The Last Full Measure (2 page)

"You should have asked Him to watch over our horses," David grumbled. He secured the front door, came back to the table, and sat down. I noticed that he did not set the musket far from where he was sitting.

Then he raised his coffee cup to his lips and glared at me over it. "You will not go outside the house at all today," he said with quiet sternness, "for any reason."

***

A
LTHOUGH SHE
was six years older than I was, Jennie Wade, older sister to pain-in-the-neck Sam, our hired boy, had been my friend for the last two years now. I suppose it was because I had no sisters, because I had three older brothers and dreamed of having an older sister. Jennie filled that empty space in my heart.

She lived half a block away. She had an older married sister, Georgia McClellan, who had just given birth to a baby boy, and she herself was already betrothed to a young man named Johnston Hastings Skelly, who was serving with the Eighty-seventh Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry.

She had worldwide knowledge already, at the age of twenty, without ever having left Gettysburg. And she taught me things most girls my age did not know and had no way of finding out. I was the wiser for having known Jennie Wade.

We went to lectures together at the college, to concerts, to teas. I helped her sew her trousseau. Of course, David never approved of my close friendship with her, saying she was "too old and worldly" for me by half.

But that was not the whole cloth of the reason. Just part of it. The whole cloth of it was that before his horse had crushed his leg, David and Jennie had been sweethearts, always lolling around together, going to strawberry festivals and church parties and taffy pulls and the like. Always together.

Then, after his horse crushed his leg, she came around less and less. Part of it was David's fault, of course. He did not encourage her to come. He wallowed so in his self-pity, seeing himself as less of a man, and Jennie did not know how to contend with this. She is not one for wallowing, so she finally stopped coming and David never forgave her.

Then, when she and I became friends, he disapproved.

Mama, who only saw good in things, did not object to my friendship with Jennie.

***

T
HAT MORNING
, following the orders of their officers, the ill-clad and half-in-their-cups men of White's Thirty-fifth Virginia Cavalry charged through town stealing horses. They came upon several young boys leading horses for various and mundane reasons.

One of them was Sam Wade leading Centipede and Ramrod back from the blacksmith. Three men from the Thirty-fifth Virginia had Sam and the horses in tow, and as the procession came past Jennie Wade's house, she came running outside, trailing after them and yelling at the top of her voice.

"Don't you dare take that boy. You release him this minute! Do you hear?"

First they ignored her. Then they laughed at her. Then they said something rude and vile to her.

You did not speak that way to Jennie Wade and live to tell the world about it. She kept following them and yelling and threatening.

When they came near our house we were all out front, under our giant sycamore tree. I was allowed outside only because I was with Mama and David.

"If the Rebs take our Sam," Jennie shouted at us, "I don't know what I'll do with you folks. I'll hold all of you responsible. I will!"

And she looked directly at me.

"Jennie!" I appealed.

"Quiet," David ordered me.

"You especially," she flung at me.

I dared not open my mouth again.

Mama spoke to the Rebs. "You don't want the boy," she told them. "He's our hired boy."

"No, we don't want the boy," one of the Reb soldiers answered. "You can have him. We are only after the horses."

Sam was shoved back at us, but both Centipede and Ramrod were taken.

I did speak then, not caring what David did to me. "Give me back my horse, you thieves!" I yelled after the Rebel soldiers. I screamed after them. I threw stones. Ramrod reared and cast a wild-eyed look, appealing to me to help her. I knew the look. She was begging.

"Stop it. Can't you see you're only making it worse for her?" David scolded me.

"Well, what am I to do?" I asked him.

"Be quiet is what you do. Behave is what you do. Do as you're told. I'll get them both back. Take Ma inside the house."

While we hadn't been paying mind, Jennie Wade had come over and pulled her brother, Sam, away toward home. "You're not working today," she'd told him. "Come with me."

***

L
ATER THAT MORNING
David went to Colonel White of the Thirty-fifth Virginia Battalion to secure the return of our horses. He failed.

