High Hearts (14 page)

“That’s him.” Geneva swung her leg over the saddle. “Banjo, come find me in the morning.” She handed her reins to Banjo, who nodded and rode toward the end of the row. The servants and seconds had to be around there somewhere.

Geneva walked into the tent. Nash looked up. At first he didn’t recognize her. “Hello.”

“Nash, it’s me.”

Dumbfounded, Nash looked at his wife. He whispered, “Geneva?”

“It’s me!”

He moved behind her and dropped the tent flap. “What are you doing here?”

“I can’t live without you.” She flung herself into his arms.

Too surprised to respond with words, he hugged and kissed her. “I can’t believe it.” He pushed her away and looked at her. “You cut your hair!”

“I’m going to enlist. Can’t very well have long hair.”

“You’re what?”

“I’m going to enlist so I can be with you.”

“Geneva, you’ll do no such thing.” Nash sat on his camp bed. She joined him.

“No one will find out. All I have do is stand up and sign my name.”

“I can’t allow you to submit yourself to such danger.”

“I’ll die without you! Really, I will!” Tears ran into the corners of her mouth. “I’d rather be fighting a war than sitting home and pining away.”

He touched her cheeks and wiped away the tears. “How could you love me so much?” He wrapped his arms around her. “Look, why don’t you just live at the camp? Some of the officers’ wives are here. We’d have time together.”

“No.” She grew hot. “No, I want to go where you go and do what you do. I’m not afraid. It beats hearing Mother tell me what to do or listening to Sin-Sin and Ernie June fight or dragging into town every Sunday to die of boredom in a church pew. No! I won’t go home. I’m staying with you!”

“Geneva, you could get killed!”

“So could you.”

“I’m a man. It’s my duty. You have different duties, darling. Everyone has a purpose in life, and it isn’t your purpose to risk your person in such a violent fashion. Childbirth is risk enough.”

“I want to be with you. I don’t care if I get killed. I have to be with you!” Geneva boldly put her hand on his crotch. He responded immediately. She unbuttoned his trousers, got up and fastened the tent flap, then returned to a bewildered but excited Nash. She touched him; she bit his ear. She wiggled out of her boots and pants and pressed her body next to his. Nash melted. He longed for her, ached for her. He wanted to howl with pleasure, but he had to be scrupulously silent. They made love and talked half the night. By sunrise Nash saw things Geneva’s way.

That night Banjo bedded down with other servants, most of them black. He curled up in his blanket and felt a tad lonesome. He’d gotten used to sleeping beside Jimmy. He realized he thought of the boy as a son. He shut his eyes to close out the tears. As the years sped by, he felt the lack of children more and more. Well, Jimmy’d be half a son. Banjo fell asleep talking to his dead wife. He did this every night. He felt she heard him.

A loud cannon boom sounded by Geneva’s right ear. She scrambled out of bed, struggled into her pants and boots, grabbed her pistol, and dashed outside the tent. No enemy approached, but she saw a puff of smoke a mere hundred yards from the tent, and she smelled gunpowder. She ran back into the tent.

“Nash, wake up! The Yankees are coming!”

Nash opened one eye halfway.

“The Yankees are coming! Our boys fired a cannon at them!” She sat on the side of the cot, her heart pounding.

He closed his eye again. “That’s the artillery telling us it’s time to get up. Guess we have to give them something to do.”

“All right, you walleyed sons of bitches, get up and get moving!” a rude voice shouted in a singsong voice.

Furious, Geneva bolted out of the tent and squared off against an unshaven man with bright red hair. “This is a military camp, not a brothel. Watch your tongue!”

“Who the hell are you to tell me what to do, sister boy?” He glared at Geneva, an inch taller than he but suspiciously sleek.

Geneva blew up. “I’m no sister boy!”

Contemptuously he pushed her out of the way and kept walking. “Get up and get moving, you walleyed sons of bitches.”

Geneva put her boot smack in the small of his back and sent him sprawling on the ground. The redhead was a slender man in his thirties, but he still outweighed her by twenty pounds. He leapt up and collared her.

“I’ll teach you, you little pissant.”

“Foulmouth!” She bit his arm. He howled and released her. Then he advanced, his fist cocked. He lunged at her and she dodged the blow, tripping him as he fell. She didn’t grow up with brothers for nothing.

