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It had been a hard lesson to learn, but
she’d learned it well, burying it along with all the other events she’d
witnessed. Now she sat by the side of her bed and wept for the soldiers they’d
lost that day.

And when she was cried out, she dried her
eyes, accepted their loss and looked out her window on the calm summer scene
before her. Kids still played in the street and drivers still honked their
horns at them. Life went on. She went on. With grim determination, she picked
up a sweatshirt, folded it and tucked it inside her Army duffle bag.

Chapter Fifteen

“How long did you think we were going to be
gone?” John asked her as he fitted the last of their gear into the back of his
truck.

“Four nights, five days. You said it was
going to be huge and I hate waiting in long lines. So I brought enough food so
we won’t need to go to the store and enough clothing to cover every
contingency.” She eyed him. He’d dressed in simple jeans with a light-blue,
button-down shirt over a deep blue T-shirt. She liked him in blue. Brought out
the incredible deepness of his eyes.

“It’s easier for guys. Jeans are now
acceptable clothing nearly everywhere. And you can’t go wrong with a buttoned
shirt. It’s like a uniform for you guys. But for women?” She gestured to her
own casual attire, which consisted of a plain peach T-shirt with her paisley
scarf tossed around her neck for style, a pair of slim-line jeans and flat
sandals. “Where you can wear the same pair of jeans three days running, a woman
would be highly suspect if she wore the same stuff over and over. And of
course, different terrains mean different shoes…”

He handed her into the car, shaking his
head. For all her prattle about style, he knew only one of those bags contained
the sundries and clothes she’d need for five days out. That meant she hadn’t
skimped on the food. Good. He knew a lot of the men really went back in time
and did all their cooking over a fire, slept in the thin wool blankets and
heavy white canvas tents the way real Union Army had. He admired their
dedication to re-creating a true living history that taught tourists more in an
afternoon than they could get in a month of lectures in school. His desire to
bring some of his experiences into the classroom next fall really went a long
way toward explaining why he was here in the first place.

But after several years living in the
desert, often without running water and electricity, eating his meals out of a
pouch and drinking water that had been shipped thousands of miles, he welcomed
the roomy nylon tent and the cook stove. Camping in a campground was living in
a mansion compared to what he’d been through.

He climbed in beside her and they headed
out. The drive would take them the better part of five hours. Glancing over at
her, he was surprised when she pulled out a ball of yarn and a crochet hook.

“Getting into the spirit of the weekend?”
he asked her.

“Keeping my hands busy,” she explained.
“Something my grandmother taught me how to do to take up time on long family
vacations. Said it would keep me out of trouble ’cause, instead of pestering my
brother, my hands would be pestered with the yarn.”

“Smart woman, your grandmother.”

“Do you mind? I can talk and crochet at the
same time. Just because my hands are busy doesn’t mean my mouth is quiet.”

“Is that a warning?”

She chuckled, her hands not missing a
stitch. “It can be.”

He turned onto the interstate that would
take them along for the next three hours. Out of the corner of his eye he saw
her glance at him.

“Does it bother you? I can put it away if
you find it distracting.”

“It doesn’t distract me. Well, except in
that I like seeing you like that.”

“Like what?”

“All settled in. Comfortable. Working away
at an old craft as if sitting beside me on a long car ride were as normal as
eating.”

This time the hook did pause. “I didn’t
think of it that way, but you’re right. I am comfortable. We have five hours
together in the car and I’m not worried about holding up my end of the
conversation, I’ve promised myself I’m not going to worry about IEDs, I’m not
worried about directions, I’m not…wait. You did pick up the directions, right?
You know where we’re going?”

Now it was his turn to chuckle. “Yes, I
know where we’re going. Studied the maps last night. Got the latitude and
longitude and did the triangulation so I’d know exactly where…” He stopped when
he realized she thought he was serious, this time laughing out loud. “Um,
Lauren? You see that little gizmo there? Stuck to the windshield?”

She bent toward him to see the screen from
his point of view. The lines and numbers of the GPS not only directed his path
but told him his present rate of speed and how much longer he had until they
got there.

“And you’re going to rely on that thing?”

“Don’t tell me you’re really a Luddite in
disguise.”

She shook her head and sat back in her
seat, her hook picking up where she’d left off. “No, not really. But those
units are not as reliable as the manufacturers would like you to think they
are. Give me an old-fashioned paper map where I can see the world spread out
before me and make my own choices.”

“I think maybe we just found our first
fundamental difference.”

She didn’t answer, only cocking an eyebrow
at him as he wove between two tractor trailers going slowly up a hill.

“Big picture versus looking at a piece at a
time. I’m sure there’s a larger analogy there somewhere.”

They bantered back and forth, learning more
and more about each other as the miles sped by. The occasional silence slipped
in, but not a silence of discomfort where one desperately sought for a topic to
share or where one felt a need to turn on the radio to fill the quiet lest the
other discover what an uninteresting person one really was.

No, the spaces between the conversations
were just that. Spaces. Punctuation marks that gave each a chance to trace down
stray thoughts and notice the world that passed them by. Lauren set down her
crocheting for longer periods of time as the scenery became less familiar and
they passed into Pennsylvania.

They stopped for lunch at a roadside diner,
pleasantly surprised to find they both preferred the mom-and-pop fare rather
than the national chain restaurants. Lauren indulged in a turkey club, John had
a hamburger loaded with onions and she teased him about the onion breath he’d
have for the rest of the afternoon.

