Sisters of Shiloh (8 page)

“We don’t string up deserters. We shoot ’em, if General Jackson’s in the mood. You can never tell with him.” A gust of wind came up, and his pants flapped soundlessly against his legs. He winced and took his glasses off and rubbed his right eye with the back of his sleeve, noticed it was dusty as well, and pulled a handkerchief from his pocket to finish the job. “Damned dust,” he said. “I never get used to it.”

The sun went down. The tent darkened. The light of campfires glowed through cotton twilling. Libby heard voices and dogs barking. Her stomach was a knot of fear. She did not know if the man in her was ready or would simply devolve into womanly gestures or girlish tears. She recalled the walk of Arden as he strolled down an unpaved street with his hands in his pockets, the vision so clear that it tore at her heart and she was forced to blink it away. Libby’s new woolen trousers scratched her legs. Her shell jacket was too wide in the shoulders and her belt was too loose, although she had cinched it to the very last hole.

Josephine sat next to her, tying and retying her shoes. The laces groaned as she tightened them.

“This is crazy, Libby. This will never work. We will be found out and sent home.”

“We passed the inspection.”

“They didn’t care who we were. They just need men. And we aren’t men.”

“Stop saying you aren’t a man. You have to believe you are. Think like one. Speak like one. Dream like one.”

“I don’t want to be a man.”

“Then, go home.”

They heard a voice outside calling hello. A lean young man appeared at one opening of their tent, his sand-colored hair illuminated by his lantern. The light made their muskets shine.

“I’m Wesley Abeline,” he said. “Who are you?”

“I’m Thomas,” Libby said. “And this is Joseph. We’re cousins.”

Wesley reached into the tent to shake their hands. Libby made sure her grip was strong and was rewarded with a slight wince from Wesley.

“Where you from?” he asked.

“Shiloh.”

“Shiloh the battle?”

“No, Shiloh, near Fredericksburg.”

“We used to have an aunt who lived in Fredericksburg. She had a pet hen. It would eat salamanders out of her hand. Now come on out. You’re about to miss supper.”

Campfires were blazing, sputtering, and crackling, the flames just as yellow as in peacetime. Some soldiers cooked meat on bayonets. Arden had tasted that meat. He had sat among men like these, heard this music, smelled this smoke. Libby had to force herself from imagining him watching her as she went by. Those eyes would have known her. She forced her shoulders straight and walked in a measured step. Josephine looked around as though absorbing every detail, and Libby wished a little more for Josephine’s curiosity, a genderless trait that would raise no suspicions.

Wesley led them to a campfire where three men sat on ammunition boxes and ate soup out of tin cups. Wesley made the introductions.

Floyd had snow-white hair and an expressive brow. He seemed too old to fight, but his handshake was firm. Lewis was small and hard-eyed. He was Wesley’s brother, it turned out, but didn’t have his light skin or easy laugh. Matthew was the most striking of the three. Instead of a shell jacket, he wore a buckskin shirt. One side of his hat was pinned up, and a red feather was stuck in the fold. He took off his hat and revealed a head of blond hair, cut shingle-style.

Libby tried to imitate their gestures as she shook each man’s hand. Any second, she feared, one would stare at her closely and say:
You do not belong here.
But no one said these things. They believed that the Southern cause was true, that Stonewall Jackson was God, and that all soldiers were men.

“Floyd’s our ancient drummer boy,” Wesley said. “He showed up after the Battle of Kernstown, looking for his son.”

“His name was Robert,” the old man said. “I found him dead in a patch of morning glory. You know, most dead bodies just look dead. But Robert was different. His face looked like marble. So handsome. Not as handsome as Matthew’s, but his borders on pretty. No offense, Matthew.”

Wesley said, “You know, Floyd, maybe when they shoot you, you’ll be handsome for once.”

“And maybe when they shoot you, you won’t be a smart-ass. Now shut your mouth, vermin. What was I just saying? Oh, yes. I never thought my boy was much for looks, but any woman in the world would have fallen in love with him right then and there. Some sweet girl was waiting for him at home, all set to marry him after the war, but the fact that you love someone don’t affect fate one bit. I wanted to fight in Robert’s place. But they said I was too old, even for this desperate army, and they made me the drummer boy.”

