The Brother Voice

By William T. Delamar

Sel and Hol Danner, identical twin brothers who can exchange thoughts without actually speaking, grow up together in Frederick, Maryland. When the American Civil War breaks out, they separate for the first time in their lives. Sel fights for the North because he hates slavery. Hol fights for the South because it's "home." Cora Dee Soyer, who loves them both, can't pray for either side because that would be praying against one of the boys. The boys discover they can no longer think to each other until the two sides meet at the Battle of the Monocacy at their home town. Brother against brother is real and reflects actual history. The changes in their lives reflect the massive transformation in all lives during this period of American history. It's as though the world is turned upside down with things never being as they were.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rogue Phoenix Press
• Release date: Aug 6, 2016
• ISBN: 9781624203138

William T. Delamar

William T. Delamar was born in Durham, North Carolina, in a home full of books, which ignited a love for reading. In high school, he worked part-time at Duke University Press, further increasing his insatiable desire for literature.   He served in the navy as a weatherman, received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Pittsburgh, and a master’s degree from Antioch University. After thirty-five years’ experience in hospital organization and development, ranging from methods and procedures examiner to CEO, Delamar became a founding member of the Hospital Management and Information Society. Under his guidance, it grew from twenty-eight members to thousands internationally.   Delamar was on the board of the Philadelphia Writers’ Conference, having served five times as president. His works include: The Hidden Congregation, The Caretakers, Patients in Purgatory, and The Brother Voice. He crossed over to join his wife Gloria in 2022.

Book preview

Prologue

July—1864

The twin stared across the Monocacy River. The unrelenting voices of the dead pounded in his head. Dead men were everywhere.

He looked down at the muddy water and a sob rose up through his body from his soul. Oh my God, are you there?

The rifle slipped from his hand. It splashed into the water. The ripples washed his reflection back and fort—a cloudy figure in a dusty uniform. A dirt statue on a horse. A dirt statue with red hair.

Enough, he whispered. No more.

The voices wouldn't leave his head—cries from dying men at one battle after another, cries that formed a curtain of voices. They called out to wives and sweethearts and mothers, a roll call of those left behind.

His horse moved a step forward and stopped.

Men shouted from across the river, but he hardly heard them past the curtain.

He stared at the sky. Please.

He nudged his horse forward in the muddy water and felt the air leave his lungs as something crunched into his stomach. It lifted him off the horse and into the river. He grabbed at the water and air trying desperately to hold onto something. Muddy water filled his mouth and choked him. He couldn't think. He couldn't breathe.

The water turned red. The curtain of voices grew louder.

In his head, he heard his brother call, Get up, get up!

Chapter One

The Years Move On

September—1856

Selden and Holland had crossed the muddy Monocacy then cut deep into the woods and were now hidden in the berry bushes near Old No's hut.

Hol squirmed further into the black raspberry bush. He smelled the dry grass, the dry earth. And he felt the thorns tear into his left ankle. He felt a warm trickle of blood, burning pain and a relentless itching. But Sel wasn't moving at all. There he was, right beside him, not moving a muscle. Sel always had to see what was happening.

Hol shut his eyes and pushed farther down. Sel would let him know if Old No was coming toward them. He was glad they could think thoughts to each other, no talking needed. It was as though they shared the same brain. Twins, like being one person. Identical faces, identical thoughts, though their thoughts weren't identical at the moment.

A cricket fiddled a rhythmic noise of protest.

Shh, Hol, Here comes Old No.

Oh God. What if he catches us?

Won't do any good to shut your eyes. It'll just make you blind, like him.

Old Nostradamus was coming toward them. Sel stared through the leaves at the old man. Hol tried to pull away from the thorn sinking into his ankle.

Hold still. He'll hear you. He's blind, not deaf.

Old No pointed his face in their direction, and Sel wondered if the old man could tell if they were there. Hol didn't have to look. The old man knew.

Old Nostradamus pushed his feet through the dry stalks and furrows as he made his way through the weed patch. Then he stopped. He faced straight ahead, listening intently. He stood like an Indian waiting for another sound. Sel watched and Hol tried to keep from squirming.

Old Nostradamus had been blind longer than anyone could remember. His pale lavender eyes never moved, and no one knew for certain that he wasn't asleep unless the rest of him moved. And even then, he moved slowly and quietly, like a shadow.

