Sisters of Shiloh (25 page)

“That is not enough.”

Libby opened her mouth, but no sound came out. Arden’s footsteps came closer. His shadow grew. He pressed his face against the cotton twilling. The shape of his features bulged into the tent.

She was afraid to sleep now. She spent her evenings huddled on one side of the tent, careful where she moved her eyes, lest she see a darting shadow or the imprint of a face. She traded food for candles and kept one lit every night, using her bayonet ring as a holder. In the mornings the wax had dripped down the length of the bayonet blade, and she had to scrape it off with a knife before she could pass inspection.

She had been questioned about Josephine’s and Wesley’s desertion, but claimed ignorance and seemed to be believed. The memory of her sister came back to her constantly, seeming soft and pre-traitorous at times, but hardening like a prism when Libby thought of what she’d done. She still felt shocked by the final conversation by torch light. She had never dreamed it would have come to this, Josephine and that boy skulking off like cowards for the homeland. And yet, when the first puff of smoke from expired candlelight woke her up in pitch darkness, she reached for her.

The men were camped at Guiney’s Station. Chancellorsville had skinned them good, but they had won the battle anyway, and now the bounties of summer had restored them. They ate wild raspberries and trapped squirrels. They grasped the pungent shoots of wild onions and yanked them out of the ground. As potholes grew from that plundering, the taste of soup improved. This was the season of letters. Ink was hot in the wells, and a group of Quaker women had sent a large supply of stationery, as well as a box of new gloves whose trigger fingers had been sewn closed. The soldiers laughed at the crazy, unwearable gloves, and at the crazy women who hated war. They did use the stationery, writing slim books to their loved ones by the light of Confederate candles, spilling endearments that would dry up forever once they came home.

On May 10, word swept through the camp that Stonewall Jackson had died after being shot by his own picket. Men wept in each other’s arms and swore revenge. Their God was dead, and they struggled to put their cause back together knowing he would never ride his sorrel among them again. The mad cause was absent its mad general, and the men did not know what to do, and so they drank.

Late that night, Libby came upon a trio of new recruits, squatting around Wesley’s old guitar. One of them poured kerosene on the useless instrument as the other watched and clapped. Their drunken cheers attracted the attention of the old drummer, Floyd, who hobbled over and asked their business.

“We’re burning the guitar of that yellow dog who deserted with his friend,” one of them explained, “in honor of our fallen general. Old Jack would not have emptied his pipe out on such a coward.”

“You listen here,” Floyd said. “You didn’t know that soldier. You boys ain’t but two weeks off the farm. Your mama probably gave you your last bath. You think you went through one battle and you’re soldiers now? I saw that boy fight for his cause. I saw him sicken and almost die for it. He sang around that fire when he had nothing left to sing. He sang for us. That boy gave everything, and then he up and left, and I say, ‘God bless him.’ And, yes, I’m an old man. But I’m telling you now, the next one of you that touches his guitar, I’m gonna kick your ass from here to Sunday.”

Floyd took the guitar, and Libby saw him late that night, fast asleep on his oilcloth, holding the guitar on his chest. The old man was snoring, reeking of kerosene and love.

Saltbox houses sat on scarred land, surrounded by old threshing machinery and cranky dogs and scratching chickens. Wesley and Josephine stole milk from patient cattle, squeezing it into their tin cups, and in one outbuilding they opened a barrel full of molasses and licked it from their fingers until they got spooked and ran away.

“Why don’t we just find a place to hole up now?” Josephine said. “I’m tired of walking.”

“That’s not what we planned.”

“Why does it matter? We should have stayed in that empty farmhouse we found yesterday.”

“You know why no one lived in it. It smelled like death.”

One morning they woke up in a barn and found themselves staring up into the barrel of a Springfield musket, the old-fashioned kind that went off on a whim. An old woman aimed it at them with shaky hands.

“Please don’t shoot us!” Josephine cried.

“She’s a woman!” Wesley added.

The old woman stared at him. “What did you say?”

“She’s a woman.” He said it proudly and with great definition, as though Josephine’s gender was a pass that allowed them every consideration.

The old woman lowered the gun slightly and peered at Josephine. Light poured through the slats in the barn roof. Dust covered her spectacles.

“Women don’t wear pants,” she said.

