Cheryl Reavis (9 page)

“Maybe you could mind your own damn business,” Thomas advised him. How La Broie knew that going with his hat in his hand to the judge was a possible solution to his problem was beyond him.

“Yes, sir,” La Broie said.

The sergeant also added a comment Thomas didn’t hear clearly, but he chose to ignore it. “How much time do you think we’ve got until Hooker marches us out?” he asked abruptly.

“From what I’m hearing, I’d say maybe a month, sir. Maybe less if Massa Robert opens the ball first.”

“I’ve got to get to Maryland.”

“Yes, sir, Cap. But you ain’t going to wear down Major Gibbons. He ain’t going to let you do it officially and you can’t go any other way. Not without getting court-martialed, not to mention shot or hanged
for it. And I ain’t wanting to give Miss Abiah that kind of news, am I?”

Thomas didn’t answer. He could ask the judge to pull some strings. He
could,
but he wouldn’t.

“Mail’s here, Cap,” La Broie announced, and Thomas nodded. He could already see the rider coming in their direction—and taking his own sweet time about it, because he was stopping to talk to everybody he knew along the way. Everybody female.

“Hurry that dandy along, La Broie,” Thomas said after a moment.

“Yes, sir, Cap. My pleasure.”

The exchange between the sergeant and the lessthan-speedy letter carrier was noisy and something to behold. La Broie really did have a fine repertoire of colorful metaphors. He was back with the bulging leather pouch almost immediately.

“Summon the boys,” Thomas said, unnecessarily. The company had heard the exchange and was already forming. He stood aside to let La Broie give the letters out, waiting to hear his own name called like the rest of them. There was no reason whatsoever why he couldn’t, as an officer, take his own mail out first and let everyone else wait while he did it, but he chose not to. It was a precedent he had set early on, because he’d thought it would help establish some kind of loyalty, however minimal, for his men to see their captain not taking a privilege at their expense. He hadn’t minded waiting before; now it was agony.

He smoked a cigar. He helped La Broie decipher
some poorly addressed envelopes from time to time. He waited.

“Captain Harrigan,” La Broie said finally, handing him a letter.

Thomas took it without looking at it, knowing everybody was all too aware that he hadn’t heard from his wife. He stuck it into his pocket. Even after the men had dispersed and gone, he took the time to finish his cigar.

Then he went inside his shelter. A spider had already strung its web in a place just right for Thomas to walk into. It was too dark to see, and he lit a candle stub.

The letter was from his mother.

“My dear son,” it began.

“…I really am surprised at you. You wife simply will not write to you again, no matter how much I try to prevail upon her to do so, and I can’t say I blame her. Couldn’t you make some effort to correspond with at least one of us? Are you kept so busy that you are unable to pen even one line…?

“What?” he said out loud, knowing La Broie was probably somewhere close enough to hear him.

He went back to reading.

…Abiah is very much improved since Gertie arrived…

“What?” he said again, and this time there was a definite rustling outside the door. He ignored it.

…Abiah is well enough to sometimes sit in the gallery to hear the music played during the salons. All the convalescent soldiers who attend the performances make much of having her there, even if she doesn’t actually socialize. She is a great favorite among them, and they watch eagerly to see if she will make an appearance. Sarah Mayron’s son, Charlie, who is still home recuperating from the terrible wounds he received at New Bern, is very smitten. This Saturday past he managed to get some forsythia from somewhere and place it, with the help of his comrades, at the foot of the gallery stairway for Abiah. He is very young, but it was still a gallant gesture on his part, one meant to compliment her but not to intrude upon her delicate health or her loyalty to the Confederacy and Virginia. It was also a gesture many another soldier wished he had thought of himself. I’m afraid all the other young ladies present were very envious indeed. In their eyes, Charlie is the poor wounded, languishing knight of yore, offering with his last breath to champion a beautiful lady…

“The hell he is,” Thomas said.

“Cap?” La Broie said from outside.

“What!”

“Messenger coming.”

Thomas skimmed the rest of the letter and put it back into his pocket. Thank God there were no more startling announcements. Now if he could just understand the thing. Abiah was apparently all right—or better, at least—but she wouldn’t—
wouldn’t
—write to him. And Charlie Mayron had damn well better be keeping his forsythia to himself.

The messenger arrived with a good deal more swiftness and purpose than the letter carrier had.