Little Minnie Lou was with him, as always, like she was tied to him. She was laughing and playing and singing. Old Nostradamus, his eyes closed, pushed his feet on through the dust, and Sel relaxed. Minnie Lou darted, jumped, and ran from spot to spot, gathering what looked like colored stones. She made up songs and sang them out loud to herself. Somewhere, off in the woods, a cicada sang.

Hol opened his eyes. Minnie Lou, on the opposite side of the field, nibbled some berries.

Like a fawn.

Sel shook his head. No. Like a hummingbird in a flower.

Her feet were on the ground, but she looked like she was flying, hovering there.

Sel nudged. You got them yet? he whispered.

Hol held out his hand. Here.

Sel pulled a small tin box from his pocket. Drop them in. Good.

Let's get out of here, said Hol.

But Old No stopped. He turned his head slowly toward the clump of bushes and sassafras saplings. He fixed his frown on the bushes, hunched over like a gnarled tree stump. He was so black, he didn't even shine. And as his eyelids rolled back and lavender eyes stared out as though he could see through them, he stepped behind a mock orange bush.

Sel and Hol Danner felt fear snap in their bodies. They stumbled up from the briars and like birds in flight, turned and ran through the woods, racing the fear that stung their nostrils, their throats, and even their stomachs. They didn't dare look behind them for fear of lavender eyes peering at them from a shadow.

They ducked low branches and plunged through briars, eyes straight ahead, until at last they stumbled out onto the Georgetown Pike. Sel wished they had worn long pants. His legs were burning and bleeding from the deep scratches. They ran without looking at the woods on either side of the dirt road. Not until they came to the Monocacy River and the covered bridge did the twins slow to a walk. It was cooler inside the bridge, and the plank flooring echoed their steps as though they each had four feet. It was safer there. They leaned out where some slats were missing, gulping air.

Sel's side hurt from running. Hol felt sick and leaned over the water a long time, his red hair and flushed face reflecting only a brown shadow in the muddy river.

How'd he know we were there, Sel?

I don't know.

They heard horses pounding the road from the south. A wagon pulled by two horses pulled around the bend in the road and thundered onto the bridge. Driving it was a black man who looked terrified. An elderly, gray-haired black woman sat behind him, facing the rear. Sel thought she had the saddest eyes he had ever seen. Two little black girls sat beside her and were screaming, Mama! Mama!

They left a cloud of dust on the road. Not long after, three men on horseback thundered across the bridge and followed them into the dust.

Escaped slaves, said Hol.

They aren't going to get away, said Sel.

They both kept hearing Mama! Mama! in their minds.

If only they had made it to Pennsylvania, said Sel.

The brothers rested on the bridge, listening to the whispering water. They had stood there many times. It was always running, day or night, winter or summer; it always ran and yet it stayed right there, talking. talking about how long it had been there, echoing sounds from long ago. The Indians had named it Monocacy, River of Many Bends, and now they were gone. But Sel and Hol could hear them still when they listened close. They were always just beyond the bend.

They should have named it muddy water, said Hol.

Sel looked at his brother whose red hair and flushed face matched his own and whose secret thoughts he liked for the same reason. He wouldn't want anyone looking into his head to see those ideas except Hol, because Hol thought them, too. They used to wonder if others could think thoughts instead of talking. But it was Miss Lily who made it known they were the only ones. She had thought they were cheating when their test papers were the same. But she had moved them to opposite sides of the room and the papers were still the same. That is when she had understood. Hol always felt he was using Sel's mind. His own often strayed out of the classroom into the woods.

The cicadas sang of heat. The fear of Old Nostradamus faded. Sel thought of Cora Dee, her perfect face, and Hol picked up on the image. They liked her face, her eyes, her smell. They liked thinking about her. But Old No crept back into their heads.

Hol found a flat blue and orange stone wedged between boards on the bridge. Look at the crazy design. It looks like an orange hand. At the far end of the bridge, he threw it low downstream and watched it skipping along the water. Eleven times, he said.

Sel glanced at the sun. Suppertime.

They turned for home, feeling safer with time and the Monocacy between them and Old Nostradamus. They looked off to the west at the distant mountains, which took on a blue appearance. Heat seemed to rise from them. The same heat baked their bodies through their shirts.

I'll get to Market Street before you, shouted Hol.

