Ed nodded, smiling. “And this army we’re all raising is going to be fighting the people who’re after him!”
Ingolf sighed, and rubbed his hand over his short-cropped brown beard, feeling the tug as his calluses caught and wondering when the first gray hairs would show. His elder brother had plenty, and he was starting to sympathize with him as well. It felt odd, after so many years of being a resentful exile.
“And when’s Rudi arriving? The whole bunch going to be with him?” the elder Vogeler went on.
“Ah. . just him and just a flying visit. Time’s pressing. And we’ve got about a battalion with us; call it five hundred.”
Ed ’s brows went up. “More wild-men like the Southsiders? They’ve learned a lot, but dey’re still sort of rough at da edges.”
Ingolf shook his head. “No, no, there’s civilization in northern Maine. Farms und such, at least, couple of towns, a government. They’ve done pretty well.”
“Yah, Yankees then.”
“Ah. . not exactly, Ed. Let’s just say that since our family’re square-heads, it’s going to be sort of like meeting some real old stories.”
The original Vogelers had been from Lower Saxony, though they’d married the usual local mixtures in the eighteen decades since; other varieties of Deutsch, plenty of Norski, some Polak and Czech, even Yankee and Irish.
Ed frowned. “Thought it was all Yankees and Frenchmen there in Maine.”
“Dere’s some Svenska, couple of places named New Sweden and Stockholm and such. Settled back in Civil War times, a little after we Vogelers arrived here in the Kickapoo country. But mostly it’s. . there was this guy named Erik, who started out in Massachusetts, and he. . it’s a long story, that’s what it is. Five hundred good fighting men, though. Rudi has a gift for making strong friends.”
He took out his pipe, and his brother filled his own and pushed over fragrant shredded tobacco in a container made from a section of polished curly maple, and a lighter. Mary ostentatiously coughed and looked revolted as he filled it, tamped it down with a horny thumb and spun the lighter’s wheel and held the flame to the bowl.
Figure I don’t indulge often enough for you to really get upset, darling, he thought.
There was no point in saying it, and the smoking habit had largely died out in Montival. Wisconsin had been tobacco-growing country before the Change, though, and had kept it up. In the old days they’d believed that smoking was bad for you, but there were so many other things that could, would and did kill you now that people didn’t care. Mary simply disliked the smell and made no bones about it.
Not much use in pointing out that that guy Strider smoked a pipe, either, and Gandalf. And all the furry-foot brigade lit up at the drop of a match.
He wasn’t afraid a pipe now and then would kill him. As far as he could tell, a lot of the old Americans had been quivering daisies who thought they’d live forever if only they were careful enough, as if life was worth living that way. Some of them had believed eating butter was bad for you, of all things.
“By the way, Ed, what’s Mark doing all dressed up like he’s off to da wars?” he said instead.
Mary’s eye rolled. “Because he is off to the wars, alae, duh!”
“Ensign Vogeler of the First Volunteer Cavalry?” Ingolf asked incredulously. Mark’s his son, but. . “That’s for real, he’s not just dressing up until they leave?”
Wanda glared at her husband, and Ed puffed furiously on his pipe. They both had the look a long-married couple got who’d chased an argument around in circles long enough that they’d stopped, if only because biting each other on the buttocks was the sole way to continue.
Ed’s tone was defensive: “Look, he is off to da wars. He threatened to run away und join up as a paid-soldier trooper somewhere if I didn’t let him, and he meant it. What am I supposed to do wit’ him, throw him in jail for da next six months? I don’t have enough pull outside Richland to stop someone hiring him.”
Ingolf opened his mouth to say You betcha you should put his butt in jail and paddle it too and closed it again; what Mark threatened was more or less what his uncle Ingolf had done after his grandfather died. Ingolf and Ed had spent six months butting heads before the call for volunteers to fight the Sioux came down from Richland, and he’d leapt at the chance.
“Yah,” his brother went on, reading his hesitation; he wasn’t stupid about people when he bothered to pay attention. “If I locked him up, he’d leave when he got out and never come back. A man has to know what he can do wit’ his sons, and what he can’t. Dad would push us too hard, sometimes.”
I nearly didn’t come back. Wouldn’t have, except for the thing on Nantucket and the way that worked out; I’d have gone on being mad at you until I died, because it’d become a habit. And I’d never have seen Wanda again, or met my younger nieces or nephews, or remembered Mark as anything but a little kid.
He couldn’t even tell the boy this war was an exercise in mutual stupidity like the fracas with the Sioux. He could say it was a stupid thing for a very young man to do when he had a perfectly good reason for staying home, but that was like saying that the world would be a better place if everyone followed the Golden Rule.
Which is true, but deeply fucking useless, because it’s never going to happen.
“Ed. . I’m not sure this is a great idea. Want me to try and talk Mark out of it?”
Ed sighed. “You can try, but he reminds me of you at that age. Or me. He’s getting to da stage where your old man is so stupid the whole world can’t bear it. Or anyone older if they cross him. Yelling didn’t work, even Wanda crying didn’t work for long, and he’s too old to put over my knee.”
“I hear you. Butting at everything like a young ram in the spring, eh?”
“Right. Und he’ll be better off wit’ you. Hell, he’s not that much younger than you were when you pulled the same stunt.”
“Two years. That’s nothing for you or me now, but seventeen to nineteen’s a big jump. He’s got his growth but his bones haven’t knit and he’s not as strong as he’ll be in two years, or as fast. He’s just not damn-well ready yet but he thinks he is. It’s dangerous enough when you are ready.”
“No, he’s not ready!” Wanda cut in. “Uff da! He’s still a child.”
Of course, he’ll always be your firstborn baby boy, Wanda. Ingolf knew mothers thought that way. But you’re right. Just now he’s a kid who thinks he’s a man.
“Yah yah, Wanda, OK!” Ed said desperately. “But he will run off if I don’t let him go! Can you talk him out of it, woman? What’m I supposed to do, break his legs?”
Mutely she shook her head, and looked out the window at twelve-year-old Dave and Melly and young Ingolf and Jenny.
Ed sighed. “And I figure you can keep an eye on him, Ingolf. I’d appreciate it.”
Ingolf felt his shoulders go tight, and his lips; he forced relaxation on himself, using a technique he’d picked up in Chenrezi Monastery, in the Valley of the Sun. It had been designed for more serious things, but it worked for this too.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Ed.”
The older man bristled. “I’ve been in fights, some of them before you had hair on your. . chin! I know-”
“You’ve been in fights, Ed. Yah, in Dad’s day, the upstream raid at Cashton, and against the road-people. You did well in them too. You’ve seen men die, had them try their best to kill you, killed a few yourself.”
For a moment Edward Vogeler glanced down at the table and turned the bowl of his pipe between his big knobby hands, looking at somewhere far away from this pleasant homey room.