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stomach twisting. I found it difficult to focus my eyes; everything seemed guarded by a gauzy shroud. I thought I might faint and looked around for a place to crumple.
    We can only wait and see.
    Without thinking I snatched up the dress as if the bed had stolen it from me. I walked to the closet, put the dress onto a hanger, and pushed on the closet door until it clicked shut. For a moment I could hear the clothes swishing back and forth before all went silent.
    I went back to the door. They were out on the back porch. I held my breath and tried to shrink into the folds of my black crinoline. After a few minutes I heard a voice again, but this time the man seemed to be talking to himself, mumbling without reply in a voice that sounded rusty and agitated. I heard just a few words.
Lookout . . . order of battle . . . enfilade . . . skeer . . . wounded.
I wondered what kind of madman talked to himself like that.
    Dear Mama,
    We have lost Martha, who has gone to be united with our Lord Jesus. I was with her to the end, and even as she lay dying she reached out and took my hand and told me that all would be well. I shouldn’t worry, she said, our Savior would carry her home. Then she rose up from the bed a little, looked to heaven, smiled, and then fell back unto death. She was at peace, finally. She was so beautiful.
    He was mumbling about the war. The man had invaded my house because of the war. I had to see him, to know who would dare bring that filthy business into my house, even if he
was
a Confederate. I straightened my dress, smoothing out the wrinkles where my lap had been, and looked in the mirror. I refused to acknowledge the face looking out at me. I looked out the window again and noticed that most of the men had dismounted and one of them was walking fast up the path toward the house, presumably to join his commander. I went to the door, unlocked it, and walked out.
    In the passage the sunbeams from my doorway seemed solid, and the glowing and swirling dust was as substantial as anything I could imagine. I passed out of the light into the brief darkness of the hall and then turned into the spare bedroom the man had just clomped through. Long glass curtains flapped slowly in the window, which was almost as large as a door. I was shocked to discover that the air outside smelled fresh and sweet. I walked to the window to spy on the man without being seen.
    Around the corner of the windowpane a tall and sour-looking man bent over the porch rail, leaning his head out and staring at Franklin in the distance. He pursed cracked lips and rubbed his hand over greasy hair. Before him stretched many acres of grove and farmland, a rolling sea of brown punctuated by an occasional stand of trees, a little creek running into the little river. He held that position and was almost motionless. I thought he might fall over if he were not careful. He wore big black boots that bore the remnants of mud and macadam. He rocked back and forth. Behind him, so close I could almost touch her, stood Mariah.
    The man’s voice was startling.
    “How big is this house?”
    Too big,
I thought
. Bigger than the whole world sometimes.
    “It got eight main rooms, some hallways, and the old wing where the family livin’ now. The rest of us, we in those cabins over there.”
    She pointed at the lattice wall at the end of the porch. I looked about me as if I, too, were a stranger. Yellowing white linen still hung from every doorway and mirror, marking the death of the children who had once lived within. My children, so weak and pure and trusting. At night the drapes looked like ghosts, moving around in the drafts that broke through the walls and under the doors. Mariah had wanted to take them away years before, but I had forbidden her.
    “They got water close by?”
    I noticed how he referred to “they,” as if Mariah didn’t live here. There was something funny about the man, about the way he looked at Mariah through half-closed eyes. He looked like