The colonel would not return them, not even after David told him that Ramrod was close to the heart of his little sister.

Yes, David told him that. Mama said he did.

What is more, White told David that he had been given the intelligence that we, the Strykers, were a "black abolitionist family." That our family had two sons in the Union army who had "taken much from the South," and so he was taking our horses.

And, David told Mama, when he asked Colonel White where he had gotten his information, he replied that he had gotten it from Jennie Wade herself.

Well, when Mama told me that, I near went out of my wits. "Jennie Wade? My friend?"

"She's no friend of yours," David said. "I always said she was no good for you."

We were at our noon meal. "I'm going over there this afternoon to have it out with her," I said.

"You're not to leave the house without permission," David pronounced. "Especially with those Rebs hanging about. You do, and I'll give you worse than you got last night."

"So give me permission, then."

Mama came alert. She looked at me. "What happened last night?" she asked.

But I just spooned my soup into my mouth and did not answer.

So she persisted. "What happened between you two last night?"

And when again I did not answer, she turned to David. "What did you do to her, David?"

He bit into a muffin. "I whipped her," he said. "She left the house in the dark. Without permission. She went far into the woods. I had to go and fetch her home. I did what I had to do. I'll answer to Pa if you want. I did what I thought was right. I have to keep order around here." He went on eating.

Mama ran her tongue along her lips, eyed her son for a moment, contemplated what he'd told her, and started to speak, then decided against it. Then she looked at me again. "Your brother is the head of the house when your pa is not here. You must obey him," she told me.

"On second thought, I'll not only give permission," David was saying, "I'll accompany you to Jennie Wade's. So you can have your say."

From the kitchen, where she was standing, I saw the look on Josie's face. She was frowning.

"He still loves that Jennie Wade," Josie whispered to me before I left with David.

"No, he doesn't," I promised her. "He doesn't. You must believe me."

And so it was that David walked me over to Jennie Wade's house that afternoon, a walk he had not taken in about six years. He said not a word to me all the way. There was nothing we had to say to each other. Although it would have been nice if he thanked me for not being a tattletale and telling Mama he had whipped me, he didn't. It was something he expected of me, I suppose, some loyalty that harkened back to the old days when we protected each other, would have died for each other.

Once at the Wade house he stayed a discreet distance from her front door, out on the dusty street, and said, "If I see any Rebs, I'll yell for you. If I do I expect you to come immediately."

I agreed and knocked on Jennie's front door. She let me in.

I did not waste time on pleasantries.

"How
could
you have so betrayed our family to Colonel White as to tell him we are black abolitionists?" I demanded.

"Well, aren't you?" She smirked.

"But we never belonged to an abolitionist movement! Pa never belonged to the Underground Railroad! As a matter of fact, as a doctor, he is sworn to help everybody—Northerner or Southerner."

"How sweet. And you don't have two brothers, then, fighting for the Union?"

"Jennie, your betrothed is fighting for the Union! You just wanted to make things difficult for us is all. But why? What did we ever do to you?"

She grimaced. "Truth to tell, I'm sick of you all looking down your uppity noses at me. You Strykers, with all your money, hiring my brother Sam to work for you because you feel sorry for us."

"We thought you wanted Sam to work."

"And I know David doesn't think I'm good enough for you to associate with. You think you're all too good for us."

"So that's it, then. David. It gets back to David, after all."

"Posh, David. A pox on him."

"You still love him—is that it? And you'll never forgive him for turning you away."

"Who does he think he is, with that twisted leg? Can't even fight in the army. Is that something to be proud of?"

I felt myself go hot and prickly all over. "Well, that's enough, as far as I'm concerned, Jennie Wade. You can say all you want about me, but you can't bring low my brother for having a condition he had nothing to do with. We're finished from here on in. Goodbye."

I started out the door.

