Juliet's Moon (14 page)

I shook my head no.

There was silence for a moment. He ran his hand over his face. "I need a shave," he said. "Maybe I'll grow a beard. You think I'd look good in a beard?"

Where was he going with this? I decided I'd just follow. "No," I said.

He gave a short laugh. "Damned Lee has a beard. So does Grant. All the important ones have beards. Would you respect me more if I had one?"

Oh, so this was the way he was going to do it. Talk things out of me. All right then. "I respect you now, Seth."

"Do you? You scared the holy hell out of me this morning, you know that?"

I lowered my eyes. "I'm sorry, Seth, really I am."

He bit his lower lip and considered that for a minute. "Do you have something to tell me?"

I just stared at him.

"Because I think you do. And I think I know what it is. Not even you, who likes to go off on a toot once in a while and drive me to distraction, would chance going against my wishes like you did this morning without a good reason. If you have one, I'd like to know it before I punish you. Well?"

Tears came to my eyes. I drew in my breath and let it out again.

"Before the Yankees came," he said softly, "we had a fight and I practically disowned you and it got very nasty between us. Then you were taken prisoner, and for a while there I almost went nuts. I promised myself that, if you lived through it, I'd always hear you out before I went into a rage. So then, do you have something to tell me?"

"Yes, Seth, but if I tell, I'm breaking a promise to Martha."

"So it has to do with Martha, then."

I almost bit my tongue to stay silent.

"And you'd rather be punished than tell."

I nodded yes. "I promised," I said.

"Well, there's one thing in your credit. You'd make a darned good soldier for Quantrill. First, though, let me tell you what I think. I'm her husband, Juliet. I do know some things. And I know she's going to have a baby, though she thinks she's keeping a secret from me."

I felt the color rising to my face. Oh, I mustn't give myself away, but it was too late. I might not break any promises as a soldier, but I couldn't control the expression on my face. And he was watching me steadily.

"I'm not going to ask you to affirm or deny this. But I'd bet this farm that you got that cow so Martha could have milk to drink while she's carrying our child. No"—he put up a hand—"you don't have to say anything."

I looked at my hands in my lap.

"Look," he said finally, "it's better I know. I'm going back to camp tomorrow and if anything happens with Martha, you've got to notify me. All right?"

I sniffed and nodded yes, and still without looking at him I asked, "What are you going to do to me?"

"Well, I'm mad as hell about Ma's pearls. How could you give them away like that?"

"What good are pearls if you don't have milk?"

"Are you sassing me?"

"No."

"And I'm also mad as hell that you went off without a by-your-leave from me, when I told you not to."

"I told Martha I was going riding."

"You lied to Martha. You didn't tell her you were going out beyond the boundaries of this farm. I hate lying, Juliet. You wanted to barter; I could have gone with you or for you. So you have to be punished."

I watched him. He wasn't enjoying this at all. He was as miserable as I was.

"So every morning you will get up at six o'clock and go into the barn and milk that cow and bring the milk up to the house to Maxine. And every evening you'll do the same.
No excuses!
Got it?"

I nodded yes.

"I taught you to milk a cow, so don't say you don't know how."

He got up. So did I. For a minute we just stood there looking at each other. "If you were older, and a man, I'd offer you some whiskey," he said. "Anybody who has to put up with me deserves a drink of whiskey once in a while."

I gave him a small smile, but my eyes were welling with tears. I had to get out of here, and soon.

"You look after Martha while I'm gone."

I nodded.

"Well now," he said, "seems to me we handled all this like two civilized beings, didn't we? I mean Pa would have taken off his belt and had the back of your dress in tatters."

"I never loved Pa," I said. I'd never told him this before.

He nodded. More silence. Then without a word, he reached out an arm and I went to him. And he held me close for a full minute and no words were needed.

The next morning, in the mist and half-light, he left, like some character in a novel about knights and princes.

I
ONCE ASKED
my brother why he became a member of Quantrill's Raiders. He said, "We became bushwhackers to fight for Missouri without answering to a bunch of Virginians with brass buttons on their coats."

