Christmas Bells (9 page)

“It looks pretty awesome now,” Jeff breathed as they watched it float off, moving up and away, following the street as if a tiny navigator was aboard. They exchanged quick high-fives, then instinctively began to follow in the lantern's wake, quickening their pace as it picked up speed. “Dude, I thought it was supposed to go up.”

“It
is
going up.”

“Not
straight
up. It's also going down the street.” A note of panic came into Jeff's voice. “It's going toward my house.”

“It'll start going straight up again when the wind dies down.” But the wind wasn't dying down, and soon they had to break into a jog just to keep up with the lantern. Alex tried to jump up and grab it, but it soared along at least six feet over his head.

“It's going to land on my roof,” Jeff shrieked, but he was wrong, because the plastic bag got tangled in the branches of the willow tree in the front yard before it could reach the house. Alex slowly backed away, watching in horrified fascination as the plastic bag folded over upon itself and came to rest on the burning
cotton balls. Soon flames began to lick the branches and travel lazily from one to another.

He was aware of Jeff yelling and sprinting for the house, and soon he came running back dragging the garden hose. As the flames multiplied, Alex shook off his shock and ran to help him, and fortunately they both had very good hand-eye coordination, proving that all those video games weren't a waste of time after all. Eventually the lantern, the willow tree, and they themselves were thoroughly soaked. The fire was out, and as Alex sank to his knees on the wet grass, he realized that neighbors had come outside to their porches and driveways and were watching and pointing. Jeff's mother had seized him by the shoulders and was scolding him, and Alex's mother was striding across the street, her hands balled into fists, her expression grim.

Jeff wasn't allowed to play with Alex anymore after that, even though they had been best friends since first grade. “That boy needs professional help,” Jeff's mother told his mom crisply the next day when she brought Alex over to apologize. He had to pay with his own money for the arborist, who was sort of like a doctor for trees, but the willow would survive, which was a relief because Alex had never intended to hurt the tree. He hadn't intended any of the stuff that had gone wrong.

The worst part wasn't upsetting his mom, although that was definitely very, very bad. The worst part was telling his father the next time they video chatted. His dad looked so disappointed and worried, all Alex could do was lower his head and blink back tears and nod as his dad urged him to be good, to think things through, to make better choices, to remember that he was supposed to be helping his mother, not giving her more things to worry about.

“I'm sorry,” Alex said, and he really, really meant it. He said it over and over again but it didn't make anything any better.

•   •   •

He had to do better, Alex told himself as Lucas led the choir through what felt like the longest warm-up in choir history. He hated the heavy, sick feeling that filled his stomach whenever he had done something bad and he knew everyone was mad at him. He wished he could talk to his dad and tell him that he would definitely do better. He wouldn't make his mom worry anymore. He would do something for her, something special for Christmas, something to make her smile again, a good surprise to make up for all the upsetting ones he had sprung on her ever since he was little, but more often since his dad had gone away, which was exactly the opposite of what he should have been doing.

He felt so awful that he had to look away and blink furiously so he didn't cry. He spotted his mom, motionless and pale, sitting in exactly the same position as when she had sat down. Then he saw Miss Sophia, smiling as she took off her coat. Instinctively he waved, and just as he remembered that he shouldn't, she gave him a tiny wave back, followed by an amused look of warning and a quick shake of the head. Alex quickly turned to face front again, just in time, because at that moment Lucas stood up. “Well done, kids,” he said. “As soon as Miss Sophia arrives—”

“She's over there,” Alex interrupted, pointing. Lucas jumped, and the sopranos giggled, and soon Miss Sophia joined Lucas at the piano. She made a bad joke about being fired, which wasn't funny at all, but then rehearsal really began, and Alex was singing with his friends and a bunch of other kids he didn't know as well and also his sister, who really did have a beautiful singing voice and probably wasn't as jealous of him as his vocabulary homework had made it sound. And she was pretty smart too, so if he asked her to help him come up with a perfect Christmas surprise for their mother, she probably would.

