Sisters of Shiloh (16 page)

“No one else knows. Except Floyd. He don’t like it, but he’s not gonna tell anyone. He’s a loyal old man.”

“Come on,” said the first Yankee impatiently.

“What do you say?” Wesley asked Josephine. “Are we gonna do it?”

Josephine nodded.

“Good,” said the first Yankee. “Let’s play.”

Lewis’s eyes blazed across the campfire. Libby stared back at him. A month had passed since their argument, but neither had forgotten it. Before their fight, Libby had begun to think of Lewis as a comrade, equally ferocious in his determination to win the war, but now he was just a harsh reminder that she hadn’t killed a single man in battle or furthered the quest for a free Confederacy. She’d failed Arden. She’d failed the South. She looked at Lewis across the fire and wished him dead.

One night as she and Josephine lay together in their tent, her sister had told her to stop antagonizing him.

“He could hurt you.”

“I don’t care. I’ll fight him any day. I’m stronger now.” Libby spoke the truth. She had trained relentlessly, and now her muscles showed themselves when she flexed her arm. Her drilling had improved. But the torment of waiting had set in. She lay awake at night, her fingers poised for counting.

The brigade began to move, leaving behind a ghostly village that once was their campsite, pit fires still warm and graves by the edge of the woods. Stonewall Jackson had a plan in his head that he shared with no one, not even his staff. Perhaps he had whispered it into the ear of his sorrel, because the little beast seemed to know something. A wave of shimmering excitement ran through his men. They didn’t know where they were going, but they knew they were heading toward the Yankees to continue their bloody sweep of victories. Confederate patriotism had reached a fevered pitch in the inactivity of camp. Rebel yells split the night. A captain had stepped in for the dead lieutenant, a passionate man who clenched his fist during morning drills and shouted, “We are the Stonewall Brigade, and we will win this war!”

His words fired up the soldiers, who started a bird swell of flying hats.

During the first few miles of the march, when the route step was fresh, the men sang songs and told jokes. Wesley and Floyd traded insults borrowed from
Les Misérables.

“Marauder.”

“Demon.”

“Fruit thief.”

“Wretch.”

The army reached its first big river early in the afternoon. It was wide and flat, and its surface provided no distinction between its shallows and its deep holes. Local Union sympathizers had burned the bridge to stop the movement of the Rebel army. The soldiers leaned on their muskets and waited as the officers argued about the best place to cross. Floyd took off his drum and stretched his old back. “We’ll be here the rest of the day, waiting for those idiots to make a decision,” he said. “Get a bunch of officers together, and they can’t even count the colors on a rooster.”

A black man came down the road, the wheels of his pastry cart stirring up dust. Floyd bought an elderberry pie and frowned when he bit into it. “Where’s the sugar in it? Isn’t it supposed to be sweet?” He stopped his complaining and cocked his head. “It’s the regimental band. What is so important about a river crossing that they need to bring the band out?”

The musicians gathered at the water’s edge. A gust of wind blew the hat off the drummer boy and revealed his red curls. His drum was a truer shade of red, more like the color of a cherry, and he beat on it with a particular vitality, his feet planted and knees locked, his face flushing hot.

As the band reached the chorus of a marching song, a roar began down the line, growing in volume.

“Look!” Lewis shouted. “It’s him!”

Stonewall Jackson appeared on his sorrel, riding with his feet high in the stirrups, acknowledging the deafening cheers by tipping his hat until it almost revealed his dark eyes. He stopped his horse at the river’s edge and stared at the regimental band, whose members had grown sweaty despite the chill of the day. A lift of Jackson’s finger killed the percussion, then the winds, then the flutes, and finally a single banjo. He allowed his horse to drink from the river, then rode over to his officers.

A boy in a straw hat who could not have been more than eight years old was fishing from the other bank. He caught a glimpse of Jackson and leaped to his feet, so distracted by the sight, he let the current pull on his line. His cane pole slid down the bank and bobbed in the water.

“General!”

The little boy pointed at a blue-green patch of river.

“Cross here! It’s only two feet deep!”