He said, "I know we do bad things. We raid, we steal, we shoot people, and usually Quantrill doesn't let us take prisoners. But it's war, Juliet. Look at what the Yankees do."

I wanted desperately to ask him how many men he had killed. Most especially in the raid on Lawrence, Kansas. But Martha told me not to. "That's not a thing a man talks about," she said. "If he ever wants to tell you,
he will. But I doubt it. He hasn't told me. But I think it's a lot. And do you know what, Juliet? It was always in combat. Never once did he kill a man just to kill him. He did tell me that."

Not like her brother, she said.

Every so often she mentioned Bill with profound sadness.

And then, the last time he was home, Seth admitted to me and to Martha, "I'm getting tired of all the killing." And there was a look in his eyes that made me know he'd done more killings than even he wanted to remember.

"I think after next summer I'll quit the whole business," he told her, "and settle down." Next summer would be the summer of '64, a year after Gettysburg. The South already knew the scales were tipped in favor of the North. Seth told us that, too, before he left.

"The only action going on now," he said, "is guerrilla hit-and-run operations. And nobody knows if the South can hold out."

Eighteen sixty-four was an election year in the North. In the barn one day, I heard some nigras talking about it. We whites weren't the only ones waiting for things to happen.

***

B
UT AT
home, things went on as usual. Every morning
I
got up at six, as Seth had directed, and milked Daisy. One thing Maxine taught me was how to make butter. I delighted in my finished product. When I brought the milk up to the house and she put it in jars, she showed me the rich layer of cream that formed on top. With it we could do many delightful things.

Martha made me a cake for my birthday and made icing out of the whipped cream. It was heavenly.

I wrote to Seth once a week, and when he could he answered. I thanked him for my birthday presents, a new woolen skirt and a copy of
Moll Flanders.
On the quiet, lazy farm the hogs were slaughtered the first cold day in November under the management of Maxine. The trees were all bare now and everything stood stark against an uncertain future.

The cold made it harder to get up in the morning. I took a lantern with me to the barn. And all along I'd been taking Seth's Sharpe's rifle. Nobody knew I could shoot it. It was my secret.

O
NE DAY
the first week of December, two riders came up the path from the main road.

One unmistakably wore blue, with shiny brass
buttons. The other was a woman. From the porch, I could see that the woman was none other than Sue Mundy, who'd been gone from us for a while.

"Does he look hostile?" Martha asked from inside the door.

"No. They're chatting. Like they know each other."

"Well, if it's Sue Mundy, I suppose they do," she said. "Tell you what, Juliet. Keep them busy talking out there while Maxine and I hide whatever Seth left around in here, will you?"

How much did she know about Sue not being a woman? Had Seth told her? Or did he keep her in the dark to protect her? He sometimes did that, I minded.

I stood on the porch, with an old jacket of Seth's wrapped around me, a civilian jacket I sometimes wore to the barn. I remembered that I was not supposed to be Seth's little sister, or know where he was, and the jacket helped me play the part. Seth Bradshaw's little sister would be wearing shiny button-up boots, several petticoats, and a fancy cloak with a velvet capelet around her shoulders. The Bradshaws were held in high esteem around here. They lacked for nothing. My pa had had money. Seth handled it now. I recollected him saying to
Martha on his last visit home that he was putting it in American dollars and depositing it in a bank in England.

The Yankee rode up, reined in his horse, and nodded up at me. "And who might this pretty lass be?" he asked Sue.

She had her answer at the ready. "That's one of my cousins, Maud, the one I told you about who fell out of the hayloft and near broke her head open. Maud, this is Captain Heffinger, come to visit for a while."

I said a polite hello. He doffed his Yankee hat.
My god,
I thought,
I'm a cousin to Sue Mundy! What have we gotten ourselves into?
But I followed Sue's lead.

She had Echo take their horses, then invited the Yankee into the house. He held the door open for me, and as I went past him I noticed his finery, his polished boots, his soft leather gloves, his spotless hat, his haughty demeanor, and I thought,
So the North wears brass buttons, too.

