The Last Full Measure (10 page)

"Oh, Tacy, what did he say?"

"Got all flustered. Told me to stay out of his private life."

"How will I ever face him again? He doesn't even know I'm alive."

"Just be yourself—act like nothing's happened. It'll give him something to think about. Maybe he'll start to act like a human being for a change."

"Oh, Tacy! I don't know whether to thank you or tell him to spank you."

I got up from the bed, leaned down, and kissed her. "Don't give him any ideas," I said. "He's got enough of his own. Now come on down and have something to eat. Mama and I made supper. As for him knowing you're alive, you don't know how worried he was when you didn't come home on time, Josie—you just don't know. Come on, let's go. I've got so much to tell you. About how Mama saved a Yankee's life today, and he's lying in David's bed in the other room, and the new dog that David brought home, and..."

I removed the white band from her arm and took her hand. She was giggling as we went down the stairs.

J
OSIE INSISTED
on serving supper as usual. She even chatted with us as she did so, telling us about some of the wounded she had come upon on the streets, some of the men she had helped on the way home, and how one or two had even grabbed at her skirts as she came along, begging for help.

But I noticed that she directed none of her words at David. And none of her glances. He did not pay mind to her, either. Studiously, they ignored each other.

Still, we lingered at supper. As it turned out, Mama invited Josie to sit and have coffee with us, then the two of them brought food up to Corporal Halpern and David fixed a tray to bring downstairs to Mr. Cameron. To surprise everyone, Marvelous and I did the dishes. Then I asked Mama if I could take Cassie out for a walk.

"When and if the shooting stops," she said. "And then, only on our property. And Marvelous must remain here." She was absolutely obsessed with Marvelous being kidnapped by Rebs. Especially since we had told her what had happened that morning.

It was after eight when the artillery fire finally stopped. David had gone to the barn. Marvelous, exhausted by the day's events, had taken herself to bed. I did not know where Josie was. She'd not gone home, but likely to bed herself.

I fastened a rope around Cassie's neck and took her outside. The July heat had abated and the evening had separated itself from the rest of the world. It wanted nothing to do with the killing and destruction. It was a universe unto itself, with a cool breeze, romantic shadows, and quarter moon that hung delicately overhead.

Cassie and I decided to be a part of it, and we walked out into the meadow and viewed the house and barn from a distance. I pretended there was no war, that if we went back inside Pa would be there. And Joel and Brandon would be playing a game of chess. David would be out and about, maybe down at the Globe Inn, having a drink and flirting with the girls. He used to do quite a bit of that. In the times before.

Thinking of David, I saw a light in the barn and then, at the same time, a figure going in the door.

A woman's figure. Mama, likely going to see how Daisy was.

I lingered inside the fence of the meadow awhile longer, wondering how long it would be, if ever again, that we had even a handful of horses here, wondering what had ever happened to my Ramrod. I breathed in the sweet night air and patted the head of Cassie, who stood beside me.

I don't know how much time passed before I decided to go back to the house, or what decided me when I was halfway there to go to the barn instead. But it wasn't Daisy. It was something else, some awareness of senses that David and I once had between us come to life again on this tempting July night.

Without thinking I headed straight to a side door of the barn and opened it quietly.

I got no further. I just stood there, staring, like a jackass in the rain.

Up ahead under a lantern hung on a rafter were David and Josie, kneeling in an empty stall in the hay. They were kneeling, facing each other, holding each other, kissing passionately.

Well, I supposed then that David did know she was alive and had known it for some time now.

I had to get out of there! Quick! And I had to get out of there without making a sound, or none of us would be able to look each other in the face again!

I pulled Cassie's rope enough to choke the poor thing, vowing to accomplish the task if she so much as whimpered. She didn't, thank God. The door, thank all God's angels, did not squeak. Outside, I crept carefully away from the barn for the first fifty paces, than ran as if the devil himself were chasing me.

