A Private Rebellion

Christopher Cervelloni

Three years into the rebellion and two years into our marriage, Thomas was shot in the head. A quick death, they said. A pleasant way to die, given the circumstances. The coroner—just a rebel army medic too old to fight—said the same thing when I went to claim the body.

“How does it happen?” I asked.

The coroner pulled down the sheet covering Thomas’s body. “You just confirm it’s him.”

“No, I mean the gunshot. What it’s like to be shot in the head?”

He looked at me funny and said wives shouldn’t hear those things. I asked again and, for the first and only time in my life, I pulled rank. Thomas was a Colonel and I was his wife and for some stupid reason that meant something to these men. The coroner folded back the sheet onto Thomas’s chest and pointed with his finger as he described the killing like a science or biology lesson.

“The bullet entered his head here, and exited the back. It would have passed in and out before his brain tissue even had time to tear,” he said. “Meaning that he was dead before he could neurologically feel pain or worry or fear.”

The coroner explained that it was a relatively large caliber round, and though I didn’t know what a caliber was, it sounded better after I learned. “It traveled so fast,” he said, “that Colonel Bernard was probably dead before the sound even reached his ears.” He tried to convey the comfort I might take, the pride almost, with the ease of a quick and painless death. Of course, it also meant that the back of Thomas’s head was largely gone, and so cremation was only fitting.

I asked my cousin Edward to carve a wooden urn. Nothing extravagant. Something simple, elegant. “We’re not praising a hero,” I told Edward. “We’re laying to rest an average human being. Don’t turn this box into something more than it needs to be.” Edward assured me it would be simple. “I mean it, Eddie,” I said. “Keep it simple.”

Before the rebellion, tourists drove from as far south as Edgefield and as far east as Cold Springs to buy Edward’s woodcarvings. They arrived in cars and even their children wore shoes and they pointed at his woodcarvings. “How extravagant,” and, “What elaborate ornamentation” and,  “What wonderful craftsmanship,” the tourists said. Then they’d pay some ridiculous amount. They never had to care about the price. It was almost as if by charging so much, Edward made his woodcarvings worth more. Everyone knew Edward poached the wood from Mr. Carlisle’s estate in the middle of the night, hopping the fence and felling a tree and tossing logs back over the fence and charging a fortune. But that was before. Before General Konig appropriated The Carlisle Estate, before Thomas was shot, and before the rebellion was lost.

The rebellion had been going poorly in the months leading to Thomas’s death and only got worse after. Bombs never came down in our small town—our town was too small to be of any strategic importance—but we heard the bombs’ rumble and the chattering gunfire echoing in the mountains. Every once in a while, a band of wounded rebels stumbled into town. The women ran to greet them and care for them, mainly looking for their own sons, but treating them all like children nonetheless. Not that they had any supplies to heal the wounded.

The main rebel force hadn’t been in our town since the start of the rebellion—when everyone was calling it a Revolution, a word I never adopted nor accepted. When the army was here, there had only been one major skirmish—the rebels ambushed a government supply convoy—and morale was at its highest, and so the town held a parade and a festival. Of course, Thomas and I weren’t together then. I was just graduated from high school, and I hadn’t seen Thomas since he graduated the year before and heard General Konig’s call for men and left to fight.

Even back then Thomas seemed so much older than me, so much more charming and handsome—so unreachable for that simple, shy girl I used to be. He had bright eyes and dark hair. He did not grow a beard like some of the other boys who wanted to look older so they could drink with the men. And Thomas smiled more. He smiled when he said hello and goodbye. He smiled whenever someone told him a story, even about anything. Thomas always seemed interested. He earned good grades and won school awards and played sports, and when my girlfriends and I used to sit in the stands during soccer practices watching the shirts versus skins scrimmage, I always hoped to see Thomas on skins. I loved him then. Altogether, I had spent only a few hours with him. I knew he knew my name and knew that I was Stephen’s younger sister. I heard once that he mentioned—to whom, and whether in passing or as serious conversation, I’ll never know—that he thought I was pretty. Red hair and freckles and all. He was probably just being nice. Since all my girlfriends were so much prettier, I always doubted he really said that.

