Fallen in Fredericksburg Page 3

  “I heard all that,” Uncle Dex said. “As loud as she was yelling, I’d be surprised if every shop owner and shopper downtown didn’t hear her. So what made her think there was a ghost down here?”

  We both looked around. The dogs next door started barking again and I realized they’d stopped once again when the ghost showed up — but they were only quiet for as long as he was here. “Well, it is kind of spooky,” I said. “You know, cobwebs and shadows. And it’s, like, a really old building. Maybe she just thought she saw a ghost. I don’t know. One minute we were talking, and the next minute she ran out of here screaming.”

  “Are you sure you didn’t do or say anything to scare her?” Uncle Dex asked. “On purpose?”

  “No,” I said. “I swear.”

  Uncle Dex shook his head. “You kids.” That was all. Or just about all. “The next time you see her, you apologize for scaring her,” he said. “Even if you didn’t mean to. You must have said something that got her all worked up like that.”

  Julie and Greg came in just then. “What’s going on?” Greg asked.

  “We just saw Belman’s little sister running down the sidewalk,” Julie added. “And boy, can she move fast.”

  “She thought she saw a ghost,” Uncle Dex said, then headed back upstairs.

  I filled them in after he left. Greg groaned. “Oh no! What are we going to do now? She’ll tell everybody.”

  “But nobody will believe her,” Julie said, already sizing up the situation. “They’ll just think she got frightened being in an old scary building, and that she got hysterical, and that’s all. And if anybody asks us, that’s what we’ll say, too. She’s just a little kid after all.”

  “She’s only one grade below us,” I pointed out.

  “Yeah, but she’s still in elementary school and we’re in middle school, and that makes all the difference,” Julie said.

  “Well, I just hope she didn’t scare the real ghost away,” Greg said. “Because I’ve been doing a lot of research and I’d hate for it to go to waste.”

  “So what do we do now?” I asked. “Even if nobody believes Little Belman about seeing the ghost, they’re going to be asking a lot of questions.”

  “We have to get out in front of this,” Julie said.

  “What does that mean?” Greg asked.

  “It means we address it before somebody can ask us about it,” Julie responded. “We tell our story first, and that becomes the story.”

  “And just what exactly is our story?” I asked.

  Julie thought hard for a minute, and then smiled. “We call Little Belman’s parents and apologize. We tell them that it was Greg, dressed up like a Civil War ghost, and he’d been hiding and then he jumped out and scared her. We tell them it was just supposed to be a dumb prank, and we didn’t know she would get so freaked-out.”

  “Brilliant!” Greg announced before I could say anything. Julie turned her smile to him now, and I was pretty sure Greg blushed, which was definitely weird.

  But then Greg added, “Uh, couldn’t we say it was Anderson, though? I don’t want to get in trouble or anything.”

  I shook my head. “Can’t be me. I was the one talking to Little Belman — or getting threatened by Little Belman — when the ghost showed up.”

  Greg looked back at Julie. She knew what he was going to ask before he even said it. “Can’t be me, either,” she said. “I’m a girl.”

  “Oh yeah,” Greg said, blushing again. “I mean, I knew that.”

  The ghost chose that moment to show back up again, suddenly standing right next to Julie and Greg and me, as if it had been the four of us talking casually together all along. And once again, as if on cue, the dogs next door hushed.

  “I didn’t like that girl,” the ghost said. “And if you ask me, little as she is she still might be a Rebel spy.”

  We all stood there and looked at him for a second. He couldn’t have been much older than us, but I’d read that during the Civil War they took soldiers who were in their teens, and some lied about their age and were actually even younger.

  “Uh, I guess we should introduce ourselves,” I said, and I started to say our names but the ghost cut me off.

  “You’re Anderson. That boy’s name is Greg. And the girl is Julie. I already knew all that. Nice to meet you.”

  “Nice to meet you, too,” Greg said. “But we don’t know your name yet.”

  The ghost winced. “Well, dang it, I don’t know it either, so we’re even. But that ain’t why I’m here.”