But Sel was already running.

They ran in step like mirror images up the Pike into Frederick and onto Market Street, pushing and laughing at each other.

They only slowed to a walk when they reached the intersection of Patrick and Market, and froze with fear. There, not twenty feet away, beside the step of Kramer's Trade Store, sat Old Nostradamus with his legs folded on the walking boards beneath him. He was hunched over something he held in his long fingers. Sel could taste Hol's fear.

They stared at Old No. They pushed each other into the road, crossed to the other side and stumbled onto the walkway afraid to talk out loud.

How did he get here?

He doesn't have wings. Too old to run. Isn't he?

Maybe if he started running before we did.

We stopped on the bridge.

But why…why is he here?

Sel stopped.

No. Sel, don't do it. Hol's eyes were wide and frantic.

But Sel was getting curious. He ignored the tug of Hol's fear. He walked across the road to Nostradamus, Hol trailing behind.

The old man won't hurt us here. He won't hurt us anywhere.

Mister Nostradamus. Sel wondered why he had called Old No Mister. Uh. Old Mister Nostradamus.

The head bobbed a little.

We…well… how did you get to town so fast?

Hol caught his breath and pointed at the object in Old No's fingers—a flat blue and orange stone. The design looked like an orange hand. Where…where did he get the stone?

Old No lifted his head and his lavender eyes withered Sel's curiosity. The twins turned in step and each tried to out-race the other up Market to the Danner Livery Stables.

Cora Dee Soyer stood in the middle of Market Street watching Sel and Hol run toward her. Her laugh said she was happy to see them. They slowed down, each catching his breath and tried to act natural. They didn't want her to know they were running from, not to.

Cora Dee was the prettiest girl in Frederick—maybe even Maryland. Green eyes, black hair, soft pink skin, and a nose that wrinkled with the slightest smile that always stirred some deep pleasure in Sel and Hol.

She was smart too. Whenever old Miss Lily was sick, Cora Dee would go to the front of the class and teach the lessons. Everybody knew that one day she would take Miss Lily's place, but right now, Sel and Hol weren't thinking about that. They had something for her. It was her thirteenth birthday.

Sel pulled the tin box from his pocket and pried off the lid with his thumb nail. He held the box out to her, and she clapped her hands. In it were three black raspberries. And she knew where they had been. That late in September, only Old Nostradamus had raspberries left. She carefully took one berry. Then the boys each took one and with private ceremony, they quietly ate them.

Chapter Two

1857—1859

Old No's forbidden raspberries became a symbol to Hol and Sel as one year later, on Cora Dee's fourteenth birthday, they repeated the ritual, producing three berries for their silent celebration. On her fifteenth birthday, three more were picked in fear from Old No's bushes. Cora Dee never told them not to go. They knew she wanted them to, even if it was a place to avoid. The old man had strange powers. There was no telling what he might do to them. He could see into the future and would know they were coming.

On the morning of her sixteenth birthday, they sensed the ritual would be repeated for the last time. Something had changed.

No more, said Hol, his legs stinging from the scratches.

I agree, said Sel. Running through briars and poison oak doesn't say what I want to say.

I want to tell her just…how I really feel.

Me, too. A different way to say it.

In the following year, when earth broke the wrappings of winter and spring unfolded into April, Sel, Hol, and Cora Dee set out for a favorite hidden place part way up on Catoctin Mountain. Sel carried a large tin box of things they needed. The odor of red clover moved across the fresh green fields, promising an early summer. Sel and Hol still liked to feel the warm soil under their bare feet and left their brogans behind, but Cora Dee preferred shoes.

They took a shortcut across the Carroll farm to the National Road winding northwest over the mountain to Middletown and beyond. The surrounding woods were freshly green with new leaves. They ran up the first rise and the boys let Cora Dee get to the top first. She waited for them, holding her small picnic basket in front of her, and they started down the hollow together.

Hol saw him first—a scraggly looking man standing by a wild hedge off to the left of the road—staring at them or rather at Cora Dee. She let her gaze fall to her feet. Sel recognized him—Joe Haywood, his gaunt face peering through layers of dirt. The same insulation covered his flannel shirt and torn overalls.

Mother would say he looks like a dirt fence.

Hol snickered.

Hey, Mr. Haywood, said Sel.

Where you chilluns going? drawled Joe Haywood, his eyes crawling over Cora Dee.