In that first year Thomas was gone, there were two boys that entertained me and took me out to dinners. From them I learned how to kiss and where to go to be alone. But they all fell short of the Thomas in my imagination, who loved me and felt just as shy as I did, and one day we would find ourselves alone and he would, shyly, tell me that he loved me and I would, shyly, tell him that I loved him, and then we wouldn’t be shy anymore. While he was off fighting, I fantasized about him more than I thought about the boys I was with.

Then Thomas came back, waving from his spot in the parade formation—second behind only General Konig himself. He casually strolled with the other offices while all the lower ranks marched in step, shoulder-to-shoulder with guns sticking up like toothpicks. No soldier wore the same outfit, and few carried the same type of gun. It looked more like little boys playing at war. They marched down the packed and cheering street, the high school band played, and the stomping feet put the town in a spirit.

Thomas saw me as he walked past, and his facial expression changed. It wasn’t the high-commanding, confident smile he gave the rest of the crowd. His eyebrows went up, his eyes wide, his wave quickened. He made his hands into a megaphone, and over our alma mater’s marching band he shouted, “Claire! Save me a dance at the festival!”

The crowd curled into the streets to follow the last of the soldiers, a new enthusiasm erupting as the citizen-marchers felt themselves part of the Revolution. My friends and I went with the crowd, weaving through slow walkers and parents with children.

“What’re you going to wear?” Rachel asked me. I looked down at my simple dress and back up at her. “Not that,” she said.

“I like it,” I said.

She pressed her dress with her hands. “Silk weren’t so expensive, I might get something other than this ridiculous thing.”

Rachel left to go put on makeup. I never liked makeup, and not just because I never had any. It never seemed to be worth it to me. I never felt any prettier wearing it. Rachel was my best friend back then, and I always thought she was the prettiest, and makeup made her even prettier. Later that summer, she went into the mountains to help the rebellion and was killed when Government forces shelled her encampment. 

Rachel and some other friends and I all gathered together at the festival later. All of us giggling and laughing and so excited to dance with the soldiers because we were tired of flirting with boys too young and men too old.

I waited through three songs before Thomas asked me to dance. He was only an average dancer. He knew the steps, and he never lost his place or stepped on my toes. But his shoulders moved very little, and his arms lurched stiffly. Even his feet, though they moved in time, seemed to clump and jerk—always landing on the beat, but always rushed and in danger of falling behind. But I make this criticism only now that I’m looking back. I had just turned eighteen and the best-looking boy at the dance was dancing with me and I was in love just like stupid little girls are, and so there were no more thoughts beyond that. When he asked me to dance for three dances in a row, I thought I was someone special.

Later that night—this was after the old folks and parents had gone home—Rachel and I stole sips of homemade alcohol from the soldiers’ flasks. The band played the music a little louder and faster. Thomas returned to me and took my hand and led me out of the dance hall.

We walked, hand in hand, to the treed edge of the park, and he pulled a branch aside like opening a door to a mansion and gestured for me to go into the woods. I didn’t ask where we were going and never asked what we were doing. I’d like to think I knew, but I’m sure I didn’t. I lacked good sense not because I was drunk or naive, but because I was a young girl in love.

He kissed me, and I kissed him back. And at first they were soft and romantic kisses, and I thought about how I’d tell Rachel and dreamed how Thomas would have that conversation with my father, and I worried father would make us wait until after the revolution to get married.

He unzipped my dress and unhooked my bra with a snap of his fingers. At first I grabbed at the straps to keep my bra on, but Thomas touched my fingers and shook his head, and I let them fall. He pulled the dress down, and I stood there in only my underwear. I was sweaty from dancing in the dry summer heat and felt self-conscious, but Thomas didn’t care. I felt only my flabby stomach and thighs and covered my breasts with my hands. Again, Thomas put his hands on mine and pulled them back. “You’re so beautiful,” he said, and all my fears diminished. Love does stupid things like that.

The sex hurt just like Rachel said it would, but I didn’t mind too much at first. I was doing it for Thomas. I loved him and he loved me and how could it have been anything but perfect? He was Thomas Bernard, the young Colonel, the man who had always smiled, and I had played this moment in my fantasies over and over.

