The Rail Read Free Page B

days of the Civil War, the town, which was still called Dropshaft, had been the venue for a small action on the path of Lee’s final retreat to Appomattox.
    On the hill where Penn’s Castle would be built, the battle’s hard debris can still be found—belt buckles, buttons and minie balls, used and unused. When Neil was Jimmy Penn, the Penns already had, for generations, been throwing these remains of the Battle of Dropshaft into a large wooden box, once used for stovewood. They were fond of collecting things.
    By the time Jimmy came along, The Box was a young child’s treasure trove. He would, playing by himself (for no other children in his town were allowed in Penn’s Castle), ferret out the least damaged of the bullets and align them in rows and columns, facing each other like the two armies to which they had belonged. He would be the great Stonewall, or sometimes Moseby or even Lee, and the hated Union troops would always be vanquished. He only knew their names and pictures and that they were gods who were somehow thwarted.
    He was four years old the last time he was invited to Penn’s Castle.
    Virginia, the socialite, had joined his father; they stood before him in the big room—this room—where he played with his tiny soldiers. The James Blackford Penns were still living there, with James’ mother. They looked down at him from a great height (the Virginia Rail, that six-foot-three shard who tore up the American League, got his height from the Penns) and said nothing for a while.
    The boy, still Jimmy Penn for a few more weeks, was used to a range of emotions at Penn’s Castle that went from tolerance to adoration. That day, though, he sensed something was different. Looking up, he saw them both frowning, and the look his father’s wife had was approximately the one he’d seen when the mouser had shown up with four unexpected and much-uncelebrated kittens.
    â€œJimmy,” his father told him, “let’s go for a walk.”
    It had been a day like this, blustery and bright. Jimmy Penn wanted to stay inside and play.
    â€œCome on, son,” the man said, and his voice seemed to catch on the last word. Jimmy put on the overcoat his grandmother had bought for him and followed his father reluctantly outside.
    They sat on the steps, and James Penn told his son that they couldn’t see each other “for a while,” that Jimmy was getting a new father now and would have to stay with him.
    Neil figured, years later, that his father’s new wife wanted no part of him from the start but needed the thin moral authority of his mother’s remarriage to get James Penn to slam the door on him entirely.
    â€œWhy can’t I stay with you?” the boy asked that day, and James Penn looked across to the woods and told him. “Because your mother wants you to stay with her all the time. You’re her little boy now.”
    The boy whined and tried to cling to his father, and James Penn finally grabbed him by his shoulders and held him at arm’s length, bending so they were eye to eye.
    â€œYou’re hers now,” he said. “You’re hers and William Beauchamp’s. You’re not mine any more.”
    Jimmy Penn threw the biggest tantrum he’d ever thrown or ever would when his father wouldn’t let him back in the house with him. Jimmy was left to scream and kick the kitchen door from outside until, a few minutes later, James returned with a handful of the minie balls.
    â€œHere,” he said. “Take these back and play with them. It’s just for a little while, Jimmy. I promise.” Even then, an old servant had to help James Penn get him in the car and back to his grandfather O’Neil’s house.
    It wasn’t a little while, either. One day, when Jimmy, who was now Neil Beauchamp, was six, his stepfather threw the minie balls away, tossed them down one of the old abandoned mineshafts in the woods