Francis

Francis

“The world is off again,” said the man in front of me.

           The man in front of me didn’t lean forward to emphasize his point. He didn’t raise his voice, or even vary his inflection. He just stated his opinion—no, his feeling—in a very slow, even way. The way you might expect a young child to tell you how the word dog is spelled or that two plus two equals four. Just straightforward and simple.

           “What do you mean?” I asked.

           He shifted a little in the large, velvet wingback, adjusting his posture and the two or three old blankets—it was hard to fix the number in the flickering candlelight—until he was about as comfortable as he could get.

           “Meant what I said, son,” he replied. “The world is off again. Off.” He paused for a moment, thinking. “Trouble is coming. Big trouble. Like what we had last century and like what you had less’n twenty years ago.”

           It took me a good long while to respond to that. Not because I had to do the math. I knew what he was talking about. Anyone living in town could tell you that. Almost anyone in the country could tell you that. It was the enormity of the claim that gave me pause. The pure, unadulterated strangeness of the remark.

           The first event he’d mentioned, the trouble he’d had in the last century, had been nothing less than the American Civil War. And the trouble that had occurred less than twenty years ago? Well, I’m certain you can do the math on that one. The Great War.

           The Civil War and the War to End All Wars.

           And he had just claimed that bigger trouble was coming.

           Which was, I decided, a patently ridiculous thing to say.

           It also, in my opinion, made the little man in the old chair, well, a bit hard to take seriously.

           Right then, I hated my editor for sending me on this assignment. Really and truly hated him.

           You see, my name is Alexander Moore and I’m a reporter for the Burdock Intelligencer, which is to say that my editor pays me a pittance and I run around doing little bits here and there that he can use to fill the space the big stories don’t need.

           Like earlier this year, back in March, when FDR announced his First New Deal. Remember that? It was the speech with the line about fearing fear. Great line. Really great. One of those big, memorable lines. The kind that people quote for decades or maybe centuries. Sometimes correctly, but mostly out of context.

But I didn’t write that bit.

Tim Hornsby got that story. Took most of the front page. Except for the half inch on the bottom left, under the fold. I got that space, and I filled it with a two-line obituary for Ol’ Doc Griffith, the man who’d served as town physician for the better part of fifty years.

And just two weeks ago, on December the fifth. Remember that day?

Of course you do. We all do.

That was the day that the 21^st Amendment was finally ratified, and we could all lift a glass again.

I didn’t write that story either.

Tim’s brother, Killian, got that one.

I was granted the opportunity to write a whole two column inches about Burdock’s newly appointed town bird that week.

It was the Baltimore Oriole, by the way. Town referendum passed by a vote of 236 to 1.

And this week?

Three days after the Chicago Bears defeated the New York Giants by a score of 23-21 to win the national football championship at Wrigley Field on the strength of a Bronko Nagurski touchdown pass and a Bill Karr lateral reception.

That what you’d think I would be writing about.

But I’m not.

Phillip Freese is writing that story. Editor even got him on a bus to the Windy City to talk to Red Grange and George Halas.

What I got was a note telling me to walk on up to the old Coreau place on Walnut and interview Burdock’s oldest living resident.

So, that’s what I did. I walked myself up to the largest house in town, knocked on the door, and inside of a quarter hour, found myself sitting in a candlelit room stuffed full of antique furniture and carpet and books and the odd scrap of memorabilia while listening to Burdock’s resident centenarian tell me there’s bigger trouble than the Civil War and the War to End All Wars coming down the road.

“What’s your name again?” he asked.

“Moore,” I said. “Alexander Moore.”

He nodded, just a short, efficient movement of his head. “And you’re here, why?”

I started to stutter out an answer. I managed to force a full syllable or two from my lips before he started chuckling amiably.

“It’s okay, son,” he said. “That editor of yours sends someone up here every Christmas season. Been doin’ it for years. Just must have someone check on ol’ Francis Coreau. I suppose you drew the short straw this time.”

“Yes, sir.”

He smiled. “I don’t suppose you really want to be here, either. Want to be out writing about this Hitler fella or the big game, don’t you? Something worthy of your time? Something that makes for good readin’, I dare say.”

It was my turn to smile, and blush.

He laughed. “I figured as much. Young kids never want to sit and talk with the, ah, exceptionally old, shall we say. Never. I know I didn’t. Not when I was ten. Not when I was twenty. And not when I was your age.” He paused, eyed me closely. “How old are you, by the way?”

