mom hasn’t made you memorize all of your ancestors?” I grinned at him.
“Come on.” He rolled his eyes.
“I wish I was joking,” I said. “Your grandfather used to test me at dinner, and if I didn’t answer right, I didn’t get dessert.”
His eyes widened. “Betsy would throw a fit.”
“I don’t doubt that.” I turned my attention back to the picture. “Yeah, those two are Obadiah and Charlotte. Married in the fall of 1843.”
“Mom says it’s important for us to know our family’s history.”
“It is,” I agreed.
I wanted to tell him that it was more important to know the truth about our family’s history than it was to memorize whatever rhetoric his mom and grandparents were giving him, but I kept my mouth shut. Sharing what I suspected but couldn’t prove to a twelve-year-old about his family would’ve been wrong on a lot of levels. If, once my film came out, he and I got the chance to talk, I’d be a little more open with him about what I’d found.
In all honesty, from what I could tell, he was a smart kid who paid attention to things. If my film exposed my family’s lies like I thought it would, he’d probably remember us going through these boxes and start putting things together. What he’d do when the family started bad-mouthing me was anyone’s guess, though. He was only twelve and seemed to have his father’s non-confrontational personality. Of all people, I could understand the position he’d be in.
None of that mattered if I was wrong, though, so what I needed to focus on now was using this information to figure out exactly what the truth was about my family and our history here in Savannah.
“My history teacher this year says we’re going to do family trees and find out if anyone in our family fought in the War.” Les set the picture down next to the box. “It wouldn’t be anyone in this picture, right?”
I shook my head. “Obadiah wasn’t quite forty when the war started, so he probably could have if he’d been in better health. If I remember my history right, he was in some sort of accident as a kid and lost one of his eyes. The other only had partial vision.”
“He doesn’t have an eye?!” Les sounded equal parts horrified and curious. He looked more closely at the picture. “How come he doesn’t have an eye patch? It doesn’t look like he’s missing an eye.”
“He’s probably wearing a glass one.”
Les’s head snapped up, and he stared at me. “A glass eye?”
I chuckled as I reached into the box for a folder. “It’s not as uncommon as you’d think. It probably would’ve drawn less attention than a patch. Either way, he would’ve been fairly old to enlist, but his sight gave him a better excuse.”
“Did we have any relatives who fought?” Les asked.
“We did,” I said. “Two of Obadiah’s sons were killed in the war. Geoffrey and Robert, I think. Your great-great-great-great-grandfather, Luke Calvert, was too young, though. He missed the war by a couple years.”
“Do you think he minded?” Les leaned against the table, the picture still in his hands. “I mean, I know Pawpaw talks about what an honor it would’ve been to fight for the South, but I don’t think people who haven’t been in war can really know how they would’ve felt, you know? Maybe they’d be good at fightin’ and all that, but maybe they wouldn’t want to kill anyone, and that’s not a bad thing, is it?”
Damn. The kid had good questions.
“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “I think a lot of it would depend on if you believed in what you’re fightin’ for.”
Les nodded, a pensive expression on his face. “I think I’m gonna go read a book.”
“All right. I’m going to take a look at more of this stuff. If you need me, I’ll be in here.”
Les nodded, and as he walked out, I wondered how much reading he’d be getting done or if he’d be thinking over our talk for a while. When I opened the folder and saw what was on the top of the stack of papers, however, Les was pushed right out of my head.
The yellowed, wrinkled page was inside a plastic sleeve, which made me less wary about picking it up, but it definitely didn’t help with the spidery, faded handwriting. It’d take a while to decipher exactly what information about my family this document held, but the printed letters at the top were