  “You’re looking for your little brother, right?” Greg asked. He took off his beanie and his red hair sort of sprouted up around his head from static electricity.

  “First time I seen you with that thing off,” the ghost said. “Didn’t know you were a redhead. And yeah, I been looking for my brother and I need you all to help me find him, and that’s the long and the short of it.”

  “Do you know his name?” I asked. “That would be a big help.”

  “ ’Course I do,” the ghost practically barked. “He’s my brother, ain’t he? My own flesh and blood.” He seemed to be getting all worked up, but then he stopped. “Dang. It’s right there on the tip of my tongue. My little brother. We’re in the same unit, doggone it. But I all of a sudden can’t seem to remember …”

  He trailed off.

  “That’s okay,” I said quickly. “We know how it is when you’re a ghost. How hard it is to remember stuff, like even your own name. But we can help you. We have a lot of experience in this sort of thing.”

  The ghost looked doubtful. “You’re just kids,” he said.

  “No offense,” Greg said, “but you don’t look like you’re a lot older than us.”

  The ghost drew himself up, standing as tall as he could, but he was just a couple of inches taller than Julie, who was the tallest of the three of us. “Bigger than any of you,” the ghost said. “And I been in the war. I bet you never been in the war.”

  “We didn’t mean any disrespect,” said Julie. “But we would like to try to help you if we can.”

  That seemed to calm the ghost down. “I thank you for the offer. Does kind of feel like I been waiting for somebody like you all for a while. A long, long while.”

  “It’s been more than a hundred and fifty years since the war ended,” I said. “We call it the Civil War.”

  “That long?” the ghost said. “Who won? I pray it was the Union, but after what happened here at Fredericksburg, over at Marye’s Heights, well, I just don’t know how we could prevail.”

  “But you did!” Greg blurted. “I mean we did! America did. I mean the Union.”

  “Well, glory, glory, hallelujah!” the ghost exclaimed. His grin was practically wider than his face. “Thank you for telling me. Would of hated to hear there was still a Confederate States of America, but it sure was in doubt when I was fighting.”

  “Do you remember anything about that?” Julie asked. “Anything about the Battle of Fredericksburg?”

  “ ’Course I do,” the ghost said. “You think I’ve just been lying around all this time forgetting things? Why I remember every single detail just like it was yesterday.”

  “Like what?” I asked, eager to hear. Greg and Julie leaned in, too. The ghost might not remember his own name, or his brother’s, but it sure sounded like he remembered something.

  But the ghost shook his head. “Dang it. There it is again, right on the tip of my tongue, but just won’t come out.” He stomped his foot like a little kid and ground his teeth together. I thought he might throw a tantrum. But then he sagged, like he was losing air. “Well, I guess some days I don’t remember,” he said sadly. “Like today.”

  “Do you at least remember the unit you were in?” Julie asked. “That would be a great start. We could do some research to see what brothers were in that unit. I bet they have that sort of thing recorded.”

  The ghost blinked. And blinked again. And kept blinking, as if it would somehow trigger a memory —
any memory at this point. That wide grin had totally disappeared, and now he just looked young and sad.

  “What day is it?” he asked, finally saying something. “I mean the date. What date is it? What month and what number day of the month?”

  “December 5,” I said.

  He nodded. “Now we’re getting somewhere. That was the day it started snowing. The year of 1862. Came from out of nowhere. We’d been stuck across the river from Fredericksburg for a couple of weeks, just waiting. We weren’t prepared for snow, not at all, though we should have been. Only it had been so warm the whole time we were here.

  “And I’ll tell you what else I remember about December 5, 1862 — that I was on scout duty, near the river’s edge. The Rappahannock River. The Rebels had blown up the bridges, including this one at a little town just a little ways to the north. The locals called it Foul Mouth. You know it?”

  “Oh, sure,” Greg said. “Only it’s not Foul Mouth, it’s Falmouth. Which I guess sounds kind of the same.”