But all I felt was the dry leaves crackling under my back and Thomas’s weight on my hips. He didn’t smile or kiss me during. But that wasn’t the worst part. The worst was that he closed his eyes. He didn’t look me deep in the eyes as I dreamed he would. I saw only his jerking head and the tree branches high above. He grimaced when he came, and let out a sigh like it had been hard work. He zipped himself up, kissed me one quick peck on the cheek, and handed me my clothes. He didn’t wait for me to put them back on, but dismissed himself as if that was the time for modesty. He waited for me at the tree line, but he didn’t walk me home. I didn’t say anything to anyone on my walk home alone, and I dried my tears and wiped my face before I went inside.

That next day my mother noticed I was different. She didn’t accept my excuses, and maybe she already knew—she at least suspected—what I had done. She and my father sat me down, and I started crying all over again, even before I told them what happened.

My mother let loose a barrage of, “How could you have done that?” and, “What were you thinking?” or variations of it, over and over. My father was unusually pensive, and he asked only, “Do you love him really?”

I didn’t know how to answer that. 

That afternoon father brought me to Thomas’s parents’ house to demand a marriage. Thomas denied anything had happened at all. Thomas’s father said that there was no proof of my accusations and he would not condone any marriage. My father consulted a lawyer, and the lawyer said we could bring Thomas to court and that, even if he was found innocent, the trial itself would be enough to taint his reputation. “Or,” the lawyer said, “it might even force Thomas to pay to keep you quiet. What better revenge, right?”

“I want justice, not revenge,” my father said.

“I want my daughter to be cared for by a husband, not paid to remain a spinster,” my mother said.  

They did not hire the lawyer. No one asked about my broken heart.

For a while, I feared I was pregnant. Then the doctor confirmed I was pregnant. That was proof enough for Thomas’s father, and so legal papers were drafted up and sent off to Thomas—wherever he was. We didn’t know and weren’t allowed to know. Military security, they said. But small groups of soldiers passed through our town once in a while, and they had ways of reaching Thomas—Colonel Bernard they called him. Two weeks later the papers came back signed, and that was my wedding.

News of our marriage spread, and the change was immediate. I was to be celebrated as part of the rebellion—The Revolution, said with a tone that demanded its capitalization. The fighting was going well for General Konig, and thus for Thomas, and thus for me. Thomas’s picture was in the papers and on the propaganda flyers, and there was a hometown pride in him and the rebellion. Maybe only because people could claim to know him or say they were from the same school. It was just like when Kirk Watkins went to the Olympics when I was a little girl. Everyone wanted to be a runner like him. But then Kirk finished seventeenth, and then his family’s business went bankrupt, and everyone forgot about how proud they had been.

General Konig’s wife, a pleasant-enough woman named Francine, helped me move into an abandoned estate down the road from hers. “You’re an officer’s wife,” she said. “It’s not fitting that you live in that hovel with your parents. Excuse my brashness, but that’s just the plain truth.”

Francine hired me a servant staff, the same staff from Mr. Carlisle’s estate. Mr. Carlisle himself was, quite literally, run out of town—he had been astute enough to send his family away south before the grumblings and discontent turned into shooting—and his newly jobless servants cooked and cleaned and cared for the grounds for me instead.

I never liked living at my estate, at least not during the rebellion. I didn’t like commanding the same people I used to see at the market, I didn’t like that my parents were suddenly proud of me, that Thomas was never there to help, that people always thought I was something better than I really was, and I really did not want the baby. I could never say anything like that, of course. In fact, I never really said much at all. I was never good with words, though people seemed to praise me for it. I realized—later, of course; I was still a stupid little girl back then—that any power I had as a speaker came from lack. I rarely said more than three or five vague sentences aloud at a time, even during afternoon tea. This let whoever infer whatever they wanted, to fill in whatever details their mind wished, and they credited me with having delivered them some sort of wisdom.

Hosting tea was a hassle. I had to keep track of who I invited and how many times and who came and what other officers’ wives might be in town. Too much hosting, too many events, too much talking about nothing and ignoring the fact that our lives could come crashing down around us if ever the rebellion took a turn. Of course, outwardly I was not to be anything less than pleased to be Mrs. Thomas Bernard, revered wife of beloved war hero.

