The Storm Before Atlanta (30 page)

Charlie looked back at Dulcie. “Well, I told him. All right?”

“That’s
what
you are. I think we both got a right to know
who
you are.”

“Does it really matter that much?”

Dulcie nodded.

“All right. My name was Bruno. But I like Charlie better. An’ I aim to like Jack better still.” The morphine was slurring his speech again.

Dulcie gave him a meaning look.

“What, everything? All right, my father owned a farm in North Carolina. A farm, and a house, and some slaves. And me. ’S near the sandhill country. Doesn’t really matter where. And I ran away.”

“I don’t understand,” said Jeremy.

Charlie smiled up at him. “No, you wouldn’t. Can’t wait to get up North. Won’t nobody understand. Gonna love it, up North.”

“What’s your father’s name?” said Dulcie.

“That doesn’t matter,” said Charlie. “He ain’t no father to me anyway. Like I said, I ran away. And then I found the war, and then after Shiloh I decided to be Charlie.”

Jeremy felt even more that he didn’t understand. He was very confused. He was still looking at Charlie and trying to figure out what was black about him. Not even his hair was black. Jeremy’s hair was black. But Charlie’s would be a sort of sandy color, if it was clean. Jeremy hadn’t seen clean hair since he’d left Shelbyville. If you cleaned Charlie up could you tell he was black? Jeremy didn’t understand any of this.

Charlie lifted a finger from the blanket where his unbandaged arm lay. “One drop of blood,” he murmured, still smiling, and fell asleep.

Jeremy looked at Dulcie. She looked vindicated, and Jeremy still didn’t understand what Charlie had just told
him and why it mattered so much to Dulcie. But he said, “So you’ll help, then?”

Dulcie nodded, and Jeremy felt a rush of gratitude. “But I don’t know how we’re going to get him into an ambulance,” he said, moving on quickly to the next stage of the problem before she could change her mind. “Because he can’t hardly lift his head, let alone walk, and he’s too heavy for the two of us to carry.”

This had been troubling him ever since he’d thought of the plan. He had considered but discarded the idea of getting Nicholas and Dave to help—it almost amounted to treason, some ways of looking at it, and he couldn’t ask that of his pardners even if they would have agreed to it.

“The stretcher bearers will move him to the ambulance,” said Dulcie.

“But they’ll know he’s not Jack.”

“Only if they know Jack.”

“Well, they probably do, don’t they? I mean, aren’t they the 107th’s own stretcher bearers?”

Dulcie frowned. “Might be. Things get a little mixed up sometimes, but they might be.” She thought for a minute. “I know. Leave it to me.”

“And they’ll know Jack’s dead.”

“I said leave it to me.”

And with that Jeremy had to be content, because she wouldn’t say any more about it.

Dulcie could not have said exactly why it was so important to her that Jeremy know that Charlie was black. Maybe it was because of the way Jeremy had been to her—kind, and a good friend, but really, just a little bit proprietorial, as if he was somehow responsible for Dulcie, maybe because she was a girl but probably also because she was black. He hadn’t acted that way to Charlie. And if he knew about Charlie would he understand a little better? Would he treat Dulcie like she had as much brains as he did? That was part of it.

The other part was, it made her angry that Charlie would lie. Would she have done the same thing if she could have gotten away with it? Well, that wasn’t really the question. Would she have joined the Confederate Army and fought for slavery?
That
was the question.

Who did Charlie think he was, anyway?

Dulcie kept all this in her own head as she carefully bandaged Charlie’s. He wasn’t much help, hardly able to turn his head or to lift it a little bit when she told him to so that she could get the bandage underneath as she wound it around and around, from his chin to the top of his hair.

“At least leave me room to breathe.” His voice came muffled through the bandages.

“I am.”

“What about my eyes?”

“Very delicate. That shell exploded right in front of you. The least little bit of light before they’re healed could blind you.”

She saw him smile through the slit she’d left for his mouth. “What happens when they take the bandage off and see I’m not injured underneath?”

“I’m sure you’ll think of a good explanation.”

He smiled again. He was sure he would too, Dulcie thought.

The stretcher bearers and Jeremy arrived at the same time.

“Where’s his pass?” one of the bearers asked Dulcie.

“In my pocket.” Charlie’s voice came through the bandages.

The other stretcher bearer dug the folded paper out of Charlie’s pocket, read it, and frowned. “I thought this Jack fella died last week. It was in a newspaper from home.”

Dulcie sighed. “They got it wrong again? Those newspaper lists are always wrong.”

“That’s the truth,” said one of the stretcher bearers with feeling. “The paper back home said I died at Chancellorsville, and my mother nearly went into a decline before she found out I was alive.”

“They printed that my cousin John was wounded in the thumb,” said the other stretcher bearer. “Come to find out it was another John that was wounded in the thumb, and my cousin was wounded in the head. It having been shot off.”

Dulcie nodded. She hadn’t thought she’d have any trouble convincing the stretcher bearers that there’d been an error in the casualty reports. There were errors in them all the time.

“Hey, Ch—Jack. Write to us when you get there,” Jeremy said, leaning down so Charlie could hear him through the bandages.