The redhead’s pride was scorched. This skinny flit dared correct him and push him in the dirt. He ran at her like a bull and caught her by the legs, throwing her across his shoulder. Her head dangled down his back. She reached her long arms around his body and down into his crotch and yanked his balls as hard as she could. Stunned and hurt, he dropped her. While he was doubled over, she smashed up against him with all her weight, and he fell down. Then she jumped on him and tried to hold him down, but he was too strong. She pinned his arms with her weight. He rocked from side to side, managing to throw her off because she was so light. Then he jumped up and smacked her upside the head. Blood trickled down the side of her face.

“Mr. Poist, that’s enough.” A melodic tenor voice, drenched with command, rang out.

The redhead lumbered a step backward. Geneva stood beside him.

A tall, well-built man with curly auburn hair and a luxurious moustache to match looked at her with laughing eyes. He wore blue trousers with a gold stripe down the side. His boots were highly polished. The inside of his pants were lined with roughed leather. His gray tunic top with a double row of gold buttons was opened, revealing a white shirt underneath, also opened. The hair on his chest matched the hair on his head, and it spilled over his muscled chest. A yellow foraging cap sat back on his head, the leather visor freshly oiled. His stand-up collar, like all his facings, was yellow with gold braid trim. A single star stood on each collar flap. He reeked of masculinity.

“Major, this sister boy started a fight.”

Geneva knocked him on the ground again. “Don’t call me sister boy!”

The next thing she knew, two powerful hands under her armpits lifted her up, and she found herself staring straight into Major Mars Vickers’s light brown eyes. “Hot tempered, aren’t you?”

Held in midair like a helpless pup, Geneva replied, “He’s got no right to call me a sister boy.”

Mars put her down. “I reckon he doesn’t.” He was sensitive to adolescence and to the varying developmental rates of young men. True, this young fellow left a great deal to be desired, but he had time to fill out. “I reckon he doesn’t.”

The redhead waxed eloquent. “Major Vickers, I was waking the men and this—individual—flies out of Hart’s tent and gives me a Sunday sermon on my colorful employment of language.”

Mars smiled, his white teeth glistening. “Mr. Poist, I believe you have considerable powers in the vocabulary of abuse.”

Poist puffed up. “Thank you, Major.”

“Now, sir, why don’t you continue on your rounds so I might have the pleasure of torturing these gentlemen after their sumptuous breakfast.”

Poist sauntered down the row of tents. “Get up, you lazy jackasses! Let me see your face, unless you think you can piss up a rope!”

As men with profound lack of enthusiasm greeted the sunrise, the dew cold on their bare feet, Mars turned to Geneva. “If cussing offends you, wait for Jackson to come to camp. He neither swears nor drinks nor smokes. I don’t know if he’ll live longer than I do, but it will seem longer.”

Geneva mumbled, “I want to serve with you.”

“You do, do you? Young man, I doubt you’ve been in school long enough to read Caesar’s
Gallic Wars
.”

“I read ’em, and I’d rather decline two drinks than one verb.” Geneva caught on fast.

Mars threw back his head and laughed. “A boy after my own heart. What’s your name?”

“James Chatfield, sir.”

“Kin to Henley and Lutie Chatfield in Albemarle County?”

“Son.”

Mars stuck out his big hand. “Finest horses I ever saw, your father’s. Never had the pleasure of meeting him, but I’ve seen Chatfield’s colors in many a race. I hope you’ll give him my regards.”

“I will, sir. He’s in the army, too.”

“Does he know where you are?” Mars asked casually. Geneva fumbled, but said nothing. “I thought so. Look, Mr. Chatfield, I applaud your patriotism, but you’re too young. You ride back home now.”

“No, sir. I want to fight.”

“I can see that.”

“I’m the best rider you ever laid eyes on.” She said this with a touch of defiance.

“Big words for a little fellow.”

“I’m not so little.” Indeed, she was tall.

Mars thought a bit, then brightened. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll set up a course—timber, hazards, and brush. We’ll provide the boys with some entertainment after breakfast. You race me. If you win, you’re on.” He stuck out his hand.

“I’ll take that bet, Major Vickers.”

As he walked back to his tent, Mars laughed to himself. He was the best rider in the camp. He had ridden at Samur, Sandhurst, and the Spanish Riding School in Vienna. The kid didn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell.

Geneva burst through the tent.

Nash, said, “He’ll bury you, sugar.”

Geneva’s eyes widened. Her own husband didn’t believe in her. “I’ll win, and you can just goddamned stand there and watch me!”

Nash got out of bed and admonished her. “I won’t have a wife of mine using foul language.”