“Who cares if you don’t like it?” Francine told me. “I haven’t seen my husband in more than eight months, and I don’t like half the women that come to tea. Why do you think I spend so much time with you?” She laughed at that. Her humor always had a way of hinting at insult. “Our men are risking their lives for us. The least we can do is risk a bad teatime to keep up morale. Still, the men might think they have it rough with the shooting and all, but I dare them to survive a week of afternoon tea.”

The tea parties let me disguise buying the illegal tealeaves—a small amount every day at each vendor around town so no one knew how much of the drug I was really buying. And since everyone knew I always had people for tea, they never suspected. I hosted tea every single day, sometimes twice a day—different guests, of course—and there was a satisfying taste of revenge in each sip.

I stayed in bed for two full weeks when I started to bleed heavily, and the doctor came to visit every day. It was miserable to bear, but so was everything else, so I bore it. It rained that second week I lay in bed, so there weren’t too many questions about why the tea parties paused.

I’m not sure if Thomas ever heard about the miscarriage. It all happened a little over two months into the marriage, and his brigade never came back into town until after the rebellion completely fell apart. We never wrote letters. I don’t know who Francine told, but I suspect she told those who couldn’t keep secrets. Everyone seemed to know I lost the baby, though no one knew how. And then there’s the simple math of forty weeks passing and no baby arriving.

There was no baby to bury, no memorial service to be had, and Thomas couldn’t have come even if there was. I’ve spent most of my life alone and endured most of my problems alone. I understand that’s just part of who I am. But I felt like everyone stared at me in my loneliness, and I wanted to scream. But since the rebellion gave so many other malnourished women worse problems, I could never have made any sort of fuss. And hadn’t Thomas provided everything a good husband should? Did I not have a comfortable bed while many across the country slept on the ground? And did I not have pleasant servants making delicious food while others were scavenging for scraps and raiding government shelters? Wasn’t I one of the few getting what the Revolution had promised to all? How dare I complain? I was the new Mrs. Thomas Bernard, with a rich new life and rising husband. Was I not the luckiest woman in the world?

•

Francine accompanied me to the funeral home. The Funeral Director sat us down in a pretentious room. The molding was intricately carved, and he wrote with a thick fountain pen. But there was a stack of wood in the corner, and the fireplace—though the mantel was quite beautiful—made the room too hot. There were brown spots on the ceiling. The Funeral Director’s desk needed a polish, and we sat on chairs with thinning seat covers. He brought out Thomas’s urn and set it on the desk that separated us. Of course, Thomas wasn’t in the urn yet. At that time Thomas’s ashes were sealed in a thick bag. I’d later have to cut it open with a knife to pour the dust into the urn. Edward’s urn was an ornamented trophy that might fit a soccer ball. Intricately carved with Thomas’s brigade’s insignia on the lid. His birthday and deathday carved into opposite side panels. Designs and patterns everywhere in between.

I asked for a moment alone, and Francine and the Funeral Director obliged.

When I heard the latch click, I started crying. I wanted to scream, to scream specifically at Thomas, and the fact that he could not hear me scream only made me want to scream more. A minute later, I heard the Funeral Director come back in. That is, I heard the door open and then close again. I imagined him walking in casually, seeing me, and suddenly feeling bad and bowing his head and stepping backwards to leave the room, for some reason guilty, as if interrupting my crying was a sin. I knew then that I would be treated that way for the rest of my life.

I picked up the box and moved to throw it in the fire. But a slow burn wouldn’t have been enough. I put the urn back on the desk and took the metal poker from its stand on the hearth. I brought it high over my head, gripping the handle with both hands. I slammed the poker down on the box. The crack was exhilarating. A dark chunk flew from the brigade insignia. There was something cathartic about seeing the evidence of my strike. Another high-held poker and another crack in the wood. I swung the poker and cracked the birthday side; the box spun as it slid across the desk. I swung again and splinters cracked from the deathday. I lifted the poker high again. I brought it down with all of my strength. My feet left the floor. The lid broke in half and fell in on itself. 