“Captain Harrigan, sir,” he said. “This was left for you at headquarters. I believe it may be urgent.”

Thomas took the envelope; his name and company were written on the front. He didn’t recognize the handwriting. He removed the single sheet of paper inside. The message was succinct and to the point.

“Your lady is waiting in Falmouth.”

“B
ender’s asking to see you, sir,” La Broie said.

Thomas ignored him.

“I think you should talk to the boy, Cap.”

Thomas continued to sit at the upturned barrel that passed for his camp table. He had enough problems of his own. He didn’t want to have to deal with anyone else’s. He needed to think. He had to figure out some way—

“He’s been waiting outside a long time, sir.”

Thomas gave a sharp sigh. “Well, get him in here, damn it!”

Bender rushed in before La Broie could give him leave, and for once he didn’t look scared to death. In fact, he looked exactly like what he probably was—a mischievous boy with a tale to tell.

“What is it, Bender?”

“Sir, I think I know how to do it.”

“Do what?”

“Get you into Falmouth without the pickets knowing it.”

“How the devil did you know about…” Thomas glanced at La Broie. “Never mind. Tell me.”

“There’s a path that cuts across the railroad tracks—see, there’s high banks on both sides for a ways. The path runs behind the banks. The pickets can’t see you either way, except when you cross the railroad. You just got to keep an eye open and hotfoot it to the other side the minute you get the chance.”

“I take it you’ve been hotfooting it on a fairly frequent basis.”

“Well, uh, sir…” He glanced at La Broie. “You see, Cap, I got me a awful sweet tooth. I been that way ever since I was a kid. And I been sort of going into town to the confectionery. The store there—they don’t charge me a arm and a leg like the sutlers do, even if I am in the wrong army. I didn’t figure it would hurt nothing, Cap. It don’t take me long. I always get back pretty quick. Nobody knowed about it or nothing—except Sergeant La Broie, I reckon. Somehow he knowed.”

“It’s his business to know, Bender,” Thomas said.

“Yes, sir. Now that I think about it, I reckon it is.”

“So you think you can get me into town.”

“Yes, sir, Cap. The way I figure it, I’ll go first when we cross the railroad tracks—”

“No, I think one deserter at a time is enough. You just tell me how to go.”

“I can’t tell it, sir. Alls I can do is
do
it.”

“You can draw me a map.”

“I could do that, sir, but you wouldn’t be able to tell hide nor hair from it. There ain’t no landmarks
and I ain’t no map drawer. Everybody that knows me knows that. All I can do is go and show you. And I’m thinking, Cap, maybe you won’t want to waste the time making me draw you a map anyway, because you’re going to see right off you can’t use it. If we skip all that, it’ll save you yelling at me and everything. Seems to me like we ought to just go, before the moon comes up—sir,” he added, apparently in case he’d been too impertinent.

“I’m going alone. I’ll stick out like a sore thumb as it is—”

“No, sir, Cap. We wouldn’t be the only soldiers in town. There’s lots of them around for one reason or another. Most of them is message runners and the like, and they got leave to be there. Ain’t nobody going to know we ain’t one of them, if we just mind our own business. I reckon them town people is used to seeing me, anyway.”

“How many times have you been into Falmouth, Bender?”

“I don’t like to say, sir,” he said, looking at the short tree limbs that had been cut and trimmed and put down to “corduroy” the mud floor.

Thomas drew a quiet breath.
This is insane,
he thought. But he was going to do it. Or at least try. He wasn’t even sure where Abiah was, but he was sure she was in Falmouth. He had to go. “La Broie, I want you to stay here and mind the store—”

“Sir—”

“Don’t interrupt me, damn it! I want you to cover our flank if anybody comes looking for me. You’re
the best liar I’ve got if Gibbons decides he needs me for something—”

“Sir—”

“I’m expecting a replacement officer to arrive tonight,” Thomas continued. “A lieutenant, and it’s going to take your expertise to explain why I’m not here—”

“Sir—”

“Damn it all, what?”

La Broie looked at him a moment, then sighed. “What exactly do you want done with him, Cap?”

“I’m sure you’ll think of something. If this plan goes awry, I guess you can tell him he’s the company’s new commanding officer.”

Thomas removed his saber and hung it on a nail in one of the pine pole supports. Then he checked his revolver to make sure all the chambers were full. “All right, Bender, lead the way.”

