Wild, Beautiful, and Free(81)

“Are you all right?” Martha asked. “Silas looked so strange. Then I saw you go into the woods.”

“I’m fine,” I said. I took the blanket from my cot and wrapped it around my shoulders. Despite the warmth of the tent, a chill had come over me. “He wants me to go to Atlanta with him instead of Vicksburg.”

“But Vicksburg would get you closer to where you came from,” said Carrie. “You told him that, right?”

“Yes. I’ll only be a few hundred miles away. Gotta keep moving toward it.”

Martha sat near me. “What happened?”

“He said I needed to pray to God about it. That’s why I went in the woods over there. I got my answer. He’s not gonna like it.”

“You’re not going with him, are you?”

“No. Haven’t told him yet, though. Too tired to keep arguing with him tonight. I’ll tell him in the morning.”

Carrie clutched a handkerchief that she wrung between her hands. “What do you think he’ll do?”

“Oh, he’ll be angry with me. That’s for certain. But he’ll get over it.” I looked at Carrie. “You’ll have to help him.”

“But you . . .”

“He doesn’t love me,” I said. “If you’d heard any of what he said to me out there, you wouldn’t have heard the word love at all. Not once. He talked more about me serving God than he did about my becoming his wife.”

“Then why does he want you to go with him?”

“He thinks I’m supposed to be his partner on his mission. It’s not my mission, though. He can’t see that. You care for him, though. You can cheer him up better than I can.”

“You don’t mind?”

I shook my head. “He’s like a brother to me, nothing more. This fighting has been hard on him. Leaning on his faith is helping him get through it. Maybe after the war you can help him come back to himself, see that God still loved him the way he was before.”

“What if he wants me to be like you?”

“Don’t let him do it, Carrie. Just keep being yourself. His resolve is strong. You’ll have to be stronger.”

Martha sat on her cot and sighed. “Will we see each other again?”

“We live through this war, God willing, yes,” I said. “You’ll always be welcome at Catalpa Valley.”

As the day of the split came closer, a curtain of melancholy dropped over us. We packed and prepared as usual, but we couldn’t hide the sorrow of losing each other. I felt as though I were leaving my sisters. I’d miss their comfort at the end of the battle days. The feeling was especially keen when, in spite of our hopeful thoughts of previous days, we began to doubt whether we would all cross paths again. Carrie and Martha had become my kinswomen. Silas, as broken as the relation might be, was as good as my brother. We had toiled together and developed genuine affection and admiration for each other. It was another kind of love—again in abundance!—by which I had been made whole. I didn’t feel as singular as Silas thought me to be. I felt connected, indeed bonded, to all around me, the soldiers included. The melancholy taught me this. I couldn’t have felt the split so deeply if I hadn’t been so invested in this unusual community.

On the morning of the movement east, I helped Carrie and Martha load their things into the wagon we knew Silas would drive. They went to say their goodbyes to Mother B., who would be traveling west with me. I was standing nearby when Silas brought the horses and hitched them to the wagon.

“You ready?”

I patted the neck of one of the horses, grateful for the warmth of its body on my hands. “I’m not going to Atlanta, Silas.”

“You just gonna let me go, betray everything we been through together?”

“Betray? I never promised you anything. And what we been through, we went through because we happened to be in the same place at the same time and helped each other as friends.”

“What about your betrayal of God? What he wants for you?”

“I act in the name of what God wants for me! My purpose is here and, if I can get back to it, with the land my papa left me.” I looked away from him. “And there are other things I need to know.”

“Like what?”

“Nothing you need to know.”

“You gonna go looking for that white man.”

“I can’t go looking for him. But I do want to know what’s happened to him. It would ease my mind.”

He climbed into the wagon and gathered the reins. “I’m gonna pray for you, Jeannette. You could be on your way to hell for all I know, but I’ll pray for you.”

I flinched at his thought of my damnation, but I wouldn’t let his stubbornness keep me from parting well with him.

“Goodbye, Silas. I’ll pray for you too.”

Carrie and Martha returned. We said our farewells, and I helped them into the wagon. They joined the noise and movement of the procession of soldiers and supplies making their way onto the road. I felt so small in the middle of the whirl of change. But the change brought on a bit of energy and excitement. I realized I was hopeful in a way that I hadn’t been for a very long time. I went back into my tent, sat on my cot next to my bag, and waited. I had to settle myself and remember that I wasn’t getting in a wagon and going straight to Catalpa Valley. And yet home felt like it was right there, on the horizon, and within reach.