“The drummer dinosaur,” Wesley said.

Floyd gave him a sideways look of contempt. “I might be old, but I can pound out the orders. The call to dress parade, forward march, attack—they each have their distinct cadence, and I am faithful to it.”

“What happened to the old drummer boy?” Josephine asked. “Was he killed?”

Wesley shook his head. “Naw. His mother showed up and told us he wasn’t but eight years old, and dragged him away by the ear. I swear that boy looked twelve.” Wesley gestured to Floyd. “So now we’ve got the oldest drummer boy in the Southern army. God, does he make a racket!”

“I play the drum better than you play that horrible guitar. I could make a better sound with a chalkboard and the fang of a rattlesnake.”

The sullen man, Lewis, finished his soup with a definitive gulp, set his tin cup down next to his feet, and began to scratch his face with the side of his spoon. The metal rasped against his whiskers as his eyes traveled from Josephine to Libby. He pressed the spoon harder, and a patch of skin on his cheek began to flush in the firelight.

“So, boys,” Lewis said, “you ready to fight?”

“I’m ready,” Libby said.

“You are, huh? Well, what is your level of commitment?”

“Come on, Lewis,” Wesley said. “They just got here. They don’t need your die-hard Rebel talk.”

“All I want to know is, are the new boys here for the South, or are they here for adventure, or to impress some girl, or what have you?”

“I would die for the Southern cause,” Libby said, “but I’d rather kill for it.”

“All right,” Wesley said. “There’s your answer, Lewis. Did they give you boys your tin cups? Good. Hand ’em over. And sit down.”

He walked away and returned a few minutes later and handed them their steaming cups.

“Soup’s good tonight,” he said.

Josephine blew on her soup cautiously. Libby took a sip and looked up, puzzled. Something wasn’t quite right. Her tongue turned to fire. Her face flushed. Tears ran out of her eyes.

“Wesley,” Floyd said, “you didn’t pull that red pepper trick on the new boys, did you?”

“Ah, I’m sorry,” said Wesley, handing Libby a cup of water. “It’s just something we do to welcome the new recruits.”

Libby threw the water in his face.

“Hey!” he said.

Libby tackled him. He fell over backward, and she jumped on top of him and raised a fist to punch him in the face. She felt others rising to stop her, grasping at her arm, pulling her off him, but she struggled ferociously, a terrible rage just waiting for the right battle, the right insult, the right spice, to open the door.

The camp had filled with quiet sounds, soldiers praying in whispers, ashes floating off old fires, quill pens scratching on palimpsest. The pickets fidgeted out in the woods.

The sisters had removed their belts and coats, and now lay with their trousers rolled up at the cuffs. Their shirtsleeves were so long, they covered their hands.

“These clothes don’t fit,” Josephine said.

“Neither do mine. I’m going to steal the pants off the first Yankee I shoot on the battlefield.”

Josephine didn’t answer. She had not told Libby yet that she would never kill an enemy soldier. She unbuttoned her shirt and pulled at the cotton binding. Some tiny varmint had gotten under the cloth and was biting the flesh of her breast.

The shadow of a mosquito loomed against the cotton twilling. Perhaps it was the last mosquito left in the world, now that summer had ended. One last drink of blood to toast the others. Josephine wiggled her fingers at the little beast, whose hum died in response.

“We did good tonight, didn’t we?” Libby asked.

“You need to hold your temper.”

“I wasn’t talking about that. I was talking about our disguises. No one suspected a thing.”

Josephine hugged her chest and watched the winged shadow still dancing across the tent. “They looked right at me and didn’t see me at all.”

When Libby first woke, several moments passed before the linen sheets of her old bed dissolved into the Spartan textures of her oilcloth and the bare ground. Other realities followed. She was in the army. She was a man. It was the middle of the night. And her bladder was full, aching in a way that wouldn’t wait for morning. She was fearful of the darkness and wanted to wake Josephine, but she was sleeping so soundly that Libby decided to go alone, despite her misgivings.

The other soldiers of her company lay out in the open, near the low campfires, their breathing raspy and slow. They slept in pairs, sharing oil blankets under the cool skies.

