I Shall Be Near to You(21)

‘It’s nothing.’

‘It ain’t nothing,’ he says, looking me full in the face.

‘I got lonesome. And I thought I’d go see my Mama and Papa and Betsy.’

Jeremiah’s eyebrows knit together, making two creases above his nose. ‘And?’ he says.

‘And I didn’t get there.’

‘You didn’t get there?’ he repeats, and stares at me.

‘Eli stopped me.’ The words come fast. ‘But I punched him and he was done with me.’

‘Eli did this?’ Jeremiah’s voice climbs.

I look down, the shame of it coming over me as I nod.

‘That white-livered son of a bitch! He touched you?’ Jeremiah jumps up, standing over me.

‘He just grabbed me and shoved me. It wasn’t nothing I couldn’t handle,’ I say.

‘I promised to protect you,’ he says, sinking back down on the log.

‘You weren’t there!’ I turn away, dragging my shirt up from the ground where Jeremiah dropped it.

‘Is that why you came all this way?’ Jeremiah asks, his voice pulled like harness traces.

‘I ain’t going back there, not without you,’ I say.

Jeremiah is quiet a long time, looking down, his hands opening and closing in his lap. The cold breeze moves through the trees, moves between us, and I don’t know what he is thinking.

‘I wanted something to make it back for,’ he says.

That does it then. The feelings coming over me are all mixed up. It is maybe the best thing anyone has ever said to me, but I ain’t thought about us not making it back, not really, not if we’re together.

‘There’s other things to make it back for! We’ve still got our farm. We’ve still got a family to raise. With me making the same pay, we can get all that sooner.’

‘It’s a three years’ enlistment, Rosetta. It wouldn’t matter if we got the money now, there ain’t nowhere to go but with the Army.’

‘Then we’ll go where the Army does. Everybody says this war’ll be over soon.’

Jeremiah shakes his head, pushing furrows in the mud with his toe.

‘I never want to see you hurt,’ he says, and stands. ‘We’ve got to get back.’





CHAPTER

9


UTICA, NEW YORK: FEBRUARY 1862

I don’t know at first what Jeremiah means to do. We walk through the melting snow and mud, through a small village of men. Most of them look to come off farms like we’ve done, but as we pass one of the tents, that wiry-looking man says, ‘That f*cking mill don’t pay damn near enough for the three of us. ’Specially not if that shit work is going to kill me.’

The Black Eye man answers him, ‘Don’t I damn well know it! That mill took my brother’s arm and I can’t hardly keep us fed on what it pays.’

‘Canal work ain’t no good either. I about break my back doing it and couldn’t even pay for a pine box to bury my wife in,’ says the serious-faced man who was marching near me.

Those men are in their old clothes, dirty now from days of wearing and traveling and drilling, but that ain’t what gets me thinking of Mama’s thick squares of soap, the foul mouth on that man worse than anything I ever tried saying, worse than anything Papa said when our cows busted through the fence and trampled Mr. Snyder’s corn. I stay close to Jeremiah as we walk between the rows of tents, wishing I could grab his hand, how maybe then I’d know something of his mind.

There’s a laugh I know and Jeremiah stops in front of the tent it’s coming from. He catches my eye before calling out, ‘Hello!’

I step from behind Jeremiah and there, gathered around a campfire, are Henry and Jimmy and tent-pole Sully between them.

‘What took you so long?’ Sully asks from where he sits on a wooden crate, his long skinny legs folded up like a grasshopper’s.

Those three look between each other. Henry snickers and digs his elbow into Sully’s ribs.

‘We thought you might need some time to work things out, but damn! That was a while!’ Henry says. Jimmy turns away, his face red enough to almost hide his freckles.

‘This is important,’ Jeremiah starts to say, but Sully ain’t paying him any mind. He has got his knife out, whittling away at a stick, keeping his hands busy. Henry looks at me, every part of me, and then Jimmy asks, ‘What did you say you’re calling yourself now?’

‘Ross Stone,’ I say, and Sully’s head snaps up then too.

‘Ross is staying here,’ Jeremiah says. ‘With us.’

‘For tonight?’ Jimmy asks, and the air goes still like when a herd of cows is about to do something stupid.

‘No. She’s—Ross is coming with us. With the Regiment,’ Jeremiah says.

Henry looks between us and takes off his cap, rubs his ginger hair, so greasy now from days of going unwashed that it almost looks brown. He slaps the cap back on. I can’t think of a time when these boys ain’t let me join in with them.

‘Have you lost your mind?’ Henry says. ‘This ain’t no place for a woman. You got to get your wife in hand—’

Jeremiah takes a step closer to Henry. ‘You keep your voice down.’

I stay where I am.