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Episode Tag for The Escape
(Brief Summary of The Escape)
Someone had left a window open and the air coming down the hallway was cool, laden with ozone. Curious, Murdoch ran his hand across the slim brown package waiting on the foyer table. Addressed to his elder son, it had lain there since Frank dropped off the rest of the ranch’s mail that afternoon. His fingertip brushed against the return address. Daniel Cassidy, St. Louis. His breath hitched. So, they’d made it back east after all, and in one piece, if the box in front of him were any indication. An envelope, tinged grey-brown from whatever muck it had been run through, lay beside the package. The return address was faded, marred by an old water stain, but it wasn’t from St. Louis. He picked it up and held it to the light slanting in from the kitchen--New York. Sent months ago from the east, even before the Cassidy’s had arrived.
Boot heels clacked on the tiles, interrupting his thoughts. Murdoch glanced at Teresa, momentarily puzzled by her presence. His eyes strayed to the bundle of towels in her arms.
“Gonna rain,” she said with a simple shrug and a sunny smile. She jostled the towels to one arm and pointed behind him. “Hey, what’s that? Mail already?” She leaned over to inspect the package.
“Daniel Cassidy?” A concentrated frown replaced her smile. “Oh, Murdoch. Why didn’t he just leave well enough alone?”
There, it was finally said out in the open and by a youngster no less. And since he didn’t have an answer for her, he stood looking dully at the package.
“Has Scott seen it yet?” she asked.
A curtain snapped against a wall somewhere and both heads popped up as rolling thunder echoed.
Teresa hugged the towels. “That rain…”
Having been left out of his son’s life until a year ago, there was nothing to do about it until Scott came home. Wordlessly, Murdoch dropped the letter on the top of the table then he and Teresa made for the open window.
~o~
Maria rolled her eyes and held out a hand in front her to fend off the two young men bumping each other through the kitchen doorway. “Mi cocina! ¡Pare a la derecha allí! Just stop!” she said, shaking her head. Her wooden spoon swung down hard on the counter top capturing their attention, then pointed in the direction of their feet.
“Excúsenos por favor, señora.” Scott nudged Johnny’s elbow. “Your boots, brother, are a mess. And now so is the rug.”
“Yeah well, yours aren’t any better. And quit tryin’ to get on her good side by spouting off Spanish.”
Scott’s grin was cut short by Maria’s scowl. “I think we’d better go outside.”
“I’m not going back out there. It’s raining and I’m hungry.”
The tip of the spoon came up and leveled off at Johnny’s chest.
“Juanito…”
He backed up. “Si, si, señora.”
Scott leaned over and whispered, “The great Johnny Madrid…”
“I know better than to tackle an armed female, Scott.”
Maria advanced and Johnny retreated, bumping into the door. His hand found the doorknob behind his back.
“Besides, I’ve got first claim on the bathhouse anyway. You stay here and try out some more Spanish; you need all the practice you can get.” With a slip of smile he was out the door and gone.
The business end of the utensil tipped to him.
“Maria? Murdoch wants to ask you something…” It was Teresa, yelling from the dining room. He was saved from the dreaded spoon.
Maria gave one more disapproving frown and shook her head at him. She left the kitchen as Teresa entered, her voice floating back, muttering in rapid-fire Spanish.
“Did you get that?” Teresa giggled.
“I’m doing better; I caught every fourth word that time.” He looked up to ceiling in concentration. “Something about sons and kitchens…”
“…and knowing enough to stay out of them with muddy boots.” She lifted up a towel and found still-warm tortillas hiding underneath. Snagging one, she tore it in half, nibbling on its edge. “You’re dripping.”
“How about helping me clean this up?”
“How about cleaning it up yourself? There’s a rag in the cupboard next to your leg.”
“Well that’s…charitable.”
“Oh, I think it’s charitable enough that I did the washing today.” She pinned him with a stare. “All of the washing.”
His eyebrows rose. “Point taken.” He opened the kitchen door wide and stepped out to the veranda, placing a foot into the iron boot jack. It came off after a satisfying tug. The second boot came harder. Balancing himself with one hand against the wall, it finally pulled free.
