Two Girls of Gettysburg (2 page)

Then Rosanna gripped my arm and cried out, “There goes Henry. Hurrah!”

We watched as Henry Phelps leaped lightly onto the stage with the other volunteers.

“Isn’t he brave?” Rosanna said, blowing kisses toward the gazebo.

“But he’s only seventeen—,” I began, when the band struck up “Rally Round the Flag” and everyone began singing.

“Do you think your brother Luke will enlist, now that Henry has?”

My stomach felt like I’d eaten something sour.

“Of course not. Anyway, he can’t. He isn’t sixteen yet.”

Rosanna was bouncing on her toes to the music.

“Lizzie, don’t you think it would be exciting to live in a camp and march to the sound of the band? Oh, I would go in a minute if I were a man!”

“You must be crazy,” I murmured, wondering why Rosanna, a girl from Virginia, was cheering at a Union rally. I folded the handbill I had been clutching all along and handed it to her. “Here. At least you can take this for a souvenir.”

The speeches went on, interrupted by applause and cheers. I saw Rosanna wave to Annie Baumann, the grocer’s daughter, whose hair always formed perfect brown ringlets. Even the wind that day couldn’t budge them.

“You’ve been at the Ladies’ Seminary only a few months and you’ve already won over Annie,” I said, amazed. “I’ve known her for years, but she doesn’t have the time of day for a public-school girl.”

“She thinks it’s romantic that I’m from the South,” said Rosanna, rolling her eyes. “As if I lived on a plantation and was waited on by hundreds of Negroes! My father doesn’t even own slaves.”

“Is he against slavery then?” I asked, but the band had struck up a loud marching tune, and Rosanna seemed not to hear me. A few more men signed their names to the enlistment roll. Finally, people started to drift away.

It looked like the last volunteer of the day would be a fellow who worked on the Weigel farm. Mr. and Mrs. Weigel always spoke German to each other. One of their sons and their daughter’s husband had already gone off to war. Martin was the only boy left at home. He also attended the public school, though he almost never said anything in class. He stood next to his mother, who gripped his arm tightly. For some reason I felt sorry for him.

Martin looked in my direction and I lifted my hand to wave, but his eyes passed over me, and my hand fluttered awkwardly back down to my side. Maybe he hadn’t seen me.

Following my gaze, Rosanna saw the Weigels and said, “That boy’s mother needn’t worry he’ll run off. They wouldn’t take him if he did. Look how scrawny he is.”

“I think he’s about my age,” I said, unable to say anything else in his defense. Like me, Martin showed little promise of turning out handsome.

I saw Luke drop out of the tree and look around, and for a heart-stopping moment I thought he was about to enlist. But he sauntered away, and I sighed with relief.

Papa still stood near the gazebo. His arms were folded and he looked deep in thought. Why hadn’t he gone back to the shop yet? He held up his hand as Amos began to leave. Then he untied his butcher’s apron and handed it to Amos, who reached for his arm as if to detain him, but Papa gently pressed Amos back. I felt fear rise in me. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. My father took the steps of the gazebo two at a time.

“No, Papa! No!” I cried out, but my thin voice was lost on the wind.

Lizzie
Chapter 2

That night our family ate supper in silence. My mother sat stiffly and avoided looking at my father. She did not touch a single bite of bread or pork, though Luke ate with his usual greed. Ben, who knew nothing of the afternoon’s events, tried to tell about a snake he had seen run over by a wagon, but I frowned at him until he fell quiet. He glared back at me like a small devil, his red hair sticking up in tufts.

Papa chewed his food in a deliberate way, his jaw working hard. Then he placed his fork and knife with a clang across his plate to announce that he was finished eating. My brothers and I stood up. Mama stayed in her chair, holding the edge of the heavy oak table firmly as if to keep it from drifting away. I began to clear the table, but Mama shook her head, so we left the kitchen and sat on the back porch stoop.

Luke began to whistle “Yankee Doodle.”

“Stop that now. How dare you make light of all this?” I hissed at him. He ignored me and kept whistling.

“Why wouldn’t Mama talk to me at supper?” asked Ben.

The door was closed, but the windows were wide open, enabling us to hear Papa’s raised voice.

“I will serve my country in this war!”

Luke stopped whistling in midnote.

“How can you go and enlist with no thought of this family? Nothing good can ever come of fighting between brothers. I thought we agreed on that.” Mama’s voice was high with anger. Papa often said she had the McGreeveys’ passionate temper.

“Like it or not, we are at war,” Papa said, enunciating each word. “It is a man’s duty at such a time to consider the needs of his country.”

“What about your duty to us? I left my family in Richmond to marry you, Albert. I’ve never looked back. Now you are telling me your country is more important to you than this family?”

Then I heard Mama sobbing and Papa murmuring.

“But Albert, we’ve never been apart. How will we get by without you? You know I haven’t been well.”

I was embarrassed to hear my mother pleading, yet I was angry at my father for being so uncaring. Mama had almost died of a fever when Ben was a baby. She had stayed in her bed for months, and ever since, she often had headaches that lasted for days.

“Lizzie can take care of the house and garden. Ben is old enough to be useful as well. As for the shop, Luke will manage, with Amos’s help. The boy must learn to be more responsible.”

I shoved Luke. “Do you hear that? It’s time for you to act your age.”

“Why don’t you start
looking
your age?” He pinched the fat at my waist and glanced at my still-flat chest. Scowling, I slid far away from him on the narrow step and pulled Ben next to me as a shield.

“Amos has agreed to work around the house for additional wages,” I heard Papa say. “It will only be for a few months. The war cannot last longer than that.”

“The rebels can go to the devil for all I care!” Mama burst out afresh.

