Sisters of Shiloh (6 page)

She threw herself into the first phase of her new quest: studying men.

“Stephen,” she said that night, calling him from the hallway into her room, “Come here.”

“What do you want?”

“Just come here.”

She knitted her brow as she watched him stroll into the room. “Good,” she said. “Now pick something up off the top of the dresser. Now untie your shoes and tie them again. Now brush the hair out of your face. Now shade your eyes and look out the window. Now put your hands in your pockets. Now sit down. Stand up. Lean over and pretend you’re petting a dog. See that book on the shelf? Open it and turn the pages.”

Stephen obeyed her until his impatience overtook his entertainment over the mysterious new game. “You’re crazy,” he said, and left the room.

Over the following days, she studied the gestures of the opposite sex, carefully noting the way they walked, handled sticks, lifted forks, fastened belt buckles, and turned doorknobs. She watched the tilt of her father’s head, the way Stephen pulled at the collar of his Sunday shirt, spat on the ground, and flinched when his mother dug her nails in his arm.

She took careful note of the wounded soldiers who lounged around the Taylor Hotel. They leaned on rails, relaxed in doorways. Scratched their necks. They had a tendency to chuckle with their teeth locked and slap at mosquitoes with reckless force. They liked to throw things to each other . . . anything. Apples, dice, even a folded newspaper, taking the chance it would open and fly like a bird. Cards meant a lot to them, as did brandy. They rested on their haunches, chewed on grass, snorted and grunted for no reason at all, would not say a word for hours and then suddenly, defiantly, would sing an old camp song or laugh at the antics of a dog. The surgeons who came outside the hotel to smoke cigarettes took longer puffs when their smocks were bloody.

Without fail, the Quaker man who lived across the street looked up at the sky just before he answered his wife’s beckoning screech. And Dr. Beale’s eyes narrowed when he pulled a tooth.

And Arden. Of course, Arden. His long-strided walk. His hands swinging. The looseness of his spine and hips. The way his body changed when he hoisted himself onto the back of a horse. That dominance, that grace. The way he wet his fingertip and collected loose granules of sugar from a tabletop, or grabbed at a blade of grass to stick in his mouth, or idly peeled bark off a tree as he leaned against it. The natural world was his to paw and peel and lick and worry, like he owned it.

Twenty-one. The number of men who would pay for his death. As a woman, she loved the poetry in that equation; as a man, she loved the rage.

Her family—with the exception of Stephen, who was in his own world like any other fourteen-year-old boy—was greatly encouraged by Libby’s new vitality.

“The color is coming back into your face!” Josephine exclaimed in a thrilled voice. “And you’re eating!”

“See?” Mrs. Beale said. “No matter the burden, God gives us the strength to face it.”

Libby only smiled. “Yes,” she said, “He does.”

That night, after everyone in the family had fallen asleep, Libby lit a kerosene lantern and stole out of the house and crept through the dark town to the little A-frame house she had shared with Arden before the war. The air was cold and carried an odor of sweet smoke, as though someone had been burning a fire using old pine needles as kindling.

She passed Arden’s old house on the way to theirs. He had been the eldest son, the adored one, and she’d seen grief weigh down that family. Their speech was unhurried and dull, and they walked in and out of church as though walking were a great burden to be borne by survivors. The way the father pulled out and checked his pocket watch had slowed. And the sticks his brothers drew down split-rail fences made deliberate, somber slaps. Now they were probably all calling Arden’s name slowly in their sleep. She knew how they all felt. Until she had met the young boy soldier with the missing arm, she had slowed too.

She reached the edge of town and stood before the house that had been bought with her dowry. So much more humble than the Hudson River Gothic Revival she’d grown up in, where every room had a chimney and a five-octave grand piano sat in the parlor. And yet she’d loved it here, waiting for Arden to come home from his job at the mill. She took a key out of her pocket and put it in the lock. Keys had not been necessary before the war. The town had felt safe, and even the deaths that arrived had done so with warning. Old people died in bed. Young people died of typhus. Women died in childbirth. But thousands of young men and boys did not die suddenly in the course of an afternoon, their bodies forming mountains.