A cloud passed over the quarter moon, and darkness enveloped me as it should have done.
I deserve such darkness
, I thought.
What am I about, spying on them?

Think of it! David and Josie in love!

With all the killing and bloodshed going on around us, those two scraped out a space in the hell around them and found the time and the hope to love!

I saw to it that Cassie was put to her bed for the night, kissed Mama, who was doing some knitting in the parlor, and went directly to bed. Once there, I shivered, though it was warm. I thought of them, in the hay in the barn, kissing and doing whatever else went with the act of love.

But they never even spoke at supper
, I minded.
Never even glanced at each other!
And now look what they were about. My own brother David! What was it he had said to me? "
What I do or don't do with any woman is not your affair
."

It came to me then. I hadn't thought he was capable of giving such tenderness or love to a woman, of giving so much of himself over.

As I knew my brother, he never allowed himself to gamble away his feelings with anybody. My brother Joel once said, "David plays his cards close to his vest." He never exposed his feelings. Which was, it seemed to me, what love required.

It must depend on the woman, I decided, to sense what love was in a man, to bring it out of him, to dare to give of herself and to chance being hurt and turned aside. Had Josie done that? Had she taken such a risk with my brother?

I fell asleep blessing her. Over and over again.

***

G
UNFIRE WOKE ME
at four in the morning. Fierce gunfire. At the same time came a knocking at my door and my brother David's voice, melding in with what must have been cannonading.

"Tacy, get up. Now!"

Before I could answer, he came in, with no regard for my state of dress or undress. Actually I was just sitting up in bed.

"Sounds like they're fighting on Culp's Hill. Come on—bring your pillow and blanket. Come to the cellar right now."

The door closed. I got out of bed and stood there in my cotton nightgown, looking around for my wrapper. In a second, the door opened again.

"Oh, and put on some clothes. Everyone's going down. Including Corporal Halpern." The door closed again. Period, end of sentence.

I dressed quickly, then grabbed my pillow and a book I'd been reading,
Frankenstein
by Mary Shelley. I never let David see it. He wouldn't let me read it, because Jennie Wade had given it to me. I knew that. And because of the subject matter.

If he had his way I'd be reading John Locke's
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
.

I stopped off in the kitchen and helped Josie, Marvelous, and Mama carry the makings of breakfast downstairs. I stole a sideways glance at Josie, looking to see if she'd changed any since her dalliance in the barn with my brother.

I'd read romance novels. In them the heroine always was changed after a love dalliance. Her skin tone glowed, her hair shone, her eyes glistened. Because romance with her beloved solved all her problems.

None of these improvements were apparent with Josie. She looked just as worried and hassled as the rest of us this morning. And, just as last night, she did not even glance at David, or speak to him. And he ignored her completely, too.

Is this how they were going to conduct themselves, then? Carry on in secret and in public act as if they could not abide each other?

I found myself more than a little disappointed with both of them.

***

W
E ATE BREAKFAST
slipshod-like, in the cellar, without the formality Mama insisted on upstairs, though Mama did ensure we said prayers first. She said a special prayer for the men fighting up on Culp's Hill. We knew the Culp family for whom the hill was named. They owned a farm just outside town, and their son was even now fighting for the South on the hill named for them.

By the time daylight made it possible for David to extinguish the kerosene lamps, which we'd been using for days now since the town shut off our gas supply, we'd finished our breakfast and were settling into our places in the cellar, listening to the firing from Culp's Hill.

Marvelous was sitting next to me, and between us we figured out a system by which we could tell the difference between the Confederate cannon and ours.

"Ours," she would whisper. And when a Reb cannon went off, I would return in a like whisper, "Reb!"

It seemed to go on all morning. In between playing this game I watched David and Josie. They were sitting on opposite sides of the room from each other, but every so often their eyes would find each other's and they would exchange a secret glance.

I was proud of myself for being the only one in the room to know why. I did not confide in Marvelous the fact that Josie and David were lovers. It was my secret alone.