Jackson saluted the boy, who drew himself up to his full height and returned the gesture, pulling off his hat and watching as the sorrel started into the river, water coming up to the general’s stirrups and no higher. The horse took one more step and disappeared with its rider under the water. The little boy collapsed into hearty laughter, rolling back and forth on the bank and holding his stomach.

Jackson’s sorrel surfaced, then the general himself, his slouch hat limp and streaming water. The horse swam back without him. It clamored up the bank and turned to stare at the little boy, who was still laughing. A soldier raised his musket and fired over the boy’s head. The boy disappeared behind a barricade of jimson weed as a gust of wind caught his hat and blew it into the river. It landed gently, right side up, and floated out of sight.

The boy’s disembodied voice rose up from his hiding place, gleeful and defiant. “Take that, you Rebel bastards!”

The brigade stood frozen. No one wanted to add to the great general’s embarrassment by offering aid. In fact, they didn’t want to acknowledge the incident at all. They lowered their eyes as Jackson swam to the edge of the river and hoisted out his awkward body, still wearing his slouch hat, which, due to his habit of pulling it down over his eyes, had stayed on his head. He stomped up the riverbank, dripping wet and leaving enormous footprints. The sorrel came back and nuzzled his shoulder. Jackson climbed on its back, and horse and rider galloped away, water sluicing out from under the saddle.

The army bivouacked near Strasburg the first night of the march. The sky was clear overhead, just the barest cloud drifting across in the opposite direction of the path taken by migratory birds. Dinner: salt pork, hardtack, and molasses too thick from the cold to spread. The wind blew harder. The sun had gone down. No stars. No campfires. Only a pitch-black sky and a frosted army that would not drip until the spring.

Libby and Josephine retired to their tent and curled up together under their oilcloths. All around them, pairs of men were doing the same, bodies as close as that of husband and wife, but bound by only a vow of warmth.

Libby shivered. “It’s so cold,” she said.

“Take my blanket.”

“No.”

“Please.”

She shook her head.

Josephine rubbed Libby’s arm. “Some of the men already have frostbite.”

“I heard.”

“Floyd says the worst of the weather is yet to come. He said he’d heard of soldiers freezing solid at their picket posts, still holding their guns. He says before this march is over, even the lice will be sleeping like spoons.”

“Floyd is full of good news.”

“I wish we could have a campfire,” said Josephine.

“You know Old Jack won’t let us. He’s afraid the Yankees will learn our position.”

They heard footsteps approaching. Wesley put his head in their tent. His oilcloth was wrapped around his shoulders, and his breath smoked the air.

“Your turn for picket duty,” he said to Libby.

“Who’s my partner?”

“Lewis. Try not to shoot each other.”

He entered the tent as Libby exited, a feat that caused a temporary strain on the tent poles. After Libby’s crunchy footsteps had faded, he said, “I wish those two would make up. What happened that night?”

“They both said things they shouldn’t.”

“They should remember they are on the same side. But it’s not up to me to make them less stupid.”

Josephine stuck a candle into a bayonet ring and lit the wick. Wesley held his hands to the tiny flame. He looked down as he spoke.

“Listen, Joseph, I got no one to keep me warm and neither do you. What do you say we sleep together until our boys come back from picket duty?”

“What happened to Floyd?”

“Ah, he found himself a friend.”

“Who?”

“Remember that big farmer we passed on the road? Floyd took a look at the meat on his bones and offered him two dollars to sleep with him.”

“That farmer looked warm, all right.”

“So what do you say? I’m afraid I’ll freeze to death before Lewis gets back.”

The presence of Wesley had filled the tent with new odors. Spices from fires, pork grease, sweat, and something vaguely sweet. Molasses? Honeysuckle? Some ghostly fragrance out of nowhere. Josephine couldn’t help but feel her hopes rise at the thought of being close to him.

“I’m cold, too,” she said, trying to keep her voice neutral.

He took off his shoes, lifted her oilcloth, and crawled next to her. She turned on her side, and he put his arms around her and drew her to him, until her back was pressed against his chest and their legs were entangled. She shivered harder. His arms tightened.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m like a campfire. Like the sun. Abilenes have hot blood. That’s where Lewis gets his temper.”

“You don’t have one.”

