did what she so frequently could not help doing, she glanced at a newspaper on the table beside her, and began to read the articles. Since everyone around her was admiring the parade, she was free to read, but not, she thought, free to pick up the paper and open it in the midst of a celebration. The dispatches related that American ships had landed preparatory to taking Santiago. As for Puerto Rico, victory belonged to the Americans, for General Miles had taken San Juan without resistance. Then there was an article about the fate of a two-headed bull-calf born in Montgomery County (died at three months), and an article about the extension of the MKT Railroad somewhere in Kansas. At the bottom of the page was another headline and part of an article, “County Man Returns from Mexico Expedition”:
Little did Andrew Jackson Jefferson Early, of this county, suspect, when he was growing up on Franklin Street, that he would someday travel the world and consort with famous and prominent men. Mr. Early is an astronomer. Before he journeyed to the mountains of central Mexico, the world was a different place. We had the sun, the moon, and the stars. We had Mr. Harriman and Commodore Vanderbilt, but we never had these last two gentlemen at the same time. Now, in effect, we do, for Dr. Early’s expedition has discovered something we would not have suspected to be possible in God’s grand Creation.
Beside the print was a photograph of a man that she thought she recognized, but perhaps it was only that he looked much like all the other young men she knew, the arching brow, the straight vertical of the nose, the square chin. He was wearing a hat in the Western style; his glance was direct and challenging. Unfortunately, she could not ascertain what his great discovery might be, because a man picked up the paper from the table beside her and carried it off. The Earlys were well known around town as Rebel sympathizers, too prominent and wealthy to end up as bushwhackers, but not the sort of people John Gentry socialized with. Margaret seemed to recall that there were many boys but no girls in the family, and that when the father had died (what was his name? Patrick?), the Rebel sympathizers had turned out in great numbers for the funeral, and John Gentry remarked, “There was another one who was never the same since the war.”
Outside the window, the Union soldiers (numbering fourteen) had passed, and the brass band, and now came a row of wagons. The first of these bore a pile of hemp, upon which sat girls from the orphanage dressed in white and carrying bouquets of daylilies, black-eyed Susans, and a few late shrub roses. After these girls came Mr. Alexander’s wagon that he got from a circus. It was pulled by a team of four grays with red ribbons braided into their manes, and into it he had loaded his best white sow and her squealing piglets. Then came the tobacco wagon that some of the local farmers kept in a barn somewhere. Margaret could smell the fragrance of the leaves as it went by.
She regarded Robert Bell and Beatrice. He was staring out at the tobacco wagon, but he had his hand on the back of Beatrice’s chair. She was fanning herself. She glanced at him. Even sitting down, Beatrice could nearly look him in the eye. Then Margaret saw her mother look at the two of them and away, then shift in her seat and adjust her skirt to cover her feet. Lavinia’s hair, which had once been so thick that she could hardly pin it up, was more manageable now, but she was the sort of woman who did not age, just as John Gentry, who was seventy-five, seemed closer to sixty. It was Lavinia’s oft-repeated lament that the supply of men in the county was short. There were numerous grandfathers, but husbands, fathers, brothers, and sons were scarce.
Beside Margaret, Elizabeth leaned forward to watch the troop of horses go by. Whereas Beatrice was dark and tall, Elizabeth was brown-haired and small-boned, with a turned-up nose; Margaret thought she was beautiful. Beatrice had no dimples where they should have been, Cupid’s-bow lips (her best feature), and large hands (and feet). But Beatrice had a way about her. Her smile was slow, her movements were slow—not as if she were lazy or sluggish, but more as if she had