Veteran's Journey

Finishing his meal, he found his way to an empty bench in the large lobby. As he took his place, a tall, thin dark woman/girl passed him and took a seat a little way down the bench. She clutched a ragged, dirty bundle that Solon at first thought was her clothing, but when she held it away from her breast, he saw the face of a tiny pale baby.

The mother saw him looking at her and her child, she blushed, diverting her dark eyes down and then anxiously turned away to nurse the child with her back towards Solon and the busy lobby. The look moved Solon, disturbed his thoughts, judgments and attitudes about pity. The look was not of some beaten spirit. There was fire in the eyes and strength of defiance. As those realizations assaulted his assumptions, he saw again Lou's eyes that time in the creek in Georgia five years ago. This memory and the feelings invoked were alive. He thought he could again smell the heat of that August morning, the dust, the cedar freshness, the honeysuckle and musk of the woods.

He felt absolutely alone - lonesome - without a place. In the middle of the crowded Union Station in Nashville, Tennessee, he was shaken by the shudder of aloneness. His awareness returned to the smoky, busy lobby in a few seconds. To reorient himself and settle back into reality, he looked around at the variety of people moving through the lobby: the immigrants still in their native dress, country dressed farm folk, dudes in outlandish styles and colors, women, righteous and otherwise, neat, scrubbed ordinary families and rich folks moving hurriedly through the common people, not looking at them, to their private train cars he speculated, servants and porters hauling mountains of luggage behind them. Solon also saw a half dozen young Union soldiers in bright new, clean blue and yellow uniforms - cavalry and three soldiers clad in blue tunics with red trimming - artillery.