She leaned back on the counter, eyebrows furrowed. “Scott, something came for you in the mail today.”
He hopped over the muddied rug in the doorway and pulled it up. “I wasn’t expecting anything,” he said, tossing the rug outside, “from Grandfather.”
“Better?” he asked.
“Much. You may even get dinner tonight.” She offered him a smile and the other half of the tortilla.
“It’s not from your grandfather; it’s from…Daniel Cassidy.”
Stopping in mid-chew, he felt his previous good humor disappear with the swallow of the bread.
He let her lead him to the foyer. It was hard to tell how long he stood before the small table, his toes curling in his white socks every so often. The normalcy in his world started to slide away, a disturbingly familiar sensation since Dan had shown up at Lancer.
“Scott? It’ll be all right, won’t it?”
He looked up at the small quiver in her voice. “Yes, Teresa, it will be all right,” he said, the words coming out like a promise he really didn’t feel.
He tapped lightly on the package. “It will be all right…”
~o~
For a long moment, all that could be heard was the crackle and hiss of the low fire in the hearth. Dinner had been completed in a perfunctory manner, the dinner conversation mundane and quiet for the most part. He’d been aware of Murdoch sending him furtive glances every now and then over the roast beef. He sighed and slid the still-wrapped package from his lap to the sofa, inadvertently pushing the stained envelope into the seat crevice. His attention was drawn to the window and the smattering of raindrops across its pane. The rain would be moving off soon.
“Scott?”
His father’s voice intruded upon his thoughts. He blinked and realized he still held the letter in his hand.
Murdoch nodded towards the sofa. “That package is a surprise.”
“Yes, it is.” Scott touched its edge briefly. “But Dan was always…a man of his word.” He got up to stand by the hearth and looked into the flames for a moment.
“Including this, after a fashion.” He turned and waved the letter in the air.
“Dan sent that, too?” asked Murdoch.
“He said he sent other letters out, not only to Lewis and Hardy. But this didn’t come from Dan. It’s from Joshua Miller—Captain Joshua Miller.”
Scott turned to the firelight and read.
“I regret to inform you that Lt Daniel Cassidy has written me a letter outlining a betrayal.... I’m writing you in hopes of preventing what surely would be a travesty for all concerned…”
“Cassidy’s visit could have been prevented, if it had arrived in time,” Murdoch murmured.
“Or better prepared for perhaps,” Scott said. “No matter now…” He dropped the letter on the sofa cushion.
“And that package?” asked Murdoch.
Scott picked it up. “It’s…difficult. I don’t need to be reminded of what happened—I was there. Some days it seems like so long ago that it really doesn’t signify anymore…Dan, Libby…the Company.”
“But you can’t forget.”
“No.”
How could he? He’d left friends behind and a promise to them—broken. Perhaps they’d been foolish to ever make the promise to each other, but it had held them together over the rough spots—the long marches, the interminable waiting, the skirmishes…and for the few who survived the battles, even the long internment.
Murdoch came to stand beside him, reaching out to clasp his shoulder in a solid grip. He leaned into the warmth of his father’s hand.
“No one is asking you to forget them, Scott,” Murdoch said. “You do the best you can with what you have…it’s all anyone can ask of a good man.”
This was something he understood. Nodding, he lapsed into silence, looking into the fire.
Murdoch moved off to the sideboard. The glass decanters clinked against each other when his father jostled them. Scott soon felt a nudge on his shoulder. A glass of whiskey was being offered, another was in Murdoch’s hand.
“To memories, good and bad…,” Murdoch said, tipping his glass upwards.
They both turned at the sound of laughter, Johnny’s rolling chuckle and Teresa’s higher pitched giggle, and watched as the pair careened into the great room together. As one, Johnny and Teresa stopped just inside the entryway, sensing the mood within.
Scott looked thoughtfully into his glass, then slowly raised it to meet his father’s. “…but mostly the good.”
His eyes flicked to the window. “It looks like the rain has finally stopped,” he held his drink up, “so I think I’ll finish this outside.” He captured his father’s steel-blue eyes. “Thank-you.”