“Yes, sir!”

Thomas glanced at La Broie. He had on his “mind how you go” face, but for once he didn’t say it.

The evening was cold enough, but not unbearable. They crossed to the perimeter of the camp quickly and headed directly into the pine woods, breaking into a run the minute they were out of sight. Bender was hell to keep up with in the waning light, but Thomas wasn’t about to tell him to slow down. The boy certainly appeared to know where he was going. In no time at all they reached the railroad cut.

But Thomas hadn’t expected the pickets to be so close to the place where they would have to cross. He
could hear them talking, could smell the wood smoke from their fire.

He caught Bender by the sleeve to keep him from blundering into them, but the boy held his fingers to his lips. Bender scrambled up to the top of the embankment for a moment, then slid back down again.

“Our luck’s holding, Cap. Somebody’s just bribed them with a bottle,” he whispered.

“Bender, do you mean to tell me we’re sneaking around like this when we could have bribed our way into Falmouth with a bottle of whiskey?”

“No, sir! Those men are from a Maine regiment. They ain’t about to take a bottle from no Boston, Massachusetts captain. They’d think you was just trying to catch them at something so’s you could send them to the stockade. We have to do it this way.”

“We’re too close to them here—”

“No, sir. It’s the only place we can get through. There’s vines and thickets all up and down the bank in both directions. We’d get all hung up and they’d hear us for sure. This is how you do it, sir. You make sure you see the bottle going around—they’re all interested in getting their turn at that. Then you go. Step on the cross ties, not on the gravel and not on the rails. It’ll make too much racket if you do, understand?”

Thomas understood. Instead of La Broie, he was now taking orders from a boy private. And it must be a treasonable offense to be this happy that Union army sentries were getting drunk on duty.

“Now, sir,” Bender said. “I’m going. If I don’t make it, you come out and say you was chasing me
because I belong to you and I was skeedaddling—and if you don’t make it, you say the same thing. The path picks up again on the other side of that bank over there, and I’m going to go pretty far down it before I stop. I’ll catch you when you go by.”

Thomas nodded.
If I go by,
he thought.

Bender immediately scrambled up the embankment again, hesitating only a moment before he disappeared. Thomas followed. He lay on his belly on the cold ground at the top, watching the pickets through the branches of scrub pine, trying to think of something in his experience that this was even remotely like. There wasn’t anything.

The men were talking now. And talking. They had a fire built off to the side of the tracks and the smoke was blowing in Thomas’s direction. He could see almost immediately that Bender had been correct in his appraisal of the situation. There was a bottle, and there was somebody in charge of the bottle. And he wasn’t being particularly generous.

Somebody protested. Somebody else protested louder. And when the bottle began to move again, so did Thomas, trying not to slide too fast or too noisily down to the rail bed, then running like hell when he reached the tracks. He expected every second to hear rifle fire behind him, and he didn’t stop until he was well into the woods on the other side. He wasn’t really sure whether he was still on the path or not. He kept going; he didn’t dare call out.

“Cap! This way, Cap,” Bender whispered fiercely behind him, and Thomas whirled around. “You did
good, Cap,” Bender took the time to add before he ran off toward the town.

Thomas could see already see the lights of the houses in Falmouth.

“Bender!” he called as loudly as he dared. “Bender!”

“Cap?” the boy said, backtracking immediately.

“Is there a hotel?”

“There’s this big old place they call a hotel, but I don’t think it was one until we got here, sir. I think it might a been a boarding school or something like that. The dining room’s got a blackboard on the wall.”

“Where is it?”

“It’s on the main street, Cap. You can find it easy. You think your lady’s there?”

“I don’t know where the hell she is.”

“Well, sir, if she ain’t at the hotel, I can help you look other places. We’ll find her.”

Thomas smiled slightly at Bender’s earnest optimism. But he didn’t say anything. He didn’t want to invite any more interest in his personal life than he could help. He wondered idly what the penalty for involving a boy private in his second flagrant disregard for military discipline might be.

They reached the outskirts of town, where they slowed to a more sedate and hopefully less conspicuous walk. Very few citizens seemed to be out and about in the immediate vicinity. The sun was gone completely now, and the air had turned colder.