Up the mountain a ways, said Hol.

Sel started moving. Let's go, Hol, he muttered

What horrible eyes he has, whispered Cora Dee.

Part way down the draw, Hol looked back to see Joe Haywood peering at something off to their left. He darted toward a clump of trees and stopped, crouching beside a large rock.

He's spying on something over there in the bottom, said Sel.

Or else he's hiding from it, said Hol.

Come on, said Cora Dee, and she ran up the hill. The boys had trouble catching her. When they looked back, Joe Haywood was gone.

I wonder what he was looking at, said Sel. He had a creepy feeling, like walking through woods full of snakes.

How old is he? asked Cora Dee. It's hard to tell because he's so dirty.

I don't know, said Sel. All I know is he lives somewhere in the woods. It could even be near where they were going. Father says he's mean as a meat axe.

They were into the big curve in the road that caused carriages to move slowly coming down. Ahead of them, towering over the forest, were the big hemlocks and just beyond them, the giant sycamore. Four men together couldn't reach around it.

Cora Dee stared at the huge tree in the distance. Its big arms are holding up the sky.

Close to noon and halfway around the curve, they came to the foot of the sycamore. They gazed up through thousands of crisscrossing limbs half hidden with the new generation of leaves. They sat on the damp earth to rest. Cora Dee sat in the middle. Sel closed his eyes. It was nice sitting close to her. She smelled sweet. He wanted to stay there but knew they had to move on.

Time to go, he said.

They followed an old wagon trail off to the left. They were hidden from the road as they turned south through the hemlocks and into the deep woods. The root-covered path plunged down and up and zigzagged until even Sel, who had a keen sense of direction, found it difficult to tell which way was north.

In single file, they dipped and climbed.

Dark in here. quiet, cool. feels good. Sel could feel the sweat drying under his shirt.

Good being here with Cora Dee. She was leading the way, and Hol tripped several times for watching her instead of where he was walking. The urge to reach out and touch her was almost overwhelming.

Like it anywhere with Cora Dee. For the first time in his life, Sel began to feel a sense of competition with his brother.

Like her laugh. It sounded like it came from a chord vibrating through her body, and it made him want to touch her all the more.

Cora Dee jumped farther ahead as they neared their secret place. They came out into a circular clearing about forty feet across. The enclosing wall of trees extended their leaves and branches to form a roof, except in the center, where rays of sunlight fell straight in, forming a circular curtain of bright yellow. The floor of this little secret world was moss-covered except, again, the center, which was grass where Cora Dee spread a cloth, a wisp of hair falling across her forehead.

Sel held his breath. Lord, she's beautiful.

They sat. From the tin box, Cora Dee set out small plates, a bowl of fried chicken, and a crock of potato salad, all of which she had prepared early that morning. They ate, licking their fingers and looking at the woods around them.

From the circle of sunlight, everything else took on a misty appearance. A curtain of dogwood at the edge of the forest, tiny white blossoms of chickweed, wake robins, and blue daisies, sprinkled like colored stars, all shimmered around them. Their mother knew every flower that was, and most of these were planted in her garden.

The ground felt cool and damp beneath Hol, who sat peering at the woods. He had heard a faint noise and thought he saw a movement through the trees. Could it be Haywood? He dismissed it, but he heard it again. Sel was absorbed with Cora Dee. Hol stood and stepped out of the circle of light.

Chapter Three

April—1859

When Minnie Lou was barely old enough to remember, they had sold her mother away to a Baltimore plantation. Minnie Lou had been left behind. Old No had taken her tiny hand and led her to his plank hut, chinked with mud, but with a wooden floor, and raised her.

The combined fear and respect the Negroes felt for Old No placed him into a different category of being. When he took Minnie Lou into his world, they placed her outside of theirs. He taught her things she would never have learned otherwise. He knew where the rabbit nests were and when it was going to storm. He told her the raccoon washed its food to remove the sand not the dirt. It did this because it ate sandy crawfish.

One day he told her that from a dark place one could see stars in the daytime, and when she laughed at the idea, he took her into a dark cave, through narrow openings, and into the bottom of a dried well. She looked up and saw the stars and cried because he couldn't see how beautiful they were. But he smiled and told her he knew what the stars looked like close. Closer than anyone with eyes had ever seen.