She entered the house and moved through the rooms, letting the light of the lantern fall over what would never be seen again without a certain stabbing pain: the hobnailed cups still sitting on the gate-leg table, the smooth pine boards, the simple ascot curtains, and the pencil-post bed, perfectly made and waiting for their return.

She hunted in their chest of drawers until she found an old pair of his trousers. She recognized them by feel. Remembered how solid his knee once felt inside the pant leg as they rested in the shade. Now the pants were empty of that man. She moved on to the wardrobe, where she retrieved one of his shirts and his worn brogans. A pair of his old socks and her task was complete. She did not allow herself to touch the bed or run her fingers across the teeth of an old comb of his she found in a drawer. She could spend a year there remembering him. But she had work to do.

The next night, Libby stood in the backyard of her parents’ house, her long hair wild around her shoulders, bathed in a midnight glow that did not come from the sky but from some angel activity or friction of leaves. She moved the knife from one hand to the other. Tonight she felt no pain, only a sweet kind of wistfulness in which memories are constant and soft. An open moon would have revealed pupils the size of marbles. Inside her father’s study, a bottle of laudanum sat open on his desk. She had seen laudanum provide courage to men without legs and to children whose bloody teeth were being yanked out by her father’s tooth key. Now she needed it for a bloodless operation that would begin her transformation from woman to man.

The knife flickered in the light when she moved it from one hand to the other.

“Arden,” she said, and raised the knife.

The air in Josephine’s room was warm but not hot, perfect for dreams that evoke visions of things so ordinary they can be found in a kitchen cupboard. She lay on her back, her hands folded across her chest, dreaming of eating horehound candy in the foyer of her house. Yellow dust drifted through the open window, moving into her nose and mouth when she took a breath. Her nightgown had tangled up under the covers. These small discomforts made her frown in her sleep.

She finished the candy but not the dream. She was walking up the stairs now, to the second landing. She heard the wounded Yankee soldier—the one who died of gangrene—calling her from his room. She opened his door and found him sitting up in bed, alive.

“Aren’t you proud of me?” he asked.

“Proud of you? For what?”

“I killed him.”

Josephine followed his gaze. Arden sat slumped in a chair, dead, his arm shattered, intestines protruding from his stomach wound. He opened his eyes.

“How do I look?”

Josephine’s own scream awakened her. She sat up in bed, bathed in sweat and gasping. She heard footsteps coming down the hallway and stopping in front of her door. She drew the covers up to her chest.

“Who’s there?” she asked, shaking, wishing she were still dreaming but knowing she was not.

The doorknob began to turn.

She reached over to the night table and fumbled for a match. She had just lit the kerosene lamp when the door opened and Arden walked into the room, wearing a shirt whose sleeves were too long for him and a pair of baggy trousers. He was gaunt and pale, but the flies were gone and the hole in his belly had disappeared. Her body shook violently. She tried to scream but couldn’t.

“Arden,” she gasped.

He sat down on the edge of her bed, the weight of his body pulling at her sheets. He leaned toward her, his pupils unnaturally large.

“No,” he said, “it’s Libby.”

Libby sat on a wingchair and watched her sister strip the bed. Occasionally she would move her hand up and feel the results of her butcher-knife haircut. It was longer on one side. She would have to fix that.

“Look what you made me do!” Josephine said. “This is my only set of sheets.”

“They’ll dry.”

Libby’s voice perfectly mimicked that of her dead husband, but the laudanum she’d taken made Arden sound dreamy and forgiving.

“Where did you get those clothes?”

“They belonged to Arden when he was younger. He left them at our house when he joined the army.”

“They’re too big for you.”

“I’ll manage.”

Josephine wadded up the sheets and put them on the washing stand. “You can’t join the Stonewall Brigade. That’s a crazy idea. You won’t fool anyone.”

“I fooled you.”

“It’s dark.”

“Don’t you remember the battlefield, Josephine? Some of those dead boys were so pretty. Such pale skin and such long eyelashes. They looked more like girls than we do. And I’ve been studying men. I know how to talk and walk and move just like they do. And I suppose I’ve studied Arden for years.” Libby stood and stretched, pushing her hands toward the ceiling in a gesture perfectly copied from her dead husband.