  “That’s on the north side of the river, just maybe a mile and a half from here,” I added. “The Confederates dynamited the Falmouth Bridge, so the Union troops — you guys — couldn’t cross. They also blew up the Chatham Bridge, which is just a couple of blocks from here, and the railroad bridge, which is just a half a mile east of where we are. But I guess you knew all that.”

  “Where’s the river from here?” the ghost asked.

  I pointed north. “Just one block over,” I said.

  “And where are we exactly?”

  “We’re in Fredericksburg. Downtown, on Caroline Street. At my uncle’s junk shop — I mean antique store,” I said. “It’s called the Kitchen Sink.”

  “And next door is the dog shop,” the ghost said, not asking.

  Greg answered anyway. “The Dog and Suds,” he said. “That’s what it’s called. They groom pets over there.”

  “Maybe so,” the ghost said. “But it’s where I live, too.” He looked at himself — at his dusty blue uniform, tattered and faded and a couple of sizes too big. “If you can call this living.”

  None of us knew what to say in response, so I changed the subject back to what he remembered.

  “You said you were on a scout mission, or scout duty, or whatever,” I said. “Across the river, in Stafford. Near Falmouth?”

  “That’s right,” the ghost said. “And could see the Johnny Rebs, too, on the other side of the river, out scouting for us, I guess. Of course they knew where we were the same as we knew where they were. So finally we came out from the trees and hollered over to them. And they hollered back.”

  “What did you say?” Greg asked.

  The ghost laughed. “Probably told them they ought to just go on ahead and surrender, ’cause as soon as we crossed that river it was going to be all over for them and the rest of Robert E. Lee’s army.”

  “And what did they say back?” I asked.

  “Best I can recall they asked if we had any sugar. Or anything else we wanted to trade.”

  “Trade for what?” Greg asked. I was just surprised that the Confederates would even have something like that on their minds, when the two armies were on opposite sides of the Rappahannock River, getting ready for what turned out to be one of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War. But I guess they were just hungry.

  “Tobacco,” the ghost said. “Once the war broke out, there wasn’t much tobacco for folks up north, and lot of guys in the Union army were dippers and smokers and spitters.”

  “That’s disgusting,” Julie said. “I hope you didn’t do any of that, as young as you are. Or were.”

  “Maybe I did and maybe I didn’t,” the ghost said, suddenly sounding defensive. “Anyway, I’m grown up and I can make my own decisions and ain’t none of anybody else’s business.”

  “Sorry,” Julie said quickly. “But, well, it’s not good for you, you know.”

  “It isn’t?” the ghost said. “First time I’ve heard of that. Who says it ain’t good for you?”

  “The surgeon general,” I said. “It’s written all over packs of cigarettes. And it’s on TV about how bad it is for you. Not just cigarettes, but the other stuff that you mentioned, too. For dipping and spitting and stuff.”

  The ghost was perplexed. “Surgeon general? Never heard of any general by that name. And everybody knows TB is bad for you. Heck, TB can kill a person, and I guess I should know.”

  “No, not TB,” Julie corrected him. “I said TV. Television. It’s like radio, only there are pictures.”

  “What’s radio?” the ghost asked.

  Greg answered. “Just this thing that can carry people’s voices and music and stuff so you can hear it when you’re driving in your car. Unless you’re on your cell phone, or have your music player out and your earbuds in, and …”

  “Could you start speaking in English?” the ghost interrupted. “ ’Cause I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about right now.”

  “Modern stuff,” Julie explained. “We’ll just let it go at that. But you mentioned TB. That’s tuberculosis, right? Contagious disease that destroys your lungs?”

  “That’s what they call it,” the ghost said. “Or else consumption. Or else the White Plague.”

  “And you said you should know it can kill a person?” Julie continued.

  The ghost got quiet again. His voice was practically a whisper. “Right. I did say that.” He was fading — not just his voice, but all of him. I hoped we had time for one more question.

  “But why did you say it?” I asked.