“I’m pretending to be a man,” Josephine said.

The old woman began to laugh. One of her front teeth was folded over the other, giving her the appearance of a rabbit. Her cheeks turned red. Dust blew away from her face. “You are no more a woman,” she said, “than I am a billy goat.”

She raised the gun again. Her cheeks paled and her mouth closed. The friendly rabbit vanished.

“We weren’t gonna steal anything!” Wesley said. “Honest! We just wanted to find a place to sleep!”

The old woman didn’t move. A dragonfly landed on the barrel and must have pleaded for mercy, because although she kept the gun pointed at them, she exhaled slowly and rolled her eyes. “A place to sleep, huh? Why aren’t you out finding a place to fight?”

“We’re not deserters, if that’s what you mean,” Wesley said.

“I wasn’t born stupid, and God gave me a few more smarts during my life. You are chicken for sure. Got a whole yellow trickle moving the wrong direction down these parts, and a trickle of black folks going the other way. Black and yellow, like a bumblebee. My husband would have shot you for sure, if out of nothing but disgust. He died of a bad heart before there was ever talk of Secession, but he was a man, through and through.”

“All right, then,” Wesley said. “We’re deserters. Please don’t turn us in. We have some money. We’ll give it to you.”

She snorted. “Confederate dollars go a long way these days, don’t they? Might as well give me a soiled handkerchief cut up in squares. No, I’m not going to turn you in. Truth is, I’m not such a fan of the Confederacy anymore. Their soldiers came through here a while back, took our last pig, and gave us all scarlet fever. I’m sure it won’t be long before the Yankees come from the opposite direction with their own bad intentions. So, you just pick a color and stay that way. Makes no matter to me. You two got scarlet fever?”

“No,” Wesley said.

“Typhoid?”

“No.”

“Syphilis?”

“What?”

“Ah, I guess there’s only one way to catch that.” She lowered the gun. “You boys get inside the house. I got a jar of pickles I can’t open.”

The house was made of poplar logs; the gaps between them had been shanked with pine boards. The aroma of sassafras and mildew permeated the interior. Hickory sticks crackled in a stone fireplace; an old horsehair sofa sat against the wall, bordered by a spinning wheel and a stack of carver chairs.

Wesley and Josephine sat on the sofa and studied the room. A sway-backed dog came padding in from another room, made a sudden dash for Wesley, and shoved its muzzle into his crotch before he could close his legs.

“That’s old Hank,” the woman said. “Just push him away. He’s fourteen years old, and he don’t insist on nothing. Of course, he ain’t good for nothing, either. I’d begrudge feeding him, but my boy’s gonna want to see him when he gets back from the war.”

“What’s your son’s name?” asked Josephine.

“Randolph. Haven’t heard from him since winter, and he’s usually good about writing. But I’ve learned not to draw conclusions about nothing.”

She went into the kitchen, returned with an iron kettle full of water, and hung it over the fireplace. “Lucky for you, I was just about to boil me some eggs for breakfast. I got a little bacon left too, and some crackers and molasses.” She eased herself into a rocking chair. It creaked as it caught her. The dog waddled toward the sound.

“You know,” she said, “the farm looks like hell, but I got more than most folks. When the Rebels came through, we took everything from the smokehouse and hid it in the loft. They couldn’t get the door open on the drying house, and they never found the root cellar. All they got of any value was a couple of chickens and a pig we were planning to slaughter come winter.”

“Wait,” Wesley said, “you keep saying
we.
”

“Ah. I wasn’t alone back then. My son’s wife and little boy lived with me. He wasn’t but eight years old. When we all got sick, I thought I’d die first, being the oldest. Not true. The woman went first. My grandson and I dug her grave together. Took us most of the day. Two weeks later the boy died, and I tried to bury him myself. But I just didn’t have the strength. We’d had the first frost. The ground was hard as a rock. Finally I gave up scratching around with the hoe and laid him down under an oak tree and covered him with his coat. I piled some old chestnut rails on top of his body to keep the wolves away. That’s all I could do for him.”

She pointed out the window. “You see that pile of rails there, under that tree? That’s where he lies. His mama’s between the peach trees and the tool shed.”

Wesley stood up. “That tool shed open?”

“Never had a lock. Rebs don’t eat hammers.”