The more he sang, the happier he felt, until gloomy thoughts
of burning willow trees and disappointed parents and the stupid broken Internet in Afghanistan faded to the back of his mind. He felt himself filling up with music and with the promise of Christmas only a few short days away, and even though his dad wouldn't be there, Alex would make the holiday better for his mom and Charlotte. He didn't know exactly how, not yet, but he would.

April–July 1861

While Massachusetts and other Northern states promptly organized volunteer troops in response to the president's call to arms, the governors of Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, and Virginia declared that they would furnish no regiments to make war upon their Southern brethren. Then, on April 17, the same day Henry took his sons to watch the Eighth and the Sixth Massachusetts Militia depart Boston for Washington City, delegates in Richmond voted in favor of secession. The loss of Virginia was a terrible blow to the Union, and the other rebellious states surely rejoiced, for it was only a matter of time before the new independent commonwealth of Virginia added its military and economic might to the Confederacy.

Charley avidly followed reports of the Sixth and the Eighth Massachusetts Militia as they traveled by rail to Washington, and he seemed to know their movements before anyone else in the household. From Boston they had gone south to New York, where they had spent the night, and where the next morning vast crowds of cheering citizens had lined Broadway waving flags, banners,
and handkerchiefs to send the volunteers off with great fanfare as they marched to the Hudson Ferry. Later that evening they arrived in Philadelphia, where they were welcomed with the pealing of bells, a grand display of fireworks, bonfires, bands, artillery salutes, and the glad applause of thousands of loyal citizens.

By all accounts, the troops' commanders did not expect such a warm reception in the next city on their route—Baltimore, about forty miles northeast of the capital. Although Maryland had remained in the Union, it was a slave state, and the city's loyalties were sharply divided. Even before the attack on Fort Sumter, Henry had read stories in the Boston papers of boisterous demonstrations in the streets. One day Union men would march through the city singing “Hail Columbia” and waving the Stars and Stripes; the next, Southern sympathizers would parade, singing “Dixie” and waving home-sewn flags bearing the South Carolina palmetto or the three stripes and seven stars of the Confederacy.

“Why didn't the militia travel by steamer?” Fanny asked when ominous rumors warned that thousands of Marylanders, clamoring for their state to follow Virginia out of the Union, were plotting to block the passage of Northern troops through Baltimore. The city had a history of mob violence, so the rumors could not be lightly dismissed; moreover, due to laws prohibiting the operation of steam engines within the city limits, upon arrival at the President Street Station, Washington-bound trains would be towed by teams of horses several blocks west through the city streets to Camden Station, where they would resume their journey by locomotive. The system, merely inconvenient in peacetime, was potentially disastrous in war.

“I suppose the generals decided that the railroad would be swifter,” Henry replied, “and time is of the essence while Washington City lies unprotected.”

“I trust that's the right decision,” Fanny said pensively, and
although she said no more of the matter that evening, Henry knew she was anxious and full of doubt.

All too soon, Fanny's worries proved to be prescient.

“Father,” Charley shouted two days later as he burst into the house carrying the evening papers. “The Sixth Massachusetts was attacked in Baltimore!”

“No, no, no,” Henry murmured as he bolted from his chair and strode from his study to the foyer, where he met Charley, wide-eyed and quivering with excitement as he scanned the headlines.

“The soldiers that we saw off at the State House were attacked by a mob,” Charley exclaimed as Fanny, Ernest, and Alice rushed to join them. Henry took a paper from the pile in his eldest son's arms, Fanny took another, and the children craned their necks, reading over their shoulders.

Ashen-faced, her gaze fixed on the page, Fanny pressed a hand to her throat. “Was anyone hurt?”

“They say two soldiers were killed, maybe more,” said Charley, “and a few civilians too.”

“What about the Eighth?” asked Ernest.