  “ ’Cause,” he said, now mostly gone, just sort of the outline of him left for us to see, and not even quite that. “How do you think Frank and me got to be orphans? It happened to Mama and Papa. They got sent to the sanatorium but they never came home again.”

  And then he wasn’t even an outline — just gone. Greg still shouted after him, though: “Is Frank your brother? Did you just remember? And what’s your last name?”

  I couldn’t help myself. I shouted after him, too, even though I knew it wouldn’t do any good. “And what was your unit in the war?”

  The only answer we got was the dogs next door, barking their heads off yet again.

  I had to get back to check on Mom at the hospital, but Julie insisted — again — that we had to get ahead of the thing with Little Belman first. We looked up Belman’s address and fortunately it wasn’t too far, past the train station and down near the city dock — just half a mile from Uncle Dex’s store. Downtown turned more residential down that way, with a lot of really old houses built before the Civil War.

  We rode our bikes there, though the sun was already sinking low in the western sky and it was getting kind of dark. We parked our bikes in front of a newly renovated Victorian house, with a steep set of steps going up from the sidewalk. Hanging in one of the windows was a banner with a blue star in the middle.

  “What’s that all about?” Greg asked, meaning the blue star.

  “It’s what you put on your house or in your window or wherever to let people know that a member of your family is overseas in the war,” I said. “I think they started it in World War I, and some people still do it today.”

  “Must be for Iraq and Afghanistan,” Greg said. “I wonder if Belman’s dad is over there.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “Or maybe his mom.”

  “It couldn’t be her,” Julie said. “Remember, she was with them at the piano recital where Greg — I mean, where somebody — dropped the eggs and the rubber chicken on Belman’s head?”

  Greg laughed. I changed the subject.

  “So, um, who’s doing the talking when Mrs. Belman answers the door?” I asked.

  Greg and I both looked at Julie. She rolled her eyes. “You guys are such babies sometimes,” she said.

  “Well, yeah,” Greg said, not arguing with her. “But since you came up with the story — and it’s a great story, don’t get me wrong — and since I’m the one who supposedly did this terr
ible thing to this poor little kid — it just makes sense that somebody else should be the one to talk to Belman’s mom.”

  I didn’t say anything. I just wanted to get the whole thing over with so I could get to the hospital. I was feeling guilty that I’d been gone for so long from Mom. For about the hundredth time I checked my phone for text messages, but the only one was what Dad had sent me a couple of hours before saying he would meet me at Mom’s room when he got off work. Of course there was no telling when that might be since Dad works in Washington, DC, and the traffic is always terrible on the interstate driving back down to Fredericksburg in the afternoon.

  “Just come on,” Julie said. “I’ll do it.”

  A woman my mom’s age came to the door when we knocked. She had on an oversize shirt that might have been Belman’s dad’s. She looked tired and sad, and like probably her short hair hadn’t been brushed in a while. But maybe we’d woken her up from a nap or something.

  “Can I help you?” she asked in a soft voice.

  “Yes,” Julie said. “I’m Julie, and this is Greg and this is Anderson.”

  We both said hi. Mrs. Belman nodded to us.

  “We came to apologize for scaring your daughter,” Julie continued, getting right to the point.

  “Deedee,” Mrs. Belman said, I guess just to confirm that it was the right daughter.

  “Yes, that’s right,” Julie said. “Deedee. Anyway, she probably told you she came to our band practice downtown a little while ago and got scared because she thought she saw a ghost, but that was just Greg sort of dressed up like a ghost. It was in Anderson’s uncle’s store, in the basement, which is kind of spooky. Anyway, she ran away before we could tell her it was just a prank. So we’re really sorry.”

  Mrs. Belman didn’t say anything. She just blinked at us, like the ghost had done earlier. At least that’s what she reminded me of. She might have been waiting for Julie to say something else, but Julie was finished.

  After a few seconds, which felt like forever, Mrs. Belman frowned. “That wasn’t very nice of you, to frighten someone like that. Deedee is pretty upset.”