Wesley walked out the back door without saying another word. As Josephine and the old woman watched him, he entered the tool shed, came out with a shovel, and carried it to the pile of rails. He set it down and began to roll up his sleeves.

The old woman looked at Josephine. “What’s your chicken friend doing?”

“I think he plans to bury that boy good and proper.”

The old woman watched him work. When he reached the lower rails, she closed the curtain and sat down in the rocking chair.

“I prayed so long for help,” she said. “It got to where I didn’t think God was listening. And then he up and sent me down a yellow angel. Why aren’t you out there helping him?”

“Wesley wouldn’t want me to.”

“Why not?”

“I told you, I’m a woman.”

The old woman didn’t laugh this time. She squinted at Josephine for a long time, her eyebrows twitching. “Now that I look at you,” she said at last, “I can see that possibility. But I still don’t believe it.”

Josephine took her jacket off. She unbuttoned her shirt and opened it. The old woman leaned forward in her rocking chair.

“I’ll be damned.”

Night had fallen. The old woman, whose name was Eleanor, opened the curtains to gaze outside. She’d been admiring her grandson’s new grave since Wesley had finished it. “Yep. Yep. Yep. Looks so much better. Just wanted to see how it looks at night. It’s got a nice shape.” She let the curtain go, sat back in her rocking chair, and studied her visitors.

“Well, what a day, huh? When you woke up, I was pointing a gun at you. And now I just made you supper. Of course, in between that time, one of you buried my grandson, and one of you turned into a woman.” Eleanor glanced at Josephine. “A very strange woman. Now that I know, I can’t believe I was ever fooled for a second. But you never told me what you were doing in the army to start with.”

“I followed someone,” Josephine said.

Eleanor pointed at Wesley. “You mean, this idiot?”

“No. My sister, Libby. She joined the Stonewall Brigade to carry on her dead husband’s cause. She was crazy with grief, and I was afraid something terrible would happen to her. And so I went with her.”

“Mmm. I’ve heard of women sneaking into the ranks, but never quite—”

“Let’s not talk about this anymore,” Wesley interrupted.

Eleanor ignored him. “Why didn’t you bring your sister with you?” she asked Josephine.

“Libby wouldn’t leave. She’s turned into someone else. I think she no longer knows right from wrong. Her mind isn’t the same.”

Wesley stood up. “For God’s sake, stop it!”

He walked out the back door and slammed it behind him.

Eleanor raised her eyebrows. The dog laid his head on her knee.

Josephine sighed. “Wesley doesn’t like it when I talk about my sister.”

The old woman turned her palms heavenward. “How can you help that? She’s your sister.”

Later that night, Eleanor made Wesley drag the bathtub in from the backyard and set it up in the kitchen.

“If you two are gonna sleep here, you’re gonna bathe. Tomorrow we’ll boil those creepy-crawling garments of yours. Tonight we’ll boil you.”

Wesley filled the tub with water heated over the fire. Steam rose to the beams of the ceiling.

“All right, then,” Eleanor said when Wesley was finished. “You, boy, go make yourself scarce until it’s your turn. Go outside. And you, girl, get in the tub.”

She handed Josephine a bar of bayberry soap and said, “Poor Pauline was saving this for when my son came home. She had a nice dress she was gonna wear for him, too. I almost buried her in that dress, but I just couldn’t do it. You get yourself a bath and put that dress on. You ain’t a boy no more. You got no reason to be.”

Once she was alone in the kitchen, Josephine took off her clothes and sank into the tub. The fragrance of the soap seemed foreign at first as she began to bathe, but by the time she reached her feet, her body had adjusted. She was softening. Field capabilities were leaving her, knowledge of the route step, tolerance for hardtack, texture of blood, desire to swear, lust for fire, instinct for the yell. She lathered herself again, washed her hair, and rinsed it clean. Her face and skin felt smooth. Creatures she would never have to wear again sank into the water.

When she was finished, Eleanor came in and handed her a linen robe. “Put that on,” she said, “and come to the back bedroom. The one on the left.”

A few minutes later, Josephine stood in the doorway of a room that was furnished only by a maple chest, a cord bed, a Sheraton mirror, and a stool. Eleanor held up a kerosene lantern and motioned her in.