When we arrived in Boston, our task was to find the train that would take us on up to Exeter. However, we had at least two days before I was to make my formal appearance at the Academy. I knew that, once we arrived there, I would have to say good-bye to my friends and that I would not see them again until the following June. That was not a happy prospect. So when Jared started cooking up an idea, I was receptive, albeit wary. 

“Harry,” he said, “don’t you got a cousin on your mama’s side who come up here to Harvard a year or two back?”

“Yup. James Faulkner’s his name. He’d be ‘bout 19, maybe 20 years old. Looking to be a lawyer, I believe.”

“You think he’s up here now or gone back to South Carolina?”

“If memory serves, he didn’t go back for the summer this year ‘cause he’s clerking – think that’s what they call it – for some state judge.”

“Then we should look the boy up. He might could show us things we wouldn’t otherwise see.”

“Hold on,” said Horatio. “Ya’ll got me with you, and this boy ain’t no Yankee. How’s he gonna feel about all that?”

“Good point,” said Jared. “What you think, Harry?”

“Truthfully, I ain’t concerned ‘bout what he thinks. All I care ‘bout is he be nice and polite to our friend here. He ain’t, we say nice chatting with ya, cousin, and take our leave.”

“Sorry to be such an anchor all the time for you two.”

“Look,” said Jared, grasping the back of Horatio’s neck with a huge hand. “Let’s get something straight right here and now. You ain’t no goddam anchor. You might be a contrary and troublesome little prick. Sometimes worse than that. But first and foremost, you our friend. Anybody got a problem with that, they can just go piss up a rope.”

“Straight out truth,” I said.

“Means a lot to me,” Horatio mumbled as he looked down at his feet scraping the station floor. 

Somehow we found our way to a horse-drawn trolley with a sign on its front saying it was headed for Cambridge on the other side of the Charles River. Shortly after the trolley passed over the Charles, the driver rang a bell and bellowed, “Harvard Square!”

As the three of us stepped off the back, a tall, gangly fellow dressed in a suit came down behind us. He had something of the country in his bearing. It’s hard to pinpoint what gave me that impression, but I was certain he had not grown up in a city. 

I suspect Jared had a similar impression of the lad because he didn’t hesitate in saying, “Howdy, boss. Was wondering if you might be able to help us find somebody who is a student here but is from down home where we are from in South Carolina?”

The young man nodded and looked at Jared with a face so expressionless it could have been carved in stone. 

“That would be James Faulkner?” he said with an accent I was not familiar with.

“How you know that’s who we trying to find?” asked Jared with a look of stark amazement.

“No one else here among the students I know talks like you boys. Wish there were. James is an easy fellow to converse with. One of the few around here who doesn’t talk down to me and treat me like a bumpkin.”

“Well, we will most assuredly not do that, friend,” I said, touched by his honesty.

“This one might,” said Jared pointing to Horatio. “He thinks he smarter ‘n just ‘bout everybody. Trouble is, he is that smart. Wish he’d do a better job of covering it up.”

“Please pay this fool no mind,” said Horatio as he extended his hand and introduced himself.

“Name’s Zacharia Braxton,” he said as he shook each of our hands. “Zach’s good enough. I suggest we go and pull James out of the library and save him some eyestrain.”

James was surrounded by a stack of books when we approached him. He paid us no attention at all until I coughed loudly and said, “Damn, boy, what you doing up here so far away from home amongst all these Yankees?”

The confused look on his face quickly changed to joyful surprise: “Well, goddam, Harry! I could ask the same of you. We best clear out of here before they figure out who we all are and throw our rebel asses in the clink. No offense to you, Zach.”

“None taken.”

All of us helped James gather up his books and scurry out of the library. Then I introduced James to Horatio and Jared and gave him a quick summary of what we were up to.

“Well ain’t that something. How about we find us a drinking establishment and catch up on things.”

Snickering and smiling broadly, Jared said, “Don’t know, James. Last time the three of us was in such an establishment … well … things got a bit out of hand.”

“That would be an understatement,” I said. “However, I suspect a pub in Harvard Square is a little different from a tavern frequented by bridge workers on the waterfront in New York City.” STOP

Ten minutes later the five of us were seated in a pub that was starkly different from the waterfront establishment. There was some noise but no raucous laughter and shouting. No overwhelming odor of stale beer and sweat. Nor was the bar obscured by large men standing three deep. Nope. Only a few students and professors drinking beer and wine and engaging in scholarly conversation. 