Josephine looked horrified. “Do you want to die like Arden? On the battlefield, covered in flies?”

Libby felt a sudden surge of anger move through the laudanum haze like a spear through a cloud of butterflies. “You were probably happy that he died.”

“Libby! That’s a terrible thing to say. I did not wish his death.”

“Liar,” Libby whispered, knowing that the laudanum both softened her words and sharpened their effect.

“It doesn’t matter whether I hated him or not. He’s dead, and you won’t change that by going to war. And even if you could, you are not well, Libby. If Arden were alive, he wouldn’t want you to fight. He’d want you to be safe.”

“How do you know what he would want? He’d be happy to know I’m out hunting Yankees. I’m going to kill twenty-one of them. One for every year of his life.”

Josephine was eyeing her. “Your breasts look flat as a board.”

Libby looked down. “I bound them with muslin. Arden always complained that they were too small. He’d be amused to find that their very size turned out to be of help to me.”

“But the medical exams.”

“I’ve heard of the medical exams. Someone told me they hold a candle to one ear, and if light does not come out the other ear, you pass.”

Josephine didn’t smile.

“But what about the call of nature?”

“Woods are all around.”

“And your monthly flow?”

“I’ll make do.”

“Libby, you are not strong. You are crazy with grief. This is a mad scheme, and if on some miracle your deceit is accepted, you will get hurt. You do not know how to shoot a rifle or make a fire. You do not know anything except how to be a woman, and that will be of no use to you at all.”

Josephine’s words meant nothing to Libby. The laudanum ate them and left only their tone. “I’ll write you, Josephine. Just like he wrote me.”

Her sister shook her head and sighed. “I tried to help you. You’ve left me no choice.” She opened her mouth, but Libby was on her in the blink of an eye, clapping a hand over her incipient scream.

“You call Mother and Father in here,” Libby warned her, “and they’ll try to keep me a prisoner in this house. But I will escape, sooner or later. You know I will. And when I return from the war, I will never speak to you again.”

Libby dropped her hand, and Josephine let her breath out. “I would accept such a punishment if you returned from the war whole. But how can you? You aren’t leaving whole. If you insist on going, I’m going with you.”

“Of course you are not.”

“Yes, I am. There is nothing you can say to make me not follow you.”

Libby allowed herself a small smile.

“You’re going to help me kill twenty-one Yankees?”

“No. I’m going to keep twenty-one Yankees from killing you.”

October 4, 1862

Dear Mother and Father,

Libby and I cannot stand by while courageous men like Arden lose their lives for our cause. We will serve our Confederacy the only way that we can, by finding a hospital in which to serve as nurses. We will return to you safely once this war is done.

Ever your loving daughter,

Josephine

October 6, 1862

Dear Sir,

Yours is but one hospital of many throughout Virginia I have written in search of my daughters, Libby Tanner and Josephine Beale, who left our home clandestinely to offer their help as nurses. We had reports that they may be bound forRichmond.

They are respectable young ladies, with character and virtue above reproach. Their zeal for our great Confederacy, coupled with my younger daughter’s grief over the loss of her husband, has caused them a lapse in judgment, but their intentions are sincere.

I am certain that you can imagine the dreadful worry that grips a father’s heart when the safety of his children is in question, particularly those of the timid gender. I would be forever in your debt if you could send me good news that they are with you and safe; and I will immediately travel to Richmond to collect them.

Cordially,

Dr. William Beale

They hid in an abandoned church a mile past the edge of town, practicing their craft and living off a loaf of bread and some dried pork Libby had taken from the smokehouse. The church had been taken over by the Union army, who laid planks across the pews to perform amputations after the Battle of Winchester. Afterward they had used it as a place of residence for one of the regiments. The Yankees had gotten drunk one night and wrecked it, breaking the windows and carving their names in the pulpit. The cross was chopped up into firewood. Their angry officers had banished the sinners from the church, and now it stood empty, even after Jackson’s brigade had driven the Yankees out of town. No one wanted to sing and worship in a sanctuary that reeked of dried vomit and urine. Under that roof, the girls committed their own brand of sacrilege, speaking in lower registers and practicing the gestures of the opposite sex.