"Ha!" she called after me. "Heard what that wonderful brother did to you last night. Sam told me. He spanked you. And you, fourteen. And you defend him? You Strykers are all crazier than hooty owls, so there. Good riddance!"

I left. All I could think of, going out the door, was that I was supposed to have been a bridesmaid in her wedding in September. I was supposed to wear pink. The devil with it. I did not like pink anyway.

O
NCE HOME
I ran into my room and flung myself onto my bed and cried and cried over my losses this day. The fight with Jennie had undone me. But the loss of Ramrod was deep and searing in my soul.

How could she be gone? What right did the Rebs have to take her? There was no doubt which was the greater loss to me. Jennie would always be about, fighting and standing up for herself. But Ramrod was an innocent animal, taken from her own, unable to speak for herself, wondering why I did not come to rescue her.

She was mine, had been since my brother Joel gave her to me for my eleventh birthday.

We were dear friends, me and that horse. We practically read each other's thoughts, knew each other's needs. What would they do to her?

Would they beat her? Starve her? Lead her into battle, where she would be shot to pieces? She was afraid of gunfire and I'd been careful to keep her clear of it.

Oh, God in heaven, would I never see her again?

The door of my room opened.

"Tacy, come downstairs right now."

David. Intruding on my mourning. "I'm never coming downstairs again."

"You heard me. Ma needs you!"

"I'm going to die up here."

"Not without my permission."

"Your permission be damned."

"Watch your mouth, missy. Ma has some great lye soap that's perfect for washing out dirty little mouths. Anyhow, this is no time for personal pity. We haven't the luxury for it. Now if you don't come, I'm going to come over there and drag you down. Another battalion of Rebs has come into town."

More Rebs! I forced myself up, wiped my face, and went downstairs with him.

And there I beheld a miracle, even though I no longer believed in miracles.

Pa was home! David had tricked me, lied to me! There were no Rebs. There was Pa.

As sure as God made telegraph wires, there he was, my pa, like he'd never left. Sanity returned to us.

He stood there, filling the parlor with his realness in that Union uniform of his, which he hated but which he had to wear. It was full of dust. His hat was off. His gray hair was still full and in need of trimming. His face was tanned and weathered, and those blue eyes still sparkled.

His presence was like a continued conversation.

"Pa!" I shouted.

"Daughter!"

I ran to him, embraced him. He held me in his arms, and in that hug he created the world all over for me, chasing out everything bad that had happened.

I smelled the tobacco on him, the man smells, the horse, the harsh soap, the rum, the medicine smell, the hope and the strength. "Pa"—I pulled back and searched his face—"are you all right?"

There were tears brimming in his eyes. But they would not spill over. He would never let them spill over.

"As right as God's rain, Tacy," he said. "And you?"

"I'm fine, Pa."

"Have you been behaving in my absence?"

I did not answer. I lowered my eyes.

He looked at David for confirmation. "Has she, son?"

"Yes, sir," David lied.

So, David would still protect me. As I had protected him. There was something left between us, then.

Mama's face was wreathed in smiles. "Come," she said. "Josie has a repast laid out in the dining room."

We sat 'round the dining room table for ham and cheese and soup and bread and leftover fish. Pa was starved. He drank four cups of coffee as well as two glasses of Madeira wine.

And he told us what had happened when he came through town on his horse.

"Rebel General Gordon's brigade of infantry was marching through town," he said. "All the citizens were running, frightened. Then General Early came upon our councilman David Kendlehart in front of his home across from the courthouse. A happenstance meeting, but a goodly one. The infantrymen were demanding things—foodstuffs, supplies, clothes, shoes. Early had a list. I was just passing by and Kendlehart bade me take part in the meeting as a witness. Well, what could I do?"

He took a long sip of coffee. We waited.

"Kendlehart said it was impossible for the town to meet the demands on the list. I foresaw break-ins, lootings, if we didn't, so I suggested we let the infantrymen examine the merchants' stores and see what they could find. I calculated that by now they'd have stashed away most of their goods."