Geneva started to say something, but then graciously agreed. “You’re absolutely right, Nash. I do so apologize. I will, however, beat Major Mars Vickers.”

Banjo found Geneva eating her breakfast and drinking strong coffee with Nash and the men of four surrounding tents. Mars had organized them into units of five tents for cooking.

“Jimmy, you gonna do it!” Banjo slapped her on the back.

Nash started to rise to put this man in his place. How dare he touch his wife? A sharp look from Geneva caused him to reconsider, and he sat down.

“Nash, this is my man Banjo Cracker.”

Banjo good-naturedly stuck out his hand. “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Hart. This here boy sets a store by you.”

Nash accepted the offered hand. “I’m glad to meet you, too, Mr. Cracker.”

“Banjo!” He pumped Nash’s hand. “Now, Jimmy, you know Mars is the best rider in this army. But you’re gonna lick him, Jimmy boy! I jes know you are.”

The other men scoffed. Banjo challenged them. “I been
riding with this boy. He’s a wonder, I tell you! I’ll bet each and every one of you ten dollars that Jimmy skunks Major Mars.”

“I’ll take that bet,” several men called out. “If you want to part with your money that bad, we’ll help you.”

A lump knotted in Geneva’s throat. “I won’t fail you, Banjo.”

“What if there’s a draw?” Nash asked, as he put his ten dollars down. He had little choice.

“The odds are so much against a draw, I think we ought to consider it a win for your fella,” one man said. The others agreed. They could afford to be generous.

The artillery men with their heavy draft horses helped Mars set up the course. A few low carts without sides were used for jumps. Hastily constructed fences of whole timbers dotted the course; brush jumps a good four feet tall added to the difficulty. The course included a rushing creek at the bottom of a treacherous slope. Mars exuded high spirits.

The light haze dispersed about ten in the morning. The temperature hovered in the midsixties, perfect weather. Word reached the regiments in the camp, and most of the men gathered to enjoy this new diversion.

The officers climbed up on a platform that was moved over from the infantry field, and the rest of the men eagerly lined the course. Men in artillery units commanded the back by the miserable water jump. The infantry crowded along the middle of the course, and the cavalry took pride of place, the homestretch and finish line, since it was one of their own competing.

Banjo and Geneva worked both her mounts that morning. Gallant, the gray, seemed springier, so they decided to go with the gelding. Nash nervously inspected her tack. Why in the world did he let Geneva convince him to be silent about her enlistment? And now this? He wanted her to win, but he thought it was impossible. Well, this race would end it. She’d go back home, which was probably just as well.

Riceland, Major Vickers’s handsome black servant, came over to Geneva. “The major is ready, Mr. Chatfield.”

“Good.” Geneva’s grin was infectious. Riceland grinned back.

Banjo ran on ahead and worked the crowd. He picked up
two thousand dollars in bets. His boy was gonna thump this flashy major. Men smiled as though they were taking candy from a baby as they traded hastily made chits. Banjo had colored pieces of paper sticking out of his hat, his pockets, up his sleeves, in his belt, in his boot tops.

Mars sat astride a big bay mare that had hindquarters that screamed power. The mare was already foaming at the mouth. Mars sat deep in his seat, long stirrups in the correct jumping position.

Geneva cantered up, crouched on Gallant’s neck. Her stirrups were much too short, and her toes lay alongside his flanks instead of properly sticking out. To the crowd, her riding style appeared ridiculous.

Mars appraised her seat. “Boy, you’re perched up there like a dragonfly.”

Banjo and Nash wriggled up to the finish line.

“That Major Vickers is a fine-looking man, ain’t he though?” Banjo said admiringly.

Nash shrugged. With Mars Vickers it was hate at first sight. Nash didn’t know why he couldn’t bear the man, but he couldn’t. However, he was assigned to Vickers’ cavalry and he wasn’t going to make a spectacle of himself by trying to skin out of it.

An artillery officer in dress uniform stepped up to the starting line. A saber rattled by his left side. He raised his right arm. The thousands shut up on cue. Geneva calmly waited. Mars’s moustache twitched. Bang!

The course was two miles. The riders were side by side. The first jump, a simple three-foot timber on flat ground, was easy. The next jump was brush taken on the rise. Geneva felt Gallant’s hind hooves tick the brush. The land rolled now, and the grass was cut on part of it. Those jumps were relatively easy, even though the height varied. Two twelve-pound cannons were placed side by side for a jump of breadth. The artillery troops went wild as both the gray and the bay sailed over the cannons. Caps waving, they shouted the riders on.