“Gentlemen,” said a female voice to my back, “What’s your pleasure?” 

I could not yet see her, but I surmised from Jared’s smile and sparkling eyes that she must be a comely woman. When I turned to face her, I saw she was not comely; she was ravishing. Tall, buxom, and sure of herself. I immediately began to worry how her beauty, the consumption of alcohol, and Jared’s general lack of restraint might cause us problems.

“Our pleasure, ma’am, is the fact that we are in the presence of such a lovely young lady,” said Jared. 

“Miranda, dear, you best keep your guard up around this gentleman – and I use that term advisedly,” said James. “Like most of us boys from down home, he thinks southern charm will garner him more than he deserves.”

“I wouldn’t worry myself, Jimmy. He seems harmless enough,” she said as she tousled Jared’s hair, making him blush. 

“Now, tell me what you want to drink, fellas, before the proprietor starts fussing at me for too much flirting and not enough barmaiding.”

After we’d given her our orders and she’d walked off, the blush on Jared’s face had not fully disappeared. “Damn,” he said, “I ain’t one to back down from a challenge, but I believe that lady could be more than a cracker like me can handle.”

Horatio and I fixed him with cold stares. “All right. All right,” he said holding up his hands in a sign of surrender. Horatio and I kept staring.

Shaking his head, Horatio turned to James and said, “Harry tells us you been working this summer as a clerk for some judge?”

“I was, but then Mr. Holmes got me outa that and now I’m doing some of what they call ‘research’ work for him at his firm.”

“Who’s Mr. Holmes?” I asked.

“Full name’s Oliver Wendell Holmes. Interesting man. Ain’t that old. Barely 31, but seems older. Dropped out of Harvard his senior year to go fight in the war.”

We all turned to Zach as he said, “Mr. Holmes got to come back. My father didn’t. Killed at Gettysburg.”

We all went quiet. Once again I was reminded of how harsh the conflict had been on so many people, not just those of us from the South. A young man immersed in his studies at college leaves it all to go and see horrors never to be washed from his memory. A boy of 10, maybe less, living and working on a farm in Maine waves good-bye to his father. He waits and waits for him to come back. He never does.

“Goddam the war! Goddam it!” said Jared in a voice so low we could barely hear him.

We smelled her light perfume before we heard: “Here you are, gentlemen. These concoctions should serve to take the glum looks off all your faces.”

“Thank you so much, love,” said James with tears pouring down his cheeks. Then Miranda walked behind him and put her arms around his shoulders and kissed the top of his head.

“I lost a brother at Antietam,” she said. “I’ll never forget him. Never. On the other hand, we all need to get past it somehow, now don’t we?”

After each of us (save Horatio) had consumed several pints of beer, our somber mood began to lift. 

“So, cousin, what are y’all doing for this Mr. Holmes anyway?” I asked.

“What I’m doing is not something I’d call terribly exciting. But I am learning a lot about how the law as we know it today sorta got born and grew up.” 

“That don’t sound boring. Sounds interesting,” said Horatio.

“You think anything what’s wrote down in a book is interesting,” said Jared. 

Ignoring him, Horatio said, “I would still like to hear about it, James, if you are of a mind to tell us.”

“Well, Mr. Holmes is writing this book that’s gonna be called The Common Law. I’m helping him with it. It’s pretty complicated and extremely detailed, but I think what I’m doing is good preparation for being a lawyer. And the man does have one hell of a legal mind. No doubt about that.”

“What’s he like to work for, being that smart and all?” asked Jared.

James chuckled and shook his head. “Good question. At first I thought he was kinda stiff. People up here in New England, they ain’t as friendly and chatty as us southerners. You agree with that, Zach?”

“I do,” he said, with the slightest of nods and no facial expression.

“But, by and by, he’d let a little of himself out, so you could see he didn’t take himself too seriously and that he could make you laugh.”

“How’d he do that,” asked Jared.

Zach began to chuckle and shake his head. James said, “Well, one day he come into this tiny little office where I’m working away on something ‘bout Roman law. He sits right next to me and pokes me in the side to get my attention. Thought he was gonna ask me some complicated question I wouldn’t know the answer to.” More chuckling from Zach.

“But that ain’t what he done. With no smile or nothing, he asks me straight out if I heard the story ‘bout the Texas rancher and the Maine farmer. Told him I didn’t know that one.”

