I Shall Be Near to You(15)

He will be happy to see me, his face lighting up like our wedding day, all the more handsome in his uniform. He will tell me he is sorry for going like he did, that he never should have done it, how it was the boys that made him leave, that he was wrong to tell me I couldn’t come along.

Only maybe it won’t be like that. Once Jeremiah blacked Henry’s eye after school, all because Henry whispered ‘son of a whore’ after Jeremiah’s name at roll call and the whole class snickered. Jeremiah simmered for hours, the heat of his anger enough that Henry broke for the outhouse as soon as Miss Riggs’ bell tinkled.

I ain’t ever made Jeremiah mad like that. We ain’t ever argued for real. Not even once.

But I have to do it now, I have to go, because I can’t show my face to Jeremiah’s Ma with my hair like this. Jeremiah won’t care that it don’t look good, it won’t matter with a cap on, covering it. Plenty of people don’t have nice hair.

Back in my own clothes, I sit myself down to work, staying up past the moon’s rising, making neat hems on Jeremiah’s old trousers and cutting down the sleeves on two of his shirts.

I wake at dawn, my neck cricked, still sitting in the chair by the fire, the last of the hemming just a few stitches from finished.

In the kitchen I dig for a burlap sack. There is hardly a thing for me to pack. The map. Jeremiah’s letter. Flannel rags for my woman’s time, extra socks, a wool blanket rolled up tight, two boiled eggs, two thick slices of bread, and some side meat, all wrapped in cheesecloth. I wind a scarf around my neck and tug Jeremiah’s hat down over what’s left of my hair. I am just about to go through the door, when I remember the mending for Jeremiah’s Ma. I scratch out a note saying Gone Visiting and leave that with the basket on the porch. Then I lift my sack and sling the canteen across my chest and walk out under the gray sky, bracing myself for what is a day’s hard ride on horseback. I look back once at the Little House, a thin trail of smoke still drifting up from the stovepipe. I think on Papa and Mama and Betsy reading every night around the fire. Words from Preacher Bowers’ sermon come back to me, about Adam and Eve being cast out in sorrow. Only I don’t feel sad to be leaving when that place ain’t my home no more, and without Jeremiah, this place ain’t my home neither.





CHAPTER

6


MONTGOMERY COUNTY, NEW YORK: FEBRUARY 1862

I don’t even make it to the church before I start thinking on the first casualty list Preacher posted on the door, back when the little boys, Tommy O’Malley, Phin Cameron, and John Lewis, were still lining up to march back and forth with Lars Nilsson yelling orders. Back before those little boys’ mamas made them quit playing soldier on Sundays.

The only good thing about that list was how it made Jeremiah get around to making things official, him coming to Papa, his hat in his hands, saying, ‘Good morning, Sir,’ and then his eyes flicking toward mine before adding, ‘I was coming to ask permission to walk Rosetta home, Sir.’

All those weeks he walked me home from school, he ain’t never asked permission.

I wish I were walking down Carlisle Road like that now, with Jeremiah crooking his elbow like he is a fine gentleman and I am a lady, feeling the heat coming off him through his cotton shirt, my steps matching his. Leaving Jeremiah’s Ma standing straight in her lace collar, her two daughters-in-law and Mrs. Snyder beside her, prying after us.

Back then the first thing he said was, ‘You look real nice in that dress,’ and when I told him, ‘It’s the same dress I always wear to church,’ he pushed me with his elbow, laughing as I staggered sideways.

‘Maybe you always look nice,’ he said.

I wonder if he’ll think that now.

At the old oak, where the path veers off from the road, I can almost see Jeremiah shuffling down the slope to the creek before me, down into the ferns, and holding out his hand, smiling at me with his head cocked to one side like it is a question or a test. I took his hand that day and ain’t ever felt anything so nice, even when our hands got to sweating.

Down by the creek, Jeremiah’s look made me get to feeling nervous, like there was something different between us, the way the air changes before a storm.

I said, ‘I want to cool off a bit,’ and undid the laces of my boots, rolled down my stockings, slipped them off.

Holding my skirt out so it wouldn’t get wet, I squished the silt between my toes, the water cool enough to almost make me forget the sweat-damp dress sticking to my back. Dipping my free hand into the creek, I skimmed it along the back of my neck. Jeremiah stood rooted.

Just to make him stop staring, I said, ‘You remember the last time we were here, just us? You remember how you said you wanted your own farm?’

‘Course,’ he said.

‘You still want that?’ I asked, standing so quiet a fingerling fish brushed up against my ankle.

‘I do,’ he said, ‘I’ve been keeping those ideas in my head. But the war—’

‘You still thinking on Nebraska?’

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I’ve been thinking on that. Could get a whole farm, a hundred sixty acres, for maybe two hundred dollars.’

I don’t know what made me do it but when I stepped out of the creek, I brushed against him as I headed for my shoes. He turned to watch me, that look coming back.