“Thirty, sir.”

He leaned his head back in the chair and, for just the briefest flicker of time, I saw his eyes shift out of focus.

“Thirty…” his voice drifted along in the dark room, bounced off the polished walnut shelves and the teak desk and the high, ornate ceiling while the amber light of the dozen or so candles danced and shoved the shadows around. “Thirty…”

“Yes, sir. Thirty.”

I’m not sure he heard me repeating myself. As a matter of fact, I am certain he did not. He was off someplace else, wandering through his own memories, trampling through time. I could see it, on his face, I mean. The way his features tightened up and the way his mouth drew in on itself. The way it would if you sucked on a particularly sour lemon.

“Big trouble comin’, Mr. Moore. Bigger than anything I ever saw.”

“Pardon me?”

His face relaxed, his eyes fixed, first on the wall behind me and then on my face. “What was that?”

“You keep saying that big trouble is coming, Mr. Coreau.”

“And so it is, Mr. Moore. So, it is.”

“Bigger than…”

He cut me off. “You know what I was doing when I was your age?”

I paused, doing the math. Seventy years. Francis Coreau would have been thirty years old in 1863. There was only one thing I supposed he would have been doing in 1863 and I said so.

“That’s right, Mr. Moore. The Civil War. Started out as a private, made it as far as captain by the time it was all over. I was out there on the extreme left flank at Gettysburg under Kemble Warren and Strong Vincent. Exchanged musket fire with the rebs all day long, we did. John Hood’s boys, if I recall properly. Took three charges from ‘em. All down the line. From us, stretchin’ all the way out to Chamberlain’s fellas from the 20^th Maine.”

I was familiar enough with Civil War history to recognize the last name. “Chamberlain? Wasn’t he the…”

Francis laughed and nodded. “Yes, he was. That was the feller that really saved the day. Him and his boys ran out of ammunition after the first three waves and charged bayonets right into the fourth wave.” He paused. “One of the damndest things I’ve ever seen. All those boys in blue racing down that rock-strewn hill, dodging trees and musket fire and screaming bloody murder the whole way. And not a handful of shot left among ‘em. Not a handful.”

I think it took a great many moments for the import of what Francis had just said to sit properly in my own head.

This man, this very, very old man, had just claimed to have fought at Gettysburg. And not just at Gettysburg, but at the one, defining location most Americans had heard of.

Little Round Top.

I’m not certain I believed it right then. Not right at that exact moment.

It wasn’t that it was impossible.

Just, improbable?

No, that’s not quite right.

Unbelievable.

That might be closer to the mark.

It was unbelievable.

And maybe that is because I’d never met a Civil War veteran before. They weren’t exactly a dime a dozen nearly seventy years after the fact.

“You don’t believe me, do you, Mr. Moore?” Francis was looking at me, one of his thin, white eyebrows up. “Don’t blame you. I wouldn’t believe me either.”

There was another one of those good long pauses, during which I could hear the flickering crackle of the candles as they burned away.

“I can prove it, you know,” he said. “Actually prove it.”

“What do you mean?”

He pointed at his nose with one of his bony fingers. “See this flat spot, right here on the bridge of my nose?”

I nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“Broke my nose in two places that day, back in July of ‘63. Cannon fire, you see. Solid shot. First blast threw me into a tree. Second one bounced me off the rocks I was hunkered behind.”

“But…”

He raised his bony hand. “I know. I could just be makin’ that up. Could have just busted my nose in fisticuffs as a young man.” He leaned forward in the deep chair and loosened his collar. He yanked the collar open to reveal a thin, jagged scar running up from his collarbone and over the back of his left shoulder. “Got this that day, too. Shrapnel. From cannister shot later that afternoon.”

He slumped back in his chair. “But that doesn’t prove a thing either, does it? And neither would the healed up old holes in my right leg. Got those on the last day, when they’d moved us and the Maine boys to the center of the Union lines. Got those when Longstreet sent ol’ George Pickett up the middle and covered it all with the biggest damned cannonade I ever saw. That wouldn’t seal the deal either, now, would it?”

“Begging your pardon, Mr. Coreau, but no. It doesn’t.”

He smiled, a wide, knowing grin that pushed the deep lines on his face around. He reached a thin hand out to the table next to his chair and tapped a small, tin box resting there.

“The proof is in here, if you want to see it.”

“If you don’t mind,” I said.

“I don’t,” he replied. “One condition.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Its asking a lot,” he warned.