Now Zach wasn’t chuckling; he was laughing loudly.

“Mr. Holmes says the Texas rancher asks the Maine farmer, ‘Tom, how big a spread you got up there in Maine?’ ‘Oh, ‘bout forty acres, give or take.’ Then Mr. Holmes says the rancher gets himself all puffed up and says, ‘Damn, Tom, my ranch is so big it takes me three days to ride round the sumbitch on my horse.’”

James paused a few seconds to let Zach’s laughter subside. “So then Mr. Holmes says the Maine farmer replies, ‘That’s too bad. I had a horse like that once.’ I commenced to laughing so hard ‘bout fell off my chair. Mr. Holmes, he don’t even smile. He picks himself up and walks outa my office without a word.”

“Zach like that, too?” asked Jared. “Make you laugh but he don’t laugh hisself?”

“Only ‘bout three, four times a day.”

“Tell ‘em about the Battle of Fort Stevens,” said Zach.

“Yeah, that was something.”

“What?” said Horatio.

“Well, like I said, Mr. Holmes dropped out of Harvard to go off and fight in the war. So now it’s the summer of 1864 down in Washington, DC, and there’s this big battle brewing between the Union and Confederate forces.”

“Good example of how them rebel boys brung the war up North, like they did at Gettysburg,” said Horatio.

“That’d be true,” said James. “That’d be true. Anyway, seems President Lincoln got the bright idea of riding his horse out to watch the battle close up.”

“Have to allow he was a brave man to go and do something like that,” said Jared.

“You ask Mr. Holmes, he might have a different opinion on that.”

“How you mean?”

“Well, Mr. Lincoln, he was a tall man and he could see what was going on pretty clear by looking over this parapet. But ‘parently he wasn’t satisfied with the view, so he climbs up on this chair so’s he could see even better. Then all of a sudden there’s this volley of rifle fire and bullets are whizzing all ‘round that parapet.”

Zach was chuckling again. Horatio, Jared, and I were transfixed.

“Course, this is not a good thing ‘cause the president and these other high-up officers coulda got killed. So one of the generals up there politely tries to get the president’s attention and talk him into taking cover. That don’t work. Mr. Lincoln was so fascinated he didn’t even hear the general. So Mr. Holmes – he’s just this lowly lieutenant – yells, ‘Get your damn head down, fool, ‘fore you get us all killed!’”

“He said that to the president?” asked Horatio. 

“He did. And you know what? Mr. Lincoln climbed down off that chair in a hurry and took himself some cover. And then one of the generals comes over to Mr. Holmes and starts yelling at him for being disrespectful and that he should apologize to Mr. Lincoln. But Mr. Holmes stands his ground and says to the general that he don’t owe the president no apology for saving his life.

“So then Mr. Lincoln says to the general, ‘Boy’s right, General. Leave him be. I was a damn fool for doing that’ and then he walks over and shakes Mr. Holmes’s hand and thanks him for what he done.”

“Tell ‘em about Mr. Holmes’s grandmother,” said Zach.

“Yeah, I almost forgot that one. Seems his grandmother was a girl of about 12 or 13 in Boston when the British finally pulled out at the end of the War of Independence.”

“Now that is something, ain’t it?” said Horatio.

“I think it is,” said James. “So when Mr. Holmes was little, he’d get the old woman to tell him all what she’d seen during those times. Like a history lesson, ‘cept not out of a book – out of somebody was right there and witnessed it and all.”

“Damn!” said Jared.

“Yep,” said James. “And I guess the old woman had been a feisty gal even when she was little. So as all these British troops are slowly making their way out of the city,  she’s standing on the street and yelling at ‘em and calling ‘em all kinds of nasty names.”

“Seems like Mr. Holmes mighta inherited some of her traits,” I offered.

“Most likely. So this one soldier at the back of the line … he gets all worked up ‘bout what she’s shouting and comes back and points his musket at her and threatens to shoot her if she don’t stop her carrying on. So you know what she done?”

“What ?” asked Horatio.

“That little girl pulled one of them old-time pistols out of her petticoats, and she fired it at the soldier so’s it just missed him. That boy was so surprised he just dropped his musket and took off running and screaming like he’d seen the devil.”

“Hell, I was born too late. I been there,” said Jared, “I woulda asked for that little girl’s hand in marriage straight out on the spot.” 

“Y’all should be so fortunate to meet up with a woman like that, fool,” said Horatio. 

(to be continued)