I was proud of her for not giving up, even if Papa was sure to get his way.

“I do not relish this war, Mary—”

“Then let other men fight it. Younger men, without wives and children. Stay here, and we will do our part peaceably.”

“Every respectable and able-bodied man of this town is called. Men my age and even older have already joined up. If I do not go now, I will be reproached by all our customers, by everyone I meet in the street, every day!”

I heard Mama weeping softly in defeat. I turned on Luke.

“Why did you tell her that Papa had enlisted? It was not your business.”

“I thought she would be proud of him.
I
am,” he said defensively.

“Proud that he might get killed? You don’t understand anything!”

“I know that there’s a war going on and it’ll be done with before I’m old enough to fight it.” Luke pounded his thighs in frustration.

“You only want to go marching and shooting and pretend you are a man. But you’re just a stupid boy!” I shot back.

“I could pass for eighteen. And I’m smarter than you think,” he said.

“No, you’re not. You and Henry Phelps skip school so often you can’t even do sums, and you write like a ten-year-old. All you care about is having fun.”

Suddenly Papa appeared in the doorway and told us to come inside. Mama looked grief-stricken as he told us that he was leaving in the morning and that Luke would be head of the family until his return. I started to cry. Luke touched my shoulder, but I pulled away from him. I tried to look at Papa and store up his image in my mind, but his face kept dissolving in the blur of my tears.

Before dawn the next morning, I heard Papa’s footsteps in the kitchen. I tiptoed halfway down the stairs and watched him drink his coffee. The only light came from the stub of a candle on the cold stove. Mama barely spoke as she packed a satchel with bread and a jar
of apple butter, a sewing kit, a clean shirt, socks, and a small prayer book. Papa put on his jacket, shrugging his shoulders as usual, and kissed her. Neither of them noticed me sitting on the stairs.

As Papa left the house, I followed him like a shadow, barefoot and still wearing my nightdress. In the middle of York Street, he stopped and turned around. I held out my arms, and he dropped his satchel and lifted me from the ground. He smelled of bay rum cologne and tobacco. His mustache tickled my neck.

“I’ll miss you, Papa. I love you.” I choked out the words.

“I love you, too. Be good. Be strong,” he said.

Then he was gone.

We sat in the dark kitchen, Mama and I, listening for the sharp whistle of the train that would take the new recruits to camp. The train came and went, its familiar rhythm fading into silence. In a neighbor’s yard a rooster crowed. A creaky cart rolled by in the street. Mama began clattering around the kitchen.

“Go rouse up Luke,” she said. “He has deliveries to make this morning.”

I climbed the steps to the garret where my brothers slept and called out, “Wake up, lazy!”

There was only silence. I opened the door. Ben lay huddled on the trundle bed, fast asleep. Luke’s empty bed was heaped with covers and clothes. So he had snuck out early for some mischief with his friends! Now who would do his work? Growing irritated, I lifted each piece of the rumpled pile, as if he might be lying underneath, flat as a flapjack, with a teasing grin on his face. Instead, I saw an envelope with
Mother
written on it. A feeling of dread settled like a heavy cat on my chest.

In the kitchen, Mama stood at the stove, poking last night’s embers into a flame.

“Up with you, too, Benjamin! I need wood for the fire!” she called. “Luke, move a little faster.”

“Luke is not here,” I said in a small voice. “This was on his bed.” I held out the envelope.

“That boy! I can’t count on him. What is it now?” She frowned and tore open the letter, and as she read it, her body seemed to collapse in stages, like a house hollowed out by fire. She lay soundless on the floor, and for a moment I feared she was dying, until she drew in her breath again and began to sob. I took the note from her hand. Luke had scrawled his message on a torn piece of a recruiting handbill.

Dear Mother,

I have joined the regiment too. It is a mans duty. If I cant fight because of my age I will learn to play the bugle instead.

Dont worry I will take care of Father for you.

Love Luke

Lizzie
Chapter 3

When Mama had calmed down, I made the deliveries myself. My hands on the reins shook with anger. I understood why Papa had to enlist. But how could Luke do this to Mama?

The deliveries took me all morning. When I was done, I stopped to tell Rosanna the news. As I rushed through the door of her bedroom, she looked up from the settee, startled, and a large scrapbook slipped from her lap to the floor.

“Oh, I thought you were my sister,” she said, sounding relieved.

“Rosanna, you won’t believe this! Luke has run off to fight the war! Why, I’m mad enough to shoot him myself.” I whipped off my bonnet and crumpled it in my hand.

“I believe it. But can you really blame him? Do you think he would let Henry show him up?”

“I don’t think Henry Phelps had anything to do with it. He was just trying to get out of the work here.” I stamped my foot. “He is so selfish! You should have seen Mama. The news almost killed her.”

“It is going to be hard on you and Aunt Mary,” Rosanna agreed. “But every man wants his share of glory.”

“Luke’s hardly a man,” I said with disdain. “He’ll do some foolish thing and get himself hurt.”

“Come. Sit down and I’ll show you my scrapbook,” said Rosanna in a tone that was both soothing and tempting. She picked up the leather book tied with red ribbons.

I sat down, resting my cheek on her shoulder.

“I’ve never shown this to anyone,” she said in a whisper. Her hands held the edges firmly. “I especially don’t want Margaret to see it, so I hide it under my mattress.”

I held my breath, suppressing my anger at Luke, my fears for Papa. What secret would Rosanna share with me?

“My whole life is in this book. I started keeping it when I was six.” Slowly she opened the book and turned the pages. I caught glimpses of childish handwriting, pressed flowers, cards, newspaper clippings, sketches, and a yellowed handkerchief.