Inside the kitchen Maxine was icing some ginger cookies. The Yank's face went haggard of a sudden. "My mother makes those," he said.

Maxine offered him some with a mug of milk. He actually set his hat down and sat himself down at the long wooden table and partook of the feast.

Martha came in. He looked her up and down. She was just starting to show her new motherhood by now, and he stood when she entered the room. "Ma'am. You a cousin, too?"

"Yes. I'm in charge when Sue isn't around. What can I help you with, Captain?"

"I'm looking for Seth Bradshaw. Somebody said they thought this was his place."

"I never met the man. My name is Martha Mundy. My husband was killed earlier this year at Gettysburg."

"Sorry for your loss, ma'am."

I did some quick counting in my head and thought,
Good for you, Martha, you've got the timing sort of right, anyway.

"Maud here is my little sister."

"I had her down as the little sister of Seth Bradshaw, the one wounded in the building collapse," he said, looking at me. "That is a scar on her head, isn't it? Intelligence has it that she was taken to Fort Leavenworth to have her head stitched. And the brother offered five Yankee prisoners for her release."

"Captain, you doubt my word?" Sue Mundy could be a coquette when she wanted to.

"No, but something tells me these two women were
supposed to be on that wagon train out of Missouri." He stood up. "Thank you for the cookies. They're so good I might be back for more. Course in my line of work, you never know when. This is a fine place you've got here, Sue Mundy. Much obliged for the hospitality."

He moved toward the door.

"Hope to see you again soon," Sue said, smiling. "You dear man, do come back. And give my regards to the others under your command."

He went out the door. I let my breath out and only then did I realize that it was the first I'd really breathed since he'd stepped foot in the house.

I
T WAS
December and the days grew short and cold. Sue Mundy had taken off on a secret mission she could not speak of, and it was just me and Martha and Maxine in the house. Martha was tutoring me this year, as Seth wanted. A cough seized me and Martha became worried. She wanted me to stop getting up at six each morning to milk Daisy.

"I can easily get one of the farm nigras to do it," she said.

"I have to," I told her. "Seth said I have to, no matter what. And I don't want to go against him again." It
was like a pact Seth and I had now. A pact we'd made without words. Like he was testing me to see if I had the mettle to carry through with his wishes. He'd treated me with decency, not allowing his anger to take over. And I had to show him I respected him and would honor my part of the relationship.

"Well," Martha said, not concealing her own anger, "just so you know, I'm writing to Seth today and telling him about your cough. And we'll see what he has to say."

I did not answer, but just picked up the freshly scoured milk pail and went out into the cold.

There was no other human in the barn. The horse stalls had all been cleaned, blankets had been put on the horses, and they'd been taken out to pasture to enjoy whatever thin sunshine the day would bring.

My position milking Daisy left me with my back to the barn door. The only sound there was came from the milk pinging into the pail. I thought about the day when I was about seven years old and Seth, maybe all of nineteen, held me in front of him and taught me how to milk a cow. How frightened I'd been, except for the nearness of Seth and the satisfaction of seeing the milk gush into the pail, just like this. I'd about finished now, when someone said:

"I see they're keeping you busy."

I jumped, coming out of my reverie. A man's voice. Familiar yet not. I half turned.

There he stood in the half-light the barn door let in. Bill Anderson. And a girl. It was his sister, Mary, who was sixteen, still bandaged up from the falling building incident.

"You're not supposed to be in these parts ever again," I told him. And I reached down for the Sharpe's rifle on the ground next to me. "My brother catches you, he'll kill you."

He gave a short, evil laugh. "Don't try to fool me, little girl. I know your brother is off with Quantrill, elst I wouldn't be here. Truth is, I'm here to see my sister Martha. Bid her good-bye. And see if she wants to come with us. I'm taking Mary here with me, back to Texas. Now you take me to Martha like a good little girl. Put that rifle down and I'll leave you be."

He knew I could shoot. He'd taught me. I saw Mary's eyes widen in fear.