Charley shook his head. “The papers don't say. I think they were still in Philadelphia.”

“Let's pray they escaped the melee,” Henry said grimly. If there was any lingering doubt that their nation was at war, the deaths of the Massachusetts soldiers had abruptly dispelled it.

Over the next few days, as rumors spread and were quashed and fact could not always be distinguished from wild speculation, the truth of what had unfolded eventually came out. On the morning of April 19, the Sixth Massachusetts had left Philadelphia on a train bound for Washington by way of Baltimore. The commanders had been informed that their passage would be impeded, and they had warned their men that as they made their
way through the city, they would almost certainly receive insults and abuse, and might even face assault—all of which they must ignore. Even if they were fired upon, they were not to fire back unless their officers gave the command.

The train carrying the Sixth Massachusetts had arrived in Baltimore unannounced, and several train cars carrying a few companies had made their way through the city without incident. But word of the soldiers' presence had spread quickly, and soon a hostile crowd had converged upon them, shouting insults and threats as their horse-drawn cars had pressed onward. Then the mob had torn up the train tracks, forcing the last four companies of the Sixth to abandon their railcars and attempt the crossing on foot. Immediately, several thousand enraged men and boys had swarmed them, hurling bricks and paving stones; from upstairs windows, other angry citizens flung dishes and bottles down upon them as they passed. The soldiers had marched onward at quick time, but when the furious mob had blocked their path and one rioter had shot a pistol into their ranks, they had opened fire upon their assailants. As the frenzy escalated, a man waving the flag of the Confederacy had become a rallying point for the mob, more shots had been fired, and the wounded had fallen bleeding to the ground amid screams and chaos. Eventually the soldiers had fought their way to the Camden Street Station, and after other sabotaged railway lines had been repaired, the train and its battered and bloodied passengers had sped off to Washington.

At least three soldiers and nine civilians had been killed and scores more injured on the streets of Baltimore. After the federal troops had escaped, the frenzied mob had turned its rage upon government property, destroying railroad tracks leading to the North, burning bridges, and severing telegraph lines. When the Sixth Massachusetts had finally reached Washington City, they had discovered that they were the only troops to have arrived,
and that the destruction in Baltimore had completely isolated the nation's capital from the rest of the Union.

For six days Washington City stood alone, stranded, imperiled, and surrounded by enemies, with the Sixth Massachusetts its sole defenders against an attack by Confederate forces. But the attack, feared imminent, inexplicably did not come, and on April 25, the Sixth Massachusetts was joined by the New York Seventh Regiment, the First Rhode Island, and at last, the Massachusetts Eighth.

Washington City was safe, for the moment, and no longer cut off from the North, but concerns about its vulnerabilities shocked the people of the North into more urgent action. While young men rushed to join regiments and engineers raced to repair the damaged bridges and railroad tracks, governors ordered their newly mustered regiments to the capital and military officers contrived other ways to transport them there, since Baltimore remained impassable.

In Boston, Henry observed a new, energetic, and unified spirit among the populace. News that sons of Massachusetts had been killed and wounded in an unprovoked attack by hostile rebel sympathizers—and on the eighty-sixth anniversary of the revolutionary battles of Lexington and Concord—compelled them to abandon old political distinctions and animosities and to proclaim their allegiance to Governor Andrew, President Lincoln, and the Union. It seemed to Henry that the people's pride had soared to unprecedented heights, for the Commonwealth had endured a harrowing test and had kept faith with their country.

And yet Henry found the talk of war and the martial display woeful and wearying. Faces in the streets were stern and serious. The drums pounded an ominous rhythm. Even the coming of May with its sunshine and flowers and birdsong seemed to him bleak and cheerless. May had always seemed a perfumed word, breathing life, youth, love, song, but in such troubled times, the
air had a bitter gunpowder taste and he could take no pleasure in it. Once, while strolling past the State House, his heart sank when he observed two youths of no more than twenty standing sentry at the gateway. Charley envied young men like them, but he envied even more their counterparts bivouacked in Washington or at Fortress Monroe. He understood nothing of the sadder aspects of war and saw only the glory and adventure.