“Hospital, sir,” Bender said unnecessarily as they passed a particular two-story house with a low iron
fence around it. Every window was shut tight against the winter evening, but occasionally the cries of the men inside still drifted out to the street. Thomas already knew about this place. It was one of many where he’d gone begging shelter for Abiah that rainy night when he’d brought her back across the river.

They turned a corner onto the main street.

“That’s the hotel down there, Cap,” Bender said, pointing to a two-story brick building with a big front porch held up by iron columns.

“Where’s the confectionery?”

“On a ways past the hotel—on this side of the street.”

“Here,” Thomas said, reaching into his pocket and giving him two nickel cent pieces. “Wait for me there—or is it closed now?”

“Mary Ann—she’ll open it up for me. She lives over the store—her pa owns it. She’ll open it for me if she sees me.”

“Mary Ann, is it?”

“Yes, sir, Cap. But you don’t have to give me no money. I reckon she’ll let me in without it.”

“Bender,” Thomas said, trying not to smile. “I’m beginning to see the reason for all this derring-do of yours. Take the money. You’ll want to help Mary Ann’s family all you can if she’s worth this much trouble.”

“Yes, sir, Cap,” he said, embarrassed—but not embarrassed enough to deny the logic of the argument. He suddenly grinned. “I thought you was going to
tease me, Cap. You know—‘Bender’s got a sweetheart’ Something like that.”

“No, Bender. I’m not much for teasing.”

“Yes, sir, and I’m glad of it, I can tell you. Some of the boys—they’re good boys, most of them, but they really know how to make a fellow’s life miserable over this sweetheart business.”

“I can imagine,” Thomas said, thinking that regardless of the hard time, Bender remained undeterred. He still, at significant personal risk, came into town to see the confectioner’s daughter.

Bender sighed. “She’s got two brothers and a cousin with Old Stonewall Jackson. I reckon you know how
that
is. Cap, what will you do if your lady ain’t at the hotel?”

“Then I’ll have to reconnoiter. See if you can find out from Mary Ann where Zachariah Wilson is while you’re waiting.”

“I’ll do that, Cap.”

Thomas left Bender and crossed the muddy street. There was much more activity in this part of town. The military was very much in evidence, as Bender had reported. Thomas made a point of nodding to the ladies he encountered along the way in the hope that it would make him look less guilty.

The hotel was bigger than he first thought, and he decided that Bender was correct about it once having been some kind of school. It certainly looked like a school. He supposed that the war had dried up the student enrollment, and some enterprising soul had seen the wisdom of taking up innkeeping in an area
that seemed to be permanently occupied by two armies.

The inside of the hotel smelled of cooked cabbage. Thomas could see a few scattered pieces of furniture and a battered piano in what passed for the lobby. There seemed to be a host of people on the ground floor, either coming or going or simply standing around. He finally spotted a large woman who seemed to be the person in charge. She was seated at a desk in the wide front hallway.

“Excuse me,” Thomas said, to make her look up. “Is Mrs. Harrigan—”

“Captain Harrigan!” she exclaimed, causing any number of heads to turn. “You are he, are you not?”

“Ah…yes, I am.”

“At last! We—all of us ladies—thought you couldn’t leave camp!”

“Well, I…only just got the message that my wife is here,” Thomas said, lowering his voice in the hopes that she would take the hint.

She didn’t. “Oh, but she’s not here,” she boomed.

“What do you mean, she’s not here? Where is she?”

“Oh, dear. I said it wrong. I meant to say she’s not here
now.
She’s been invited to supper at the home of one of the local ladies. I’m afraid I don’t know where exactly—but she should return any time now.”

“She’s well enough to go out?” he asked, his mind busy worrying the fact that in all these years he hadn’t realized that his mother was given to such understatement. Somehow he hadn’t equated Abiah’s being recovered
enough to sit in the gallery and listen to music with her actually being able to accept someone’s invitation to supper.

“Yes, of course,” the woman said. “She seems perfectly fine, Captain. Will you wait in the room for her or…” She was clearly open to suggestions, but he had none. He just wanted to get away from all the curious attention he could feel boring into his back.

“I…yes,” Thomas answered. “Yes,” he said again, wondering why she was smiling so.

“It’s a
very
fine room. Mrs. Morse and Mrs. January have doubled up so that you and Mrs. Harrigan could have some privacy—oh, it’s just so exciting. Torn apart by this terrible war the moment you were married—and to think
my
hotel shall play a part in the honeymoon!”