I Shall Be Near to You(53)

Henry sits himself right down beside Jimmy, and it don’t take but a minute before he droops over onto Jimmy’s shoulder, his mouth hanging open. He is the only one of us who can sleep and Jimmy never shoves him off. He just sits there quiet and lets Henry doze.

Jeremiah pokes me. ‘You want a fancy place like that house back there?’ he asks, and I know just which one he means, the white one with sprawling lawns and fancy flowers planted everywhere.

‘It don’t got no farm around it,’ I say. ‘All those flowers are just taking up good soil a kitchen garden could grow in. And, you ask me, fancy buildings don’t make up for the feeling of a place.’

‘You ain’t ever seen a town you liked, have you?’ Jeremiah lies back on the grass.

‘I ain’t got use for a town. But I bet there’s good planting to be done around here.’

Jeremiah closes his eyes, leaving me with thoughts of Nebraska, and if it really is good farming, and how soon we might get ourselves clear of this Army. But then Joseph’s face comes up in my mind, how pale he was against that hospital pillow. There are things it would be fitting for Jeremiah to read if it comes to that, so I sit with my back to an ash tree right near Jeremiah and let my thoughts spread like the branches shading me.

August 26, 1862

My Dear Jeremiah,

I don’t want to sit and write these Words to you. I have been thinking on Us living through this War. I have been feeling it to be True, this fact of Us together. But now I have tasted War. I see how Dreaming on a thing don’t make it so. It has got me thinking on things I would have you know.

I’m not sorry for this Thing we’ve done. You did Right by letting me stay. There ain’t a thing to make me take back These Days with You. You gave me friendship and then Love and Freedom to live a different Life. There ain’t a person else in this World who gave me More, and you should know it. I know I never wanted the things I should or been a proper Wife, but you don’t ever make me Feel it too much.

If we see this War to its End, if we can live Free on our own Place, the two of Us, I want you should know I will give you all that is left of my Life. It is all I want to work that Land with you and see those crops come up and if God is Willing, what children we may raise up alongside the farm we build. It will make this all Worth it if we can have our Place.

And that is what I would Give to you. I would Give you my Love. I would give you our Dream. Even if I am only watching from the Other side, I give you these things.

Your wife,

Rosetta





CHAPTER

19


WARRENTON TURNPIKE: AUGUST 28, 1862

We march past a hayfield, bigger than any of Papa’s, fine-stemmed grass pushing up new seed heads and rolling away from us toward the trees, where a white clapboard farmhouse stands. The sweet smell of curing hay comes to us on the breeze, the first cutting most likely done not even a month ago. It makes me wish for home, to hear Mama singing hymns to the horses from where she sits up in the hayrick, me and Papa a mirror image dance of scooping forks, twisting trunks, and throwing arms to get that hay put up. For a moment I pretend Sully yelling at us to hurry as he jogs ahead is Papa hollering, ‘Step up, gleaning girl!’ to Betsy raking the least little bits behind us.

But it ain’t Papa marching up ahead. It’s Thomas, the circles under his eyes getting darker every day and his griping to old John Morgan getting louder too.

‘My wife is asking every letter when I am coming home,’ he says, looking out over the hayfield. ‘Says she and the girls ain’t up to the task of harvest on their own.’

‘I bet all those ladies need is a good poking,’ Hiram says, and that gets Thomas’ Adam’s apple bobbing, but no one wants to say a thing where Hiram is concerned.

John acts like he ain’t heard and says, ‘At this rate you and me and Frank and half the Army will need furloughs just to keep our farms going.’

‘Maybe Pope means to march us to death,’ Henry says, and something about the way we all feel it stops Hiram’s laugh cold.

‘At least we’ll see the countryside before we die,’ Jeremiah says with a bitterness I ain’t never heard out of him. It scares me more than anything, seeing his face hard and closed.

‘We’ll be fighting for sure,’ Sully says, all breathless from weaving up and down the column to get what particulars he can from Sergeant. ‘Lee has got Jackson on the move! Maybe twenty thousand men! The Pennsylvania Regiment up there is seeing Rebel pickets ahead guarding at least a Brigade of Rebels.’

‘We don’t want to meet Stonewall Jackson if we can help it,’ Thomas says. ‘He made that name for himself right around here. My brother-in-law saw firsthand at Bull Run how Jackson don’t back down.’

But Sully just keeps on running his mouth, ‘Those damn Seceshes got our supply trains at Manassas Junction and they broke up the rail line. We ain’t getting even a taste of those crackers and candy and oranges that were on that train.’

‘This fool Army!’ Henry says. ‘We ain’t doing a thing out here but marching ourselves into the ground!’

‘It’s no use thinking on what we ain’t getting,’ Jeremiah says, but I still feel myself getting saucy too, my legs aching and my stomach warbling at the thought of candy and oranges.

‘Maybe the Rebels needed it more than we do,’ Will says, all quiet-like.