As May unfurled her beauties day by day, buttercups burst from the grass, the purple buds of lilacs tipped the hedges, and birdsong mingled discordantly with martial drums. Near the end of the month, Henry received a note from a friend, the writer and orator George W. Curtis, urging him to write a national song or hymn to rally the people of the Union behind their great cause.

“Will you attempt it?” inquired Fanny, smiling up at him as they walked along Brattle Street. They had set out hoping that the fine weather and perfumed air of spring would distract them from the war and from concerns over her father's declining health, but after they had chatted of the children and the garden and of their plans to move to their summer home at Nahant on Massachusetts Bay later that summer, the conversation turned back to work and to war.

“I think I'll decline,” said Henry reluctantly.

“But why?” she asked. “It seems to me these dark times call for another great work like ‘The Building of the Ship.'”

Henry patted her arm and smiled his thanks for the implicit praise. He had written the poem in 1849 in response to the growing animosity between slave states and free, when secession was still only a distant threat, a shoal few truly believed the nation would break upon. Its heartfelt call for the Union to endure—“sail on, O Ship of State! Sail on, O UNION, strong and great! Humanity with all its fears, With all the hopes of future years, Is hanging breathless on thy fate!”—was said to have moved Mr. Lincoln to tears when he had first heard it recited.

“It isn't that I wouldn't like to honor Curtis's request, but the command, ‘Go to, let us make a national song,' doesn't inspire me. In fact, it has quite the opposite effect.” Henry shook his head, wishing it were otherwise. “A national song will likely arise in some other way, if not from my pen, then from some other poet's.”

“Oh, I hope it shall be from yours. Who else can move the people's hearts as you do?” She smiled up at him. “The children would be so proud.”

“Ernest and Alice, perhaps,” he replied. “Edith and Annie are too young to understand what their papa does.”

“Charley is not too young. Why do you not mention him? Wouldn't he be as proud of you as Ernest and Alice?”

“Ah, Charley.” Henry sighed, wistful. “You and I both know that our eldest boy is not overfond of literature. He's impressed by men of deeds, not men of letters.”

“Charley admires you as much as the other children do,” Fanny protested. “Perhaps more.”

“He loves and respects me, but he does not admire me.” Henry felt a pang of loss as he spoke the words, for giving voice to his great regret somehow anchored it in truth. “He admires men who fight, who risk their lives for noble purposes, who embody manly courage and daring. And I—” He shrugged and tried to smile, though he knew himself incapable of disguising his true feelings from his wife. “What do I risk in defense of my country? Ink-stained fingers? Injured pride from a scathing review?”

“Courage takes many forms,” Fanny replied, squeezing his arm for emphasis, “and there are many honorable ways to contribute to the Union cause other than fighting on the battlefield. Charley knows this.”

Henry raised her hand to his lips to thank her for her loving reassurances. He wished he could believe her.

•   •   •

Spring blossomed into summer, and the arduous work to build armies and navies continued apace, even as dismaying accounts of skirmishes in Virginia and Missouri, and the inevitable loss of life, appeared more frequently in the papers.

On the night of July 3, Henry invited Fanny outside to the garden to observe the night sky, where a splendid comet blazed in the north, near the constellation of the Great Bear. “If we were less scientific and more superstitious than we are,” he remarked, his arm around her shoulders, “we might believe this to be an omen of a great Union victory yet to come.”

She shuddered. “Or a terrible defeat. Weren't strange, celestial phenomena also considered portents of doom?”

“Oh, surely this one cannot presage anything so dire,” he assured her with mock solemnity, kissing her forehead. “It shines in the northern sky, upon the North. It can mean only great things for the Union.”