A DREAM WITH FATHER

Once back in our room, I tumbled onto my bed and into a fitful sleep. Sometime after midnight I awoke. There in the dim light was my father, leaning against the doorway. He put a finger to his lips and pointed at Albert’s snoring form. He smiled and beckoned me with a cupped hand. 

I struggled to my feet and trudged after him. As he tiptoed down the hall, I was reminded of how he had played hide and seek with me and Jared and Horatio. I started giggling. He feigned a stern look that only turned my giggling into raucous laughter.

Now the two of us were sitting on the bench where Mrs. Powell had uttered her confession. He leaned forward and put a hand on my knee.

“Not a comfortable place to be in, son.”

I released a sigh and said, “I do not know what to do. Maybe the worst part, Daddy, is that you’re not going to tell me. Even old Augustus, were he standing there snorting in the cold, would tell me.”

“I would never presume to speak for Augustus, but you are right; I can’t tell you what to do.”

“I understand. I do. But perhaps you could tell me how you dealt with one of your own dilemmas.”

“I could do that.” 

For the next minute I gazed at the mists of his breaths drifting  into the air. Then he scowled and began speaking  very slowly.

“This happened long before you were born, Harry. I had recently returned to South Carolina after completing my medical training in New York. A mother and father who owned a farm not far from ours had brought their pregnant daughter to me. She was no more than 14. Her parents were understandably disturbed about this. At the very least, they wanted a physician to look after her until the baby was born.” 

“Lot of young girls get pregnant back home.”

“They do, son. But this was before the war. During the war thousands of soldiers foraged and pillaged and had their way with women and young girls.

“It took me a while to learn what had happened to Mathilda. She was a shy creature not prone to talking much, especially if her parents were present.”

“Wouldn’t expect her to be. Probably ashamed she had brought this burden on herself and on her parents.”

“I thought much the same. But as I had occasion to observe her more and more, I sensed something else. I could not put my finger on it, but I knew it was more than embarrassment. Some deeply imbedded pain. And I so wanted to help her uncover it and cast it out.”

“What’d you do?

“I don’t know as I did anything but show her as much kindness as I could. Then one day, when neither of her parents was around, she came out with it, all in a rush.” He sighed deeply, shook his head, and stared at the ground.

“She told me that her uncle, the husband of one her mother’s sisters, had dragged her into the woods one day and raped her.”

“And she was too afraid to tell her parents?”

“Told her he’d kill her if she did. I remember holding her as she sobbed and wailed. Once she settled down, she swore me to secrecy. I was to tell no one. No one at all.”

“Awful for her. Awful for you, too.”

“It was. It was horrible. For several days I wrestled with what I should do. Then one morning I hitched up the buggy and drove it out to the man’s farm. When I arrived, he was plowing a furrow in one of his fields behind a large horse.” 

I knew daddy was capable of intensity, but what I saw at that moment was of a different order.

“He was a brute of a man. A third again my size and hard-muscled the way men are who have labored in fields all their lives. As I walked towards him, he looked at me blankly until recognition dawned on his face. I suspect his deference for physicians and other learned men gave me the upper hand with him.

“When I was about a foot away from him, I shoved him hard in the chest and shouted, ‘I know what you did to Mathilda, you disgusting swine of a man.’ I expected him to feign confusion and lack of understanding. He did not. He just stood there, staring at the ground and making a soft keening sound.” 

Daddy looked at me and let his head sway back and forth like the pendulum of a clock. I put a hand to the back of his neck and gently squeezed.

“Just as I was about to threaten him with great harm if he ever so much as looked again at Mathilda, he stopped his moaning and said that, come the morning, he would be gone from the region, never to return.”

“And was he?”

“He was.”