I Shall Be Near to You(67)

Sometime in the night we get to a town, or leastways I think it is a town from the dogs barking and the sharp tang of cows closed in. Ahead we hear men shouting and once I get over fearing they might be Rebels, I think it must be townspeople, waking late to cheer us as we come back. But then I hear their words.

‘We hoped you’d lose!’ a voice calls loudly out of the murk.

‘You only hoped? Hell, I knew Pope couldn’t win, that arrogant bastard!’ another voice answers, and then others laugh along with him.

Of course Sully is stung and from off to Jeremiah’s right he yells, ‘Who are you sons of bitches, to be laughing at us?’

‘We’re Franklin’s Corps, Army of the Potomac. And we’re damn pleased to be fighting for a General that knows something, instead of that fool Pope.’

Hiram yells back at them, ‘I don’t care if you’re f*cking Jesus’ Army! Here I thought we was all fighting for the Union, but you must be some kind of special jackasses to be cheering for the goddamned Seceshes.’

It don’t do a lick of good. Even after we pass they keep jeering, making us feel low, and I hope Henry ain’t hearing the things they are saying. If I ever had any thought of us all fighting for the same thing, it is gone now, left on the road just like Jimmy on that battlefield, just like Will’s Bible wrapped up in that flannel.


OUR LINE STOPS. All around me boys drop to the ground with groans and sighs. I stare into the night, trying to make out shapes, when someone moves in close to me. He don’t have to say a word. I know it is Jeremiah from the warm-earth smell coming from him, coming even when there’s other smells mixed in: blood, sweat, fear.

His arms pull me tight against his chest and I bury my face in his shoulder. He shakes and it is dark enough I can still say I ain’t ever seen him cry. My heart goes to cracking wide open, but at least I am alive to feel it. I am a different kind of woman now, a wife who knows what this war really is. At least I am part of this war, part of the things Jeremiah’s done here, things that will always be hiding somewhere in his heart.

Jeremiah holds me a long time and my breathing comes as ragged as his, but the two of us made it. Our dream is still shining off there in the distance, and that is enough of a star to pull me through this black night, as long as I don’t count the cost of it.





CHAPTER

23


CENTREVILLE, VIRGINIA: AUGUST 31, 1862

‘We might’ve guessed at it, is all. Henry never was cut out to wade through any kind of grieving,’ I say to Jeremiah and Sully. ‘He ain’t got the determination.’

It’s the honest truth but I don’t say the whole of it, how Jimmy shouldn’t have been here neither, how he was too nice for a soldier. It ain’t the thing they want to hear. They want all cream-and-sugar words.

But we’ve been waiting for near to an hour, long after the fresh ration of sowbelly went cold, for Henry to come trudging out of the trees or from between the brick and clapboard houses, all sheepish and gruff at how we got ourselves riled up. Only it don’t happen like that because he never comes. At roll call Sully tells Sergeant that Henry must be lagging and even after Jeremiah opens his knapsack and finds Henry’s letter home stuffed in it and Will has already gone down the road looking, the boys can’t find their way to seeing that Henry ain’t coming back any more than Jimmy is.

‘Henry should’ve told me so I didn’t waste my time this morning,’ I say when Will goes to report him missing. ‘I could’ve given his ration to someone who’d maybe appreciate eating something warm. It sure ain’t my idea of fun cooking in the rain for people without the decency to show up for breakfast.’ I don’t say how seeing that bit of salt pork burning in the pan was almost more than my stomach could stand.

None of my jokes is any good, but it’s either laugh or cry. It’s plain there ain’t a thing I can say to make it better, and I am just pretending it don’t touch me to have two of our boys gone. All of us lost ourselves in the haze yesterday, and there wasn’t one of us keeping close watch on each other. Not like we should. All we know is that Henry was with us when we bivouacked for the night and when we started stirring he wasn’t. Now he and his pack and his rifle are gone.

My throat closes and tears start coming so I try saying, ‘Cooking’s less of a chore now, I guess,’ but my fire with the mucket hanging over it, working on boiling water for coffee, almost does me in.

Jeremiah lifts his head up. ‘You ain’t helping, Rosetta. ’Specially not when we all know there ain’t any lost love between you and Henry these days.’

I ought to be yelling for his forgetting himself and using my old name, but everyone is too busy huddling under their ponchos and rubber blankets to be listening to a thing we’re saying. Staying dry and chewing on hardtack is already too much trouble.

‘How could he do it?’ Jeremiah asks. ‘How could he leave like that? Without saying a word? What if he ain’t all right?’

There ain’t an answer to those questions, and we go silent after that. What was Henry thinking when he knew the facts as well as any of us, when we all saw Levi Blalock cursing and fighting against Hiram and Young Frank, that glowing D searing through the stubble and into the skin on his cheek? A punishment like that ain’t easy to push aside, and even with the heavy burden Henry is carrying, to up and leave, risking such a thing? If he were smart, he’d at least have taken my map. But when I open my pack, it is still there on top and it is clear he ain’t thought the thing through to its end. Course, none of us thought this soldiering through to the end. I still can’t. Especially when I don’t know what my body is playing at and every day that passes I’ve got more to worry over.