upstairs Julia hears the words with the very soles of her feet.
His old roommate's little sister. If there could be a plainer and less romantic connection than this, she cannot imagine it. She sits on the end of the bed and looks out the window, chewing her lip and bemoaning her fate. His old roommate's little sister. It is a poor place to start. Yet he has come once again, has he not? He can be no more than twenty or thirty feet away at this very instant, dutifully and deferentially making small talk in the sweltering oven of her father's dim, hot, airless office. She ought to rejoice in his nearness and in the promise of his calling on her once the colonel is finished with him. She ought to rejoice in this as she rejoices in so many aspects of the charmed life she leads. She is a most fortunate girl, after all—in good health, adored by her family, and secure in the sheltered and bountiful world of White Haven. She should appreciate the gifts she has been given, and not go seeking trouble. She settles her mind on this idea and she lets her gaze drift—from the fields to the barnyard and from the barnyard to the walk and from the walk to her own windowsill, whereon lies the bird. Yes. It is Birdie's death that has her in this wounded mood. That's all there is to it.
Excerpted from The General and Julia by Jon Clinch. Copyright © 2023 by Jon Clinch. Excerpted by permission of Atria Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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