“I’ll do that, little buddy. Thanks.”

They lifted him onto the stretcher and carried him away, but not before Dulcie heard him add, “You too, Dulcie—thanks. For everything.”

TWENTY-FIVE

T
HE REAR STRETCHED BACK FOR MILES
,
AND
G
ENERAL
Sherman kept sending anyone he could back to it. Atlanta lay ahead, and he wanted only fighting men at the front. And the people whom the army couldn’t do without, which included medics like Dulcie. At the rear were the contraband, thousands upon thousands of them. Every mile that Sherman moved through Georgia it seemed another thousand slaves joined behind him. He didn’t want them to follow him, Dulcie knew. But that didn’t matter.

It was among these thousands that she finally found Uncle John, standing on top of a hill and holding a spyglass.

“Where’s Aunt Betsy?” Dulcie asked him, when they had exchanged greetings.

He waved at the mountain in the distance, where Dulcie knew the Secesh lay in wait. Another battle was brewing, over that mountain.

“In the Secesh camp,” he said.

“You mean she didn’t get away?” Dulcie found it hard to believe that Uncle John would have escaped without Aunt Betsy, and she wondered how it could have happened.

“Oh, she got away. And then she went back to do laundry for the Secesh generals.” He smiled.

“But … why?”

In answer Uncle John handed Dulcie the spyglass. “Train that over there on that mountain, girl, and tell me if you can find Aunt Betsy doing laundry.”

Dulcie took the heavy spyglass in both hands. It was hard to hold it steady at her eye, and when she finally did the distant mountain leapt up close, as if it had only been a few feet away—a green blur became individual trees. There was a buzzard sitting in one of them, waiting for the next battle. The tiniest move of the spyglass caused many trees to whiz dizzyingly past, and finally Uncle John had to take it from her hands, look through it, and then hold it steady for her.

“Now look,” he said.

“I see a woman hanging up washing on a line. Is that Aunt Betsy?” She couldn’t see her clearly enough to tell.

“Yup. Now tell me about the laundry.”

“The laundry? It looks like, er, drawers.”

“What color?”

“Gray, mostly.” She saw this wasn’t enough for him, so she added, feeling a little annoyed, “Two white pairs, a gray pair, a red pair, three more gray pairs. No, now she’s
moving the red pair to the end. After the three gray pairs. Now she’s moving it back again! Why’s she doing that?”

“No battle today,” said Uncle John, putting down the spyglass. “I’ma go tell the captain that.”

“How do you know?”

“Aunt Betsy does the laundry, that’s how I know. She does it right behind the Secesh generals’ tents, and she listens to what they say, and then she takes and hangs it on the line, and all I have to do is look for it.”

“What—”

“We worked out a code, before she left. She moves the drawers to tell me what the Secesh are planning.”

Dulcie marveled at this.

“Oh, we ain’t the only ones doing it. If them Secesh generals knew all the news that was being carried across the lines by their drawers flappin’ in the breeze, I reckon they’d rather keep wearing them drawers dirty till they fall apart.”

“Nicholas!”

Nicholas looked up from the letter he was reading. “Evenin’, Jeremy.” He folded the letter and put it in his pocket.

“I didn’t mean to interrupt your letter,” said Jeremy. He sat down on a log beside the fire. He really wanted to ask Nicholas’s advice about what was bothering him. Dave said you could trust Nicholas. But Nicholas had said some
pretty harsh things to Jeremy, even if he had sort of mostly apologized. And could you trust Nicholas to stand by you when you were pretty much breaking the law?

“Oh, it’s my third time reading it,” said Nicholas. “It’s from my sister.”

“Oh.” Jeremy realized he’d never thought about Nicholas having a sister or anything like that.

“I heard that Secesh friend of yours escaped,” said Nicholas.

“Did he?” said Jeremy.

“Yup. No one knows how. There’s no flies on you, Jeremy.”

Jeremy wanted to say that Dulcie had helped, but then he also didn’t think he should admit that either of them had had anything to do with Charlie escaping—even though he could see Nicholas already knew.

“You have to help out your pardners,” said Nicholas. “No matter what side they’re on.”

“I think Charlie’s on our side now,” said Jeremy. “He told me he’s black.”

Nicholas looked surprised. “Didn’t look black to me.”

“Me either. But he said something about one drop of blood.”

He told Nicholas what Charlie and Dulcie had said to each other, although he left out the part where Dulcie had agreed to help Charlie escape.

“I just didn’t know he was black,” said Jeremy. “I mean, I never thought of it.”

“So?”

“So, I don’t know. What did he want to fight on the Secesh side for?”

“Probably didn’t know why he was doing it,” said Nicholas. “I think a lot of people got into this war not knowing why.”

That was for sure.

“Time he visited with us, it sounded like he was starting to make up his mind about things,” said Nicholas.

“Yeah. Maybe.”

“You going to tell me how you did it?” said Nicholas.

“Did what?” said Jeremy.

Nicholas laughed. “All right. Maybe you’ll tell me after this cruel war is over, eh?”