“What’s the condition?”

“You can’t write about anything you find in this box. Not a word. Can’t tell anyone, either. No matter what happens.”

To say I was confused at his condition would be a great understatement. To hear his caveats, you’d think that I was going to open that little tin box and find a handwritten note from General Hancock or Abraham Lincoln rather than the pile of dusty old pictures and letters people usually stuffed away in such containers.

“Do we have an agreement, Mr. Moore?”

“Excuse me, sir, but…”

“Do we have an agreement?” He repeated the question, a little more firmly this time, tapping the top of the tin box to emphasize each word.

I looked at the box. I looked at him.

I shrugged.

This little visit was only worth maybe a full column inch and that was usually reserved for some sort of announcement that yes, good people of Burdock, Mr. Francis Coreau is still alive and kicking.

I nodded.

“I need to hear you say it.”

“I agree,” I said.

He stopped tapping the tin box and let his hand rest on the lid. He smiled and nudged the box towards my side of the little table.

“A word of advice, if I may?” he said.

I slid the box closer and nodded.

“Touch only the papers and pictures, Mr. Moore. Just the papers and the pictures. Nothing else. Do not touch any of the objects you may find in that box.”

“I don’t understand.”

He looked at me, shrugged, and turned to look at the candles on the desk. I pulled the box into my lap and worked to unlatch the lid. It was tight and a little bent and it took three tries, but I finally cracked open the lid and looked inside the box.

It was exactly what I had expected.

At first.

A handful of letters tied up with a thick, black ribbon.

“From my late wife, Mr. Moore. Her name was Ophelia.”

I think it was the way he said it, with that wistful, whimsical swaying of the voice that comes from a place in the heart that has known brilliant, unconditional love and deep, soul-crushing heartbreak, that made me put the letters to the side, unread.

I found a stack of papers and pictures below the letters. I looked at Francis and he gestured for me to continue. I began sorting through the pile.

I immediately regretted having agreed to his terms.

There was proof to support his claims. Plenty of proof.

Pictures of Francis Coreau with other men in uniform. Mustering orders. Pay tickets. Handwritten requests for supplies—mostly rations and ammunition and blankets and such. There was a commendation signed with the name ‘G.K. Warren’ and there was even a photograph of a much younger version of the man in front of me standing next to a man I immediately recognized as General Hancock.

I looked up at Francis.

He was smiling at me.

“Why don’t you want me to write about this?”

“I have my reasons, Mr. Moore.”

I kept shuffling through the pictures. Faster. Francis with Hancock. Francis with Warren. Francis with Chamberlain.

Francis with…

Good heavens…

Mr. Francis Coreau with Abraham Lincoln.

“But, Mr. Coreau…”

He waved a finger. “You agreed, Mr. Moore. You agreed. And a man must keep his word.”

I dug into the little box again, my mind racing.

This was…

Astonishing.

Amazing.

Unbelievable.

I was sitting next to a living, breathing human being who had touched President Lincoln, who had clasped hands with the man.

I dug further into the box, anxious, excited, and wanting to see more. Somewhere, in the back of my mind, I was trying to frame an argument that would persuade Francis to let me write this story, to tell his tale.

I heard a small rattle at the bottom of the box and I did what any excited human being would do, I dug for it. I pulled some more papers out of the way and found…

A bullet.

A Minie ball.

A small lump of conical lead that a Union soldier would have fired from a rifle.

I reached for it.

I touched it.

A great flash of light enveloped me. The chair I’d been seated in vanished in a great whooshing and twisting of wind. My hands flew to my eyes, rubbed at them, tried to force them open, tried to refocus on Coreau’s old library, convinced that there had been some sort of explosion.

When my eyes did open, when they did focus, I saw that I was not in the Coreau mansion. I was not, in fact, in any building. Francis Coreau was gone, along with his library and candles and the wingback chair with the blankets.

I was on a hill, out in the intensely hot sun, surrounded by trees and rocks and dirty men in thick, woolen uniforms of dark blue, each one holding a long rifle with large, fierce-looking bayonets perched on the ends.

I looked at them.

They did not look at me.

Somewhere, way down along the line to my left, someone screamed.

“20^th Maine! Charge! Bayonets!”

The man next to me poked me with his elbow. I looked at him. He was looking at me. He pointed off into the wood line, excitedly.

“Francis! Are you seeing this? Looky what those boys from Maine are fixin’ to do!”