“I do. Comes out sometimes.”

She felt his breath on her neck as he spoke. She’d been thinking of him, about how his arm had been broken out of love. It was just the kind of love you could expect out here, where decisions were harsh but necessary. He moved his arm, and she felt the hard knot where the bone had broken. He spoke in her ear again, something ordinary, but she barely listened, too busy reveling in the warmth and feel of his body.

She remembered once spying Arden and Libby lying in this same position in the meadow, no blanket between their bodies and the grass, no clouds in the sky, no breeze. A perfect day where the world turns blank, just for a moment, and lovers can live in a space with no distractions. Arden whispered something into Libby’s ear. She did not reply but turned her eyes toward the direction of the woods, looking back into history, perhaps, or admiring a bird. All these secret, whispered things. Two people who fit together and left the rest of the world discontinuous.

She knew she was just another man to Wesley, but she couldn’t help wondering if he had sniffed any clues on the back of her neck or felt any tension in the air of the tent, an inclination that she fitted him more perfectly than he knew.

“Wesley,” she whispered, “are you asleep?”

He didn’t answer. She could feel his steady breathing.

“Wesley,” she said again, just to make sure, and then said his name one more time, in her own voice.

Libby and Lewis hadn’t spoken all night. The tension between them made the sound of snapping branches hard on their nerves.

Libby couldn’t feel her legs. The numbness had spread from her toes to her ankles and then crept higher as the hours passed. She struggled to stay awake. She hadn’t been sleeping well. Arden still spoke to her in dreams; the dark tone in his voice troubled her and left her weary in the morning.

She exhaled a cloud of smoke. The forest turned mushy. Her gun slid out of position. As she approached the edge of sleep, a light flashed between the trees, her eyes flew open, and her body jerked and stiffened.

She raised her gun and fired.

There was no reaction in the inky blackness. No voices or returning fire.

Lewis snorted in derision. “There ain’t no one out there. You’re wasting your bullets firing at ghosts. You need twenty-one real men, don’t you, to avenge your poor dead friend?”

Her eyes stung, but the tears didn’t fall. She knelt and reloaded. The palm of her bare hand stuck to the freezing barrel. She gritted her teeth as she peeled her hand away.

Lewis spat in the snow. “You’ve killed one Yankee. And that was a lucky shot. Your dead friend—what did you say his name was? Arden?—is sitting up in heaven without nobody worth a damn to carry on his purpose.”

Libby felt a sudden rage fill her. She stood and pointed her gun at him and suddenly found herself speaking to him in a voice that was even deeper than the one she constantly, vigilantly affected. “Say another word, and I’ll shoot you.”

“You don’t even—”

She fired. The bullet whizzed past his ear, so close he cringed. He covered his ear and stared at her in disbelief.

“You’re crazy,” he whispered.

An artillery wagon had bogged down in the mud, blocking the road and halting the progress of the brigade. The men were told to rest, but Wesley and Josephine wandered off together, far enough that the swearing of the mule drivers was a hymn in the distance. The sky was the color of soaked hardtack, and under this sky the farms stretched out, fields in fallow, flowers dead, cows nibbling at stacks of hay.

Wesley swept his hand over the vista. “Just imagine living out here in the middle of nowhere. I could sit on my porch and play my guitar.”

“What about the Southern cause?” Josephine said, mimicking the ardent tone of her sister with a small smile. “States’ rights?”

“How about Wesley’s rights? How about a chicken’s right to boil in a pot? How about a blackberry’s right to be made into brandy? Where are these famous states’ rights we’re fighting for? I’ve never met them. I’m not fighting for nothing, except my own good name. And sometimes I even wonder why I’m doing that.”

They walked up a gentle rise. Wesley fell silent, and Josephine waited for him to speak again. She never knew what he was thinking about until he said it. Conversations with him were an adventure—sudden turns into religion, history, music, or the best way to draw the wild taste out of deer meat. He glanced at her and then looked away. His thoughtful stare had increased in duration and intensity as the march had progressed. A mystery lingered right under his nose. She had to fight the urge toward feminine gestures, natural when a man enters the space of a woman. She was, after all, a woman. She had checked for herself in the slow water of a river.