I dropped the poker. The feeling was almost surprising. It started with the anger, revenge, degradation. But I started to feel warm and, in an irregular way, both excited and calm at the same moment. And then, almost like a chemical reaction, I started to feel good up my entire body, fizz and effervescent tingling from my middle.

Francine and the Funeral Director stared from the doorway. 

 “Claire! What are you doing?” Francine said.

“I didn’t like that box,” I said. “I want something simple.”

The next day, the funeral procession to the bridge began at my estate. All the mourners waited for me outside, even General Konig came. Everyone wore their best, though their best was still tatters. No one could afford anything, just like before. Most officers, though, and their wives, too, had some finery left over from their time in power. General Konig wore no epaulettes or insignia. He couldn’t have if he wanted to. The rebellion would benefit everyone, they said.

Father stayed outside to greet people while mother helped me dress inside. Stephen, my brother, was there. Edward too. A few women I might call acquaintances and their families. Thomas’s parents and siblings and cousins and compatriots and fans. Everyone there to celebrate the war hero. Several Government soldiers kicked dust at the outskirts of the congregation, their guns slung over their shoulders. As long as the procession through town stayed in control, as long as the songs were mournful and not seditious, as long as heads were bowed in deference and not raised in defiance, the Government soldiers left us alone.

I carried Thomas’s ashes in a simple and solid wood box. The town minister—a young man no older than me at least, and I was only twenty-one then—walked next to me, even though I was not a member of his congregation. From the time I left my estate to the time I came up to the bridge, not one person spoke one word.

I set the wooden box on the high railing in the center of the bridge. I waited for everyone to gather. A semi-circle formed around me. The Minister put his hand on my shoulder.

“Would you like to say a prayer?” he asked. Of course, he meant that he should say the prayer.

I didn’t want anyone to say anything, but I couldn’t say that. I wanted to scatter Thomas’s ashes and watch them disappear into the wind or see the whitewater kidnap them away, and I wanted to be done with it. There was nothing spiritual the Minister’s prayers might assuage. I had once loved Thomas, and then I stopped loving him, and then we married, and then he died. I had been Wife as he had been Soldier. Both lost in service to some so-called greater good.

“Thank you, Minister Wembly,” I said. “That would be pleasant.”

The Minister slid to take the place at the forefront. He lifted his hands high and straight, reaching towards the simple box sitting on the rusted metal railing. The congregation put their hands on each other’s shoulders. Those close to the Minister placed their hands on his shoulders. All bowed their heads. With his booming pulpit voice, he begged Our Creator to look over Thomas’s soul and those that loved him and were hurt from his loss. He broadened his prayer to our families, to the community, and then blessed everyone who had felt the misfortune of the rebellion. When he finished, he folded his hands, and the congregation released shoulders and raised heads.

“Thank you,” I said. “Thank you, each of you, for coming. Thomas knew he was loved, and he loved you all.”

I slid the top off the box. A small curl of ash wafted up. I flipped the box in my hands and shook out the ashes. The wind carried the dust away, and we all stayed silent until it dissolved in water or diluted in air. I put the lid back on the box and set it back on the railing. It went ignored there while I spent an hour accepting hugs from teary-eyed women and handshakes from taciturn men. I heard, “Thomas was a pleasant man,” or, “Thomas was a fine soldier,” or variations of it, over and over. Only three people complimented the urn. “Elegant,” they said. “Simple beauty.”

To everything, I said only, “Thank you,” and, “Yes, pleasant,” and nothing more.

The crowd broke into small whispering clusters. Once in a while someone laughed, like a sharp thundercrack against a clouded sky. Kids kicked stones back and forth, bored and waiting for their parents to leave. But no one left, not right away. Everyone had chores waiting at home, but their sense of formality prevailed. Eventually, they dissolved down the street and diluted into the town, individuals at a time and in small groups. No one wanted to appear in a hurry to leave, though no one had anything more to say or anything more to do.

© 2020 Christopher Cervelloni

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Christopher Cervelloni earned his bachelor’s in education from Butler University and an MFA from Rutgers. He is Executive Editor at Blue Square Writers Studio. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in SixFold, The MacGuffin, The Barcelona Review, Metaphorosis, and Crab Orchard Review, among others. He currently teaches English and journalism in Denver.