Mama had fallen asleep again despite the gunfire. So had Mr. Cameron and Corporal Halpern, who did not look too well at all this morning.

Before long Marvelous gave up the game and dozed, too. I snuggled under my blanket with Cassie the dog, half sleepy myself. And frightened now. Because the Reb guns were getting louder and more frequent. I looked across the room at David.

"Suppose they win?" I asked him shakily. "What will happen?"

Everyone else must have been thinking the same thing. Corporal Halpern opened his eyes and looked at David, too. And so did Mama. As if my brother had some inside intelligence. As if he had the answers to it all.

He took his time responding, David did, but he considered the question carefully. Then he shook his head no. "They won't" was all he said. "We have superior firepower. And superior manpower. They just won't, that's all."

For some reason everybody took his word for it. And those who'd had their eyes closed went back to sleep. Even me.

At midmorning, two things happened to wake me.

The fighting on Culp's Hill stopped.

And there came a pounding on our front door.

David rushed upstairs to answer the door. I heard his voice and that of a woman in a brief conversation, I heard a despairing "Oh" from David, and then he invited the woman downstairs.

It was Jennie Wade's mother.

Immediately, I sat up.

"Ma." David stood at the foot of the cellar stairs. Mrs. Wade stood on the first step, a little above him.

Mama came fully awake. "Why, come in, come in." Now she stood up, shaking the sleep from herself. "Are you all right, Mary? How is your new grandson? What is he? Six days old now?"

"Ma," David said quietly, "she isn't all right. She's come to tell us, Jennie's been shot this morning. She's dead. They think she was killed by a Confederate sharpshooter."

He said it with no emotion, David did. He seemed to be in shock. Even as Mrs. Wade was.

W
HAT HAPPENED
next was that David and Mama and Mrs. Wade went upstairs, as if someone were directing them to do so, as if some angel on temporary leave from heaven was leading them with a sword and telling them what to do.

I stood at the foot of the cellar steps, watching.

At the top of the steps, the angel must have given David permission to speak to me, for he turned and said, "You stay in the cellar with the rest of them, Tacy, at least until I come back. I'll be back directly. I'm just going to escort Mama to the McClellan house on Baltimore Street."

The McClellan house was where Jennie had been shot. She and her mother had been staying there, helping her sister, Georgia, with the baby, who was only six days old.

"All right," I told David. Though I don't know if he heard me, because he didn't look as if he was hearing anything, except maybe that angel, who was likely telling him to get on with it because he, the angel, had other places to be, and
by the way, don't forget your musket, David—there are still Rebels in the streets
.

They went out the door.

The house was silent; it felt empty. I went back down the steps, where everyone in the cellar was staring at me as if I had news to tell or something.

"Stop crying, Tacy," Josie said. "It'll be all right."

"I'm not crying," I said. "And anyway, how can it be all right? She's dead. Jennie Wade is dead. It isn't all right to be dead, is it? Since when is it all right to be dead?"

She was coming toward me, Josie was, with her arms outstretched. "No, it isn't, honey, but your being hysterical isn't going to help right now. It's only going to hurt you. Come on down here with the rest of us. You can't do anything for Jennie Wade anymore."

I allowed her to take my hand.
Hysterical? Who was hysterical?
But I allowed her to take me over to my mattress where Marvelous waited for me, big-eyed, while I said things I had to say.

"I fought with her and she was my friend."

And "The last thing I did was fight with her."

And "I was supposed to wear pink at her wedding in September."

And "She never really loved Johnston Hastings Skelly. She still loved David. Did you know that? Why she agreed to wed Skelly I never knew. I think it was just to make David jealous. Well, now she can make both of them jealous, can't she?"

Josie took me by the shoulders and gently set me down on my mattress. They were all still staring at me. "I'm going upstairs to get some spirits," Josie said to no one in particular. "She needs to be becalmed. Marvelous, hold her. I'll be right down."