How We Ate During the War by Alysa Salzberg (that summer book .txt) 📕

Help me tie them!”
We had no time to lose, because each man was breathing and who knew when he’d wake? We got them hog-tied without thinking of it, though we’d never done such a thing before. Benjamin rested on the ground, able just to lift up his head and see beyond the two fallen bodies he’d been lying on.
My mother and I rode into town. We had no carriage and no way to carry him, so Benjamin stayed behind.
When we returned, we breathed easier. The men were still unconscious and tied. Benjamin was in his chair on the porch where we’d left him. We’d brought back a captain of the guards and some others with us, and they soon rounded the deserters up into a wagon, and led them away with the barrels of their rifles. They’d take them all the way to the jail, get what information they could from them, and, I knew, in a matter of days the men would be executed, and never again would they be seen on the dirt road.
By evening, the rain had let up, and Benjamin lay as always, a pile of limbs like something in a bin at a rag shop.
That night, we tried to eat as little as possible, but my mother gave Benjamin a far larger portion than she normally would have.
When he retired to his room, my mother leaned conspiringly towards me. “You know,” she said in a low voice, “I always thought that boy was a burden. But now, I see that he’s quite the opposite.”
The next morning when I awoke, she rushed out of the library at the sound of my footstep upon the bottom stair. Normally it was Benjamin or myself the first awake in the house; my mother seemed, in fact, to have not slept at all last night.
“My dear Eliza,” she came to me smiling. “Please take this letter to town and post it.” I did as I was told. When I returned, Benjamin was on the porch. I nodded at him and went into the house to start my chores.
A little while later, my mother went out to speak with him. “Good afternoon, Benjamin”, I heard her say. “Please come to the library; we have something to discuss.”
She came inside to our dark foyer, and he wheeled and dragged himself after. I watched from the parlor, not sure where I was meant to go.
Benjamin couldn’t close the library door behind him, so I heard every word. It was time, according to my mother, for Benjamin to pay his debts. It was time for him to do what he could do to support our family. “Miss Eliza and I are near-starving, you know,” she added. And what she proposed was so incredible, that I couldn’t help but admire her and her steel will and her ways of being quick-witted about making a profit. They left the room after about an hour. I could perceive a fire in my mother’s eye, but Benjamin was past me before I could see anything much of him.

A few days later, a knock on the front door woke me, and when I came downstairs to answer, there was a crowd of people trampling the grass of our lawn.
My mother breezily came past me, and opened the door wide as if to let the sunlight over the threshold. “Welcome, everyone,” she said. “My, what a crowd! Please take a seat on the lawn. The show will begin shortly.”
A rough, strong-looking man I’d seen once in town, came to the door and he and my mother nodded at each other. “Collect the money,” she said.
He went around as she’d ordered, taking coins from each person once they’d settled themselves on the grass.
Benjamin wheeled out of his room at the noise, unsurprised. Once they were outside, my mother called to the strong man and he lifted Benjamin – chair and all – and placed him on the path. Then, he stood in front of him, and yelled threats and insults.
Well, if you live anywhere within a hundred miles of our old house, I’d say you know what happened: with the same extraordinary strength he’d shown a few days before, Benjamin hurled himself out of his chair, and onto the man, who (perhaps not entirely involuntarily, I’ll allow), fell to the earth. The crowd cheered and roared.
In a week’s time, we found ourselves in a sunlit field just outside of town, with another strong man facing Benjamin down. This time, my mother had procured a grey uniform from somewhere or other, and someone had sewn together a mock-up of a Union one. Benjamin wore the grey, and at my mother’s command, he launched himself at his foe costumed in enemy blue, and beat him directly, to wild applause.
This all continued for a while, taking us farther and farther from home. I got new clothes, my mother did as well, we stayed in the finest hotels and inns, and ate more than our fill. She had playbills made up, with medallion images of Jefferson Davis in each corner, and in the center, an image of what was supposed to be Benjamin, but what looked to me more like a strange comet or star, flying fast towards the chest of an immobile enemy.
But eventually, novelty fades. Within a month or so, my mother made another decision: let people volunteer to fight Benjamin. I would have thought there would be hesitation, on account of his being a cripple, but always there were two or three who came forth. And now it got harder, because these men, unfit for war, were searching for glory any way they could. They fought hard outside in the stifling heat. They didn’t always fall at first, and Benjamin scrambled and flung his legs at their torsos, hanging from their necks by his good right arm.
Often, he lost. He came out of each fight with bruises, or bleeding from some part or other. Months passed, and he was thinner than usual, though there was always so much food on our table, and when he was in his chair these days, he didn’t look out – though now there was so much more to look at. He kept his eyes lowered, and said even less than before, though he always greeted me when I came into a room, with a “Hello Miss Clary.”
One morning I looked at him across the victuals-laden breakfast table. His right hand brought food to his mouth so slowly. It was sunny; he would fight this afternoon. Often I wondered what had given him the strength to fight that first time, and all the fights after. He felt my gaze and his eyes rose almost to meet mine.
I turned and looked at the sky outside the window, hoping for rain.


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Publication Date: 01-30-2010

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