Murdoch watched him leave quietly out the French doors. The edge of an envelope poked out from its hiding place behind the sofa cushion, drawing his eye. Reaching for it, his hand brushed against the letter. An underlined phrase written in heavy scrawl stood out from the rest of the written page and he smoothed out the paper, reading what Scott had purposely left out before.
“…for your honor, Lieutenant Lancer, has never been in question, not by me nor by those men who gallantly served with you.”
He re-read it then carefully folded the letter into the envelope and placed it upright beside the lamp base.
~o~
Leaving the warmth of the great room behind, Scott escaped to the back portico with the drink in one hand and the box in the other. Holding it loosely, he studied its wrapper. The plain brown paper didn’t reveal any of its secrets, but he knew what lay inside. Admittedly, he was leery of seeing it again. He set the box down and took up his drink, slouching into the chair.
The door slid open on a whisper. The tread was too light for his father—Johnny then. His brother swung into the opposite chair, one hand clutching a mass of sunflower seeds.
“Gonna open it, Scott?”
“I was thinking about it.” He looked instead to the corral and saw the sorrel Johnny had been working with the past few days. It had been caught in some fencing, its foreleg cut to the tendon.
“It looks like he’s going to be all right after all,” Scott said, watching the animal walk.
Johnny popped a shell into his mouth and spoke around it, “A little time, a little care and understanding, it’ll all work out--or most things will.”
“So a little time and care, is that all brother?”
“Just about.”
Scott looked out past the barn and corral to the hills of Lancer. “Johnny…when was your best?”
“Best what?”
He gestured to the pale pink and yellow ribbons of color edging into the horizon.
“My best sunset?”
Scott nodded.
Johnny cracked a sunflower seed between his teeth, spitting the shells out, while he thought. “I’ve had a few here and there. But there was a time after Pardee…. I was still laid up, the house was settled for the evening and Murdoch had just left the room. I got up and opened the windows, craned my neck to see outside. It was special just seein’ it—from my own bedroom—you know?”
Johnny grinned. “Saw more’n a few sunsets back then that way.”
“You weren’t fooling anyone, you know. Murdoch was wondering how you didn’t add a broken neck to the bullet wound in your back.”
Johnny barked out an appreciative laugh, and split another shell.
Scott took the package in both hands and slipped a finger under the binding, the paper coming off easily. He peeled back the flaps. And there it was, nestled at the bottom. A picture of the 83rd, as it was in all of its glory. Just as Dan had promised.
Johnny leaned over and let out a low whistle. “Well, look at that….”
Scott could feel his brother studying him, waiting for the right moment.
“Your turn, Scott,” Johnny said, sitting back into his chair. “When was your best sunset?”
He exhaled. “My best sunset came on the day this picture was taken.” His voice dipped lower. “You know, when we were together, nothing could overcome us. It was for duty…and a promise we’d made to each other.”
He traced the pad of his thumb over the figures. “We knew our place in the world and found it to our liking. Our battle rhythm had begun.” He placed the picture back in the box and shrugged. “But things had a way of changing…”
Scott twirled his etched glass and watched the ebbing sunlight grab and catch at the whiskey. When was the last time he and Dan had shared a drink—or a sunset?
It was an evening similar to this, with welcome coolness brushing against his skin. The sunset was brilliant, even Captain Miller—a man not given to overtures of sentimentality—had remarked on it. The drink came later that night in the back of a tent. After weeks spent slogging through muggy Mississippi air and red mud, they had bivouacked on the banks of the river and been commanded to wait. But Grant had finally requested them, the Captain said, the orders had been sent. So they’d raised their tin cups in a toast to the Company and all of its fine citizens. Little did they realize it would be the last drink they’d have together. It would also be their last sunset for the next long year.
He turned back to the picture and gazed at the rows of young men, their solemn faces giving a false impression—they’d never been that gloomy in real life. Spencer, O’Riley, Thomas, Morris, Huelsman…he could name them all. The good men of the 83rd.
It was time to start celebrating their lives instead of mourning their deaths. Past time, actually.
“Johnny,” he said, swiping a finger across the likeness of a stalwart young man, “this was Sergeant Spencer. He was our quartermaster and the best one a soldier could ever hope for…”
~end~
Mar/’09