Рита Браун - Tail Gait

West stood up, Piglet intently studying his master’s face. “What you are, Captain, are damned good soldiers.”

Grins appeared on the rebel faces. These cocky Brits thought they’d roll right over them, or, even worse, they thought most colonists would stick with the Crown. Hearing the battle raging below, the Americans liked the acknowledgment.

Captain Schuyler and his men surrounded his small harvest of captives. “Jacob, each one of you men take a musket.” Jacob and the others did as ordered.

The long march to an uncertain future began.

As an officer, Captain Schuyler walked with his British counterpart. He was intent on showing these people the rebellious colonists were civilized and understood the rules of war. Looking down at the corgi, he asked. “What is his rank?”

Despite himself, West smiled. “Private Piglet, Captain, eager to do my bidding.”

Voice low, slightly conspiratorial, Captain Schuyler replied, “Ah, now there’s a good soldier.”

Piglet, pleased, trotted along. Cannon fire could be heard at a distance, mostly from the rebels’ side. The British struggled to haul their big guns over the uneven ground. The little fellow was not afraid. He had liked Angus, would remember him in his fashion, for the older man would occasionally share a biscuit with him, speak to him in his accent, a soothing sound.

Piglet knew war as well as any canine, and he would protect Charles to the death. Through searing heat, driving rain, biting sleet, and heavy snows, Piglet didn’t care, as long as he was with his young man, a battle-hardened young man with a heart of gold. Even this terrible war couldn’t kill that, and Piglet knew it. But then dogs know the things about humans that humans work to conceal from other humans.

On that day, October 7, 1777, Fate tossed together three lives. Lieutenant Charles West, Captain John Schuyler, and Piglet, three lives that would be entwined until their own deaths years later. What the American Captain Schuyler knew that neither Lieutenant West nor Piglet could imagine was that an old order was dying and a new country was being born.

April 10, 2015

Long, low, pale golden rays washed the western side of the stone wall around St. Luke’s graveyard. Many of the souls therein had been sleeping since shortly after the Revolutionary War. The church itself—of hand-laid stone, much of it pulled from the fields—matched the deceased in age. The architect of this peaceful symmetry had fallen in love with central Virginia and a young Virginia beauty while in a Revolutionary War camp a few miles away. Three arched walkways connected the church at one end and the rectory office at the other. St. Luke’s inner quad was bounded on the north by the main arcade. At each corner the two shorter arcades created a quiet rectangle; a longer arcade duplicated the front arcade. The proportions of this old rectangular plan were graceful, simple, timeless. The shorter arcades were anchored by one-story stone buildings with the handblown glass wavy in their paned windows. Originally used as classrooms, one lower school and one upper, the space was now used by different church groups. The men’s building reposed on the north. The women’s sat on the south, each a duplicate of the other, as with the arcades. The men’s building was so clean one could eat off the random-width heart-pine floor, a cleanliness that had each wife wondering why this was not the case in her home.

Bordering this inner quad was a large outer quad, big enough for football games and gatherings in good weather. The far border was the graveyard, enclosed by a gray stone wall, the same stone as the church’s structures.

From the large quad, the pastor’s house was to the left of the graveyard. The dwelling had grown over the centuries, with additions as well as a two-car garage. Originally a stable with living quarters overhead, the parsonage had been constructed of clapboard painted white. Its shutters were midnight blue, each with a cross cut into the top.

As St. Luke’s was a Lutheran church, it was high church, but the décor, while testifying to a brief flirtation with gilt, was more subdued than that of the Catholic church down the road. However, it was not nearly as barren as the local Church of the Holy Light.

Inside this delightful, warm home, a dinner party brought together friends. The Very Reverend Herbert Jones, at long last emerging from the shadow of his wife’s death, had decided to entertain this evening. Although his wife, a great beauty in her day, had passed away seven years ago, it had taken the good man that long to rebound.

Inside, Harry and Fair Haristeen, D.V.M.; Susan and Ned Tucker; Nelson and Sandra Yarbrough, both dentists; Professor Greg “Ginger” McConnell and his wife, Trudy; Marshall and Joyce Reese; and Paul and Anita Huber all sat in the simple, pale yellow living room with Reverend Jones and his dear friend, Miranda Hogendobber. After Harry’s mother died, Miranda was a surrogate mother to her and a good friend to all. Miranda also possessed a singing voice touched by an angel, a voice in the service of the Church of the Holy Light, an evangelical house of worship.

The caterer could be heard at work in the old country kitchen.

“I don’t know why you didn’t let me cook tonight’s repast,” said Miranda, looking quite nice in a peach dress.

“Because then you’d fret.” Herb smiled as Lucy Fur, a Lutheran cat, leapt to the back of his big easy chair.

“I’ve forgotten how lovely this house is,” Trudy remarked. “Like walking back in time.”

“Well, at least there’s no television in the living room,” remarked Susan, in her early forties. “Drives me crazy.”

Harry, Susan’s friend since cradle days, reached over to pinch her. “Oh, Susan, everything drives you crazy.”

“There, she said it, I didn’t.” Ned laughed. Ned was the district’s representative to the state legislature, which he usually referred to as the House of Burgesses, as it was known before the Revolution. He also, not for public consumption, referred to it as “the Asylum.”

“She’s a perfectionist in everything, but most especially deportment,” Fair complimented Susan, using the word his mother had always used to chide him. In his head, he could still hear the voice: “Pharamond, a gentleman always walks to the outside of a lady. In this fashion, should a conveyance drive through a mud puddle, he will be besmirched, not she.”

And so, since age five, Fair had always walked on the outside as well as performing all the duties a Virginia gentleman was supposed to perform. These duties were ironclad, regardless of race, religion, age, or class. His father’s way of enforcing the same standard was to mutter, “Don’t be a dolt, son.”

All of the assembled that evening at Reverend Jones’s home had been raised with strict rules of behavior. While other parts of the country might see such rules as imposing on their self-expression, every Southerner knows that the way to truly insult someone is with impeccable manners. One slight shift of tone, one turn of the hand, jingling coins in a pocket, could be like an arrow shot from the bow. While none of the people there dwelt on it, each one knew manners provided vital information on social and emotional levels. To not know them was like reading with one eye closed.

The Lutheran cats, however, were under no such dictates. At that moment, Cazenovia was in the kitchen, clawing the leg of the caterer in hopes he would drop a morsel. “Damn cat,” the caterer was heard to exclaim.

The Reverend Jones rose, entered the kitchen to confront the unrepentant calico. “Where are your manners?”