He would close his eyes and sit, nodding his head and humming, and his visions would float through her mind. She knew they were his. They always began with her mother, holding out her arms and calling to her like a bird with a broken wing, a cry of anguish, a key to her past. Then would come drums and deep, leafy forests with strange animals, things just beyond her memory.

As she grew older, she realized that she was different from the others, as different as Old No. She learned to cook without help from any of the Negro women. She would smell the food and know what to do. By the time she was sixteen, she had learned to sew with a skill none of the others possessed. She watched them and did what they did and invented better ways. She watched the animals in the woods. When they were sick, they ate certain plants. She discovered that when the female had babies, they ate plants they didn't usually eat. It gave them more milk for their young. When one of the women had a baby and had trouble making milk, Minnie Lou put special sprouts, some carefully gathered seeds, some grass that grew just north of the river, and some other herbs from the supply she had in the hut and boiled them all in water. She gave the woman the tea and her breasts grew full of milk. When the foreman's woman had the same problem, she made the same for her too.

She learned all the herbs and roots and berries, where to find them, and how to prepare them. She could make powders and healing poultices and a variety of potions. A particular root made childbirth less painful. The Negro women came to her for help. So did some of the white people. She found a sick rabbit in the woods—too sick to move. She boiled some clover, some grass, some seeds, and some sassafras roots, and soaked a rag with the liquor. She held the rabbit on her arm and squeezed the rag so that drops fell into the rabbit's mouth. He let her cradle him but watched her with frightened eyes. She fixed him a soft nest to lie in. For three days she nursed him. On the morning of the fourth day, he was sitting beside the nest when she came out of the hut. He let her pick him up, and when she put him down, he hopped away and began nibbling some clover. He continued to use the nest.

The foreman and Mr. Prevost allowed her to act as Old No's housekeeper and cook as they termed it. They had set the old man free years before, and now he had taken over Minnie Lou. She was no longer their property. She was, in fact, free. She wasn't bound by the rules of the plantation or the code of the Negroes. She didn't belong to the white society and wasn't subject to its taboos. Her world included Old No, his hut, his field and the surrounding woods, of which she knew every herb, every stick, and every ant hill. She developed in the way animals in the woods do, from small frisky creatures to sudden full maturity with full instinct. And she knew she was needed, that she knew things that helped others, both animals and people. She had no need to learn fear. Not even from the snakes. Some she stayed away from, but she knew them and respected them. It was a beautiful world, even though some things weren't beautiful. She didn't understand how people could be owned by others. She didn't understand why her mother had been taken away. It was a beautiful world, but it could be better.

In the spring of 1859, she walked through the woods and her bare feet felt the warmth of the earth blossoming with life. She sensed its completeness and felt herself part of it. She followed whatever scents pleased her and found herself at the Catoctins.

She sensed someone, looked around, but saw no one. She heard something, and across an open field, she saw a man for just a moment as he ducked behind a wild spicebush. She waited for a moment, but there was no more movement. She started west, up the mountain, slowly at first, but she heard him again, and then she knew fear. Her heart started pounding. She ran. She couldn't get to the road because he was between it and her, so she turned south only to find he had gone that way and cut her off. How had he done it? Where was he now? What did he want? She scrambled up the mountain which grew steeper as she went higher, and from behind, she could hear him from both the right and the left.

She heard voices ahead of her and chased after them. She came to a small clearing walled in by trees and hidden from the sky by a roof of limbs and leaves. In the center was a circle of light from an opening in the leaves, and beneath it sat the red-headed twins and a girl she had seen with them before. The sunlight made their red hair brighter. The girl took food from a basket and gave it to the twins. She was clean and fair and belonged to the other world. The three of them sat in the light and ate chicken.

She heard a noise behind her and turned quickly, but there was nothing there, and down the slope she could hear nothing. She turned to the clearing and saw one of the twins walking toward her. She liked the way his body swayed as he moved. His arms looked strong and limber. For a moment, she felt safe and stepped forward. The boy looked at her and she stood still, feeling his gaze like a hand on her body.

Chapter Four

April—1859

Hol was shocked. There, beyond the chickweed and behind a bush of pinks, stood Minnie Lou. Hol stared at her. Her eyes were wide and alert and she was trying to catch her breath. Her brown skin glistened as she watched Hol. Every few seconds, she would