The miles slipped by once they were on the
road again and soon the GPS had them turning off and into the busy local
traffic of Sharpsburg. There the traffic slowed to a crawl. Narrow streets laid
down long before the invention of the automobile confined the traffic.

“I should’ve realized everything would be
backed up with all the tourists and reenactors coming in for the weekend.”

John sounded almost apologetic and Lauren
hastened to reassure him. “It’s fine. I’ve never been here before and going
slow gives me time to look around.” She pointed to one particular brick
building sitting near the road. “Look at that. I did some reading before we
came just to be up on the history. People lived in these buildings and war came
to their doorstep.”

“And sometimes inside their houses. The
soldiers filled this place.”

Lauren shook her head. “I’ve seen war in
people’s homes. It’s never pretty.”

She fell silent at that point, her thoughts
thousands of miles away. In a hundred fifty years, would the people of Iraq be
able to gather like this and commemorate battles? Probably not. Today’s
armament didn’t leave many buildings standing—family homes or not.

“Campground should be just a mile ahead.”

Lauren glanced at the GPS, then started
looking for signs. They’d passed out of the small town and Lauren shook her
head. “Do you suppose they mind?” she asked.

John glanced at her. “Who?”

She waved her hand at the farmhouses. “The
people who live here. They were invaded a hundred and fifty years ago and are
now being invaded again.”

“Believe it or not, there are fewer here
now than then. And several people make their living off the tourists who come.”

“Fewer? There must be thousands of people
here right now.”

“Lauren,” John’s voice, gentle and quiet,
caught her attention. “On that one day, a hundred and fifty years ago, over
twenty-three thousand men were killed, injured or went missing.”

“Twenty-three thousand?”

“I told you. It was the bloodiest day in
any war, before or since, in America’s history.”

Lauren tried to wrap her mind around that
number, and failed miserably. She just couldn’t conceive that many dead bodies
in one place. They’d have to be lying on top of each other, piled like
cordwood. Who would keep moving forward to climb a hill of bodies?

John made the turn into the campground and
she shook her head to get rid of the macabre thoughts. She’d seen death, met it
up close and personal. But that much of it? In one place at one time? It put
her experiences into a very different perspective.

“Will’s already got us a campsite. Let me
text him and find out where we are.”

John stopped near the check-in building for
the campground and Lauren nodded to the little wooden building behind it. “I’m
headed to the restroom. Won’t be long.” At his distracted nod, she climbed out
of the truck, stretched her legs and went to answer nature’s call.

True to her word, she didn’t take long and
John grinned as he watched her saunter back to the truck. In her T-shirt and
jeans, with her hair pulled into a ponytail, she could be just any normal
beautiful woman walking along the dirt path. He grinned because she was
his
beautiful woman. She still noticed every detail around her, but she no longer
tried to make herself small. In fact, she flung her arms out as she approached
the car.

“This is wonderful weather,” she announced
through the open window as she grabbed for the door handle. “I could so easily
live where it’s always in the mid-seventies.”

“You don’t like the cold?” John put the
truck in gear as she closed her door.

“I think the desert changed me. I just got
the tail end of this past winter and it was almost too much for me.”

“Look for number forty-five.” He peered at
one of the markers as he drove slowly past. “It’ll be on your side. I’ve even
numbers over here.”

“Should be a ways up yet.”

The campground buzzed with activity. The
place could be a village unto itself. Huge RVs filled some slots, collections
of tents filled others and still more spaces held everything in between. Some
men, already in uniform, tended cooking fires and John wondered what the
soldiers of the past would think if they could see men sporting both blue and
gray sharing the same cook fire and toasting each other with Bud Lights.

“There it is, next one.”

John looked where she pointed. A small RV
sat on the lot next to number forty-five. The door opened and Will stepped
down, waving them in.

“Glad you made it,” Will called out as John
backed the truck into the narrow opening between two trees.

Their windows were still down and Will came
over to lean on Lauren’s door as John turned off the engine. “Lauren, this
reprobate is William Bondman. He’s the one who talked me into all this. Will,
meet Lauren Carr.”

“Girlfriend extraordinaire, or so rumor has
it.” He put his hand in the window. “Nice to meet you, Lauren.” Stepping back,
he opened her door before she could reply and reached out to hand her down. “If
you can put up with Mr. Social Studies Teacher, you must be okay.”

Lauren laughed at Will’s antics and John
got a warm feeling in the middle of his chest. He got out of the truck and came
around the back end to meet them. “Where’s Jill?”

Will cocked his head toward the trailer. “Inside.”
He turned to Lauren. “She’d come out to say hello, but she’s a bit tied up.”
Will gave an over-large wink. John knew exactly what he meant. Cautiously, he
watched Lauren’s face. She gave Will a puzzled look, then shrugged and reached
for the bag with the tent. John hastened to give her a hand, mouthing the word
“later” to his friend. Will burst out laughing.

“I’ll leave you two to set up camp and I’ll
give Jill a hand.”

“Your friend seems nice,” Lauren told him
as she helped get the tent out of the bag.

“He is.”

“Odd sense of humor though.”

John didn’t say anything, suddenly
wondering if this had been such a good idea. Maybe Lauren wasn’t ready for
this. While he didn’t have any intentions of sharing her, or of doing anything
with Will and his wife in a sexual manner this weekend, the possibility of a
foursome someday had certainly crossed his mind.

The tent went up easily enough and John was
glad to see it was so large. He really hadn’t wanted to sleep with his feet out
of a pup tent but then again, he didn’t want to sleep curled up in a ball
because the nylon tent was too small either.