Wesley and Lewis were curled up together, their faces peaceful under starlight. Matthew and Floyd took less intimate positions on their backs and a foot apart. Floyd slept with a folded handkerchief over his chest, an eccentricity whose origins were unknown. Libby turned between two officers’ tents and crept past a pair of ambulance wagons into the field that bordered the woods.

High grass brushed her legs and made a swooshing sound that evoked memories of the cornfield back home. She reached the edge of the woods, catching the fragrance of wintergreen plants and the ammonia scent of urine. The lantern caught the bold design of a spider web, and she walked around it, eyeing the black spider in the center. She stepped on something that could have been an old snakeskin or the dried remains of ironweed, but did not lower her lantern to look.

She ducked behind an oak tree, hanging the lantern on a low limb so that its light fell from her waist to the ground. She sniffed at the air and realized someone else with an aching bladder had already found this spot. She had no desire, though, to look further. She pulled down her trousers, backed up to the tree, and sank into a crouching position, bracing her back against the trunk and holding her shirttail out of the way. She tried to hurry, but her bladder would not be rushed. She waited, trembling, alert for any sound beyond the splash of urine against the leaves of the forest floor.

She heard something. A footstep or the fall of an acorn loosened by the wind. Her throat went dry. She stopped the flow and listened. A definite series of footsteps now, creeping up so fast that she did not have time to react, but remained in her position with her sex bared as suddenly she was looking into a man’s face. The lantern light caught his wild eyes as he stared at her.

She couldn’t help herself. She screamed. He screamed too.

She fell over as he ran away, still screaming, in the direction of the camp. She managed to pull up her pants. Her fingers shook as she buttoned them. Voices rose in the distance, curses and urgent calls for the guards. She crept out of the woods and back through the field toward a gathering clamor. She hid behind an ambulance wagon and listened.

“They’re killing me. They’re killing me!”

She peered out from behind the wagon. Half a dozen soldiers were trying to pin down the crazy man’s arms and legs, but he fought them ferociously. Other soldiers were gathering.

“We’re going to die! All of us!”

The lieutenant, a short, chubby man whose uniform fit him tightly, came rushing up to the struggling group. “Private Abraham! You will be quiet now!”

But the man would not be silenced. “They’re coming! They’re coming! Oh God, they’re here!”

“Private Abraham goes through spells,” Floyd explained the next morning as he rolled up his mackinaw blanket. “The man’s got nostalgia. That’s the medical term. All of a sudden, he’ll start screaming for no reason at all. Claims people are coming to kill him or a pack of wild dogs has broken loose. Once in a while, he’ll think he’s sinking in quicksand. He used to be a regular fellow. Last summer he was trying to reload his musket, when a Yankee shell took the head off the man standing next to him. Half the man’s face ended up sliding down his neck. Private Abraham didn’t speak for three days, and after that . . . well, you see what happens.”

“Why don’t they send him home?” Josephine asked.

“He won’t go. He’s still a good soldier, and Old Jack would let a billy goat fight if he could hold a gun.”

Floyd began to rummage through his haversack and didn’t speak again until he’d found his folding toothbrush and held it to the light.

“Years ago, there was a man from my town who fought at Churubusco. When he came back home, he didn’t have no foot, and he was crazy as a loon. His family had to put bars over his window and chain him to his bed.”

“What did they do with Private Abraham last night?” Libby asked.

“Ah, they threw him in the guardhouse. He’s always fine in the morning, like nothing ever happened.”

“Really? He doesn’t remember?”

“Who knows?”

Libby hadn’t slept, too worried about exposing her gender to an insane man.

“This war makes everyone crazy,” said Floyd. “Some more than others, of course.”

Just as Floyd had promised, Private Abraham was at morning drill. His expression was calm, but he had the eyes of a man in a blood-exhausted state, when all colors are equal, and North and South form interchangeable pieces of a broken whole.

“He saw me last night,” Libby whispered to Josephine. “The lantern was shining right on me. He knows I’m a woman.”

“Don’t worry. He wasn’t himself.”

But on the way back to the campsite, Private Abraham caught up to them and pulled on Libby’s elbow to stop her.

“Excuse me,” he said, his voice formal and sane now by the light of day. “I believe we met last night.”