High Hearts (43 page)

Years ago she had hated Mars so much she placed a thorn in his heart. Every time he pressed against her, he would bleed. She never knew she could be so cruel. She didn’t want to be cruel any longer.

If Mars survived the war, she would approach him then about a divorce. If he did not survive the war, the issue would be settled. She hoped he’d survive, even though a divorce would permanently shatter her reputation. Even if no lady of society would receive her after a divorce, she knew perfectly well she could make a brilliant marriage. After all, it was men that asked you to marry, not women.

Sweet with fragrance, the air clung to the Vickerses’ expansive back porch. Lutie and Geneva read from the first book of Kings, chapter 11. Solomon had seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines.

“I thought he was supposed to be wise,” Lutie commented when the lesson was finished. She broke off further discussion when Henley joined them.

“Di-Peachy’s in her room,” he said. Geneva immediately left the porch.

“You told her?” Lutie pulled the silk ribbon markers in her Bible.

“Yes.” He exhaled. “She showed very little emotion.”

“Since when do Negroes show their true emotions to us?” Lutie so took Sin-Sin for granted that she blurted this out.

“Sometimes you is disgusting mean!” Sin-Sin glared at
Lutie. Her feelings for Di-Peachy ran deep. Her love for Lutie had never prevented her from seeing Lutie’s correct coldness to the girl. She stormed off the porch.

Lutie, without thinking, tore a ribbon out of her Bible. “See what you’ve done.”

“You insulted her, I didn’t,” Henley logically replied.

“I hate it when you’re reasonable!” Now Lutie stormed off the porch.

Henley sat alone in the rocker and lit his pipe. Old emotions, like old scars, savaged his face.

When Geneva walked into Di-Peachy’s tiny attic room, she closed the door behind her. For an awkward moment they stared at one another, two half-sisters separated by the chasms of race, temperament, and war.

Geneva, always the more demonstrative and impulsive of the two, rushed to embrace Di-Peachy. They clung to each other like frightened children.

Finally Di-Peachy stepped back and looked at Geneva. “You don’t look like yourself. I don’t even know you anymore.”

“I’m still me.” Geneva smiled.

“We’ve both changed.”

“You and I will never change with regard to one another.” Geneva’s conviction was pure.

“I hope not.” Di-Peachy took her hand. They sat at opposite ends of the bed, facing one another, as they had done so many times at Chatfield.

“It’s a relief to know. I always suspected.”

“Me, too, but I was too afraid to say anything. I felt like my birth was enshrouded in a poisonous mist. No one ever spoke of it. I never knew what I did wrong.”

“Nothing.”

“Are you ashamed?”

Geneva shook her head. “Why should I be?”

“You have a sister, a half-sister, who is illegitimate and black.”

“Me and half the Confederacy.” Her grin was infectious.

“Lutie’s been a little better since Sumner died. I don’t know why. And we hardly ever hear her talking to Emil anymore.”

“She probably doesn’t have the time. Mother was always embroidering her woes. Now she’s seeing everyone else’s.”
Geneva exhaled. “Away from her, from home, I see things differently. It must have been miserable for her.”

“Disappointment seems to be a standing feature of marriage,” Di-Peachy quietly said.

“Not mine! Mine’s perfect,” Geneva lied.

“I’m glad to hear it.”

“What about you? Are you really in love with Mercer?”

“I think so. I’ve never been in love before. Once the war is over, you’ll get to know him.”

Geneva, relaxing in the company of her oldest friend, spilled over. “My marriage isn’t perfect. He doesn’t love me anymore. I went into the army to be close to him, and I succeeded in driving him away. But I can’t leave him, and I can’t leave my regiment!” Tears filled her eyes.

“I’m so sorry.” Di-Peachy’s eyes glazed over, too. “Things will be fine when you get home, when life is normal.”

“You’re smarter than that, and now, so am I.” Geneva shook her head. “I don’t want to spoil your love, but, Peaches, marriage isn’t what you think it is!”

“I know. I see it all around me, and it scares me.”

“Plus, Mercer is white. That adds one more burden to it.”

“I know that, too. Does it bother you?”

“Some.” Geneva hastily added, “But I’ll get used to it. I’m getting used to a lot of things.”

“Me, too. Geneva, everything is happening so fast. I used to have a dream for the future. I kept it to myself. I didn’t even tell you or Sin-Sin. I used to dream that I’d be free, and I would go to college. Then I would come home and teach my people. Living in ignorance is as bad as being a slave!”

This sentiment didn’t offend Geneva. Di-Peachy never pretended to like her status for Geneva’s sake. “It might come true.”

“It might, but from the things I see and hear in Richmond, it seems to me that whether you win this war or whether you lose it, the fate of my people, of me, is going to be one thunderstorm after another. I don’t see any rainbows.”

Geneva very quietly said, “Your fate is with Chatfield. We’re sisters; we rise or we fall together!”

“God, I wish I believed that.” Di-Peachy squeezed Geneva’s hand, and they cried anew. They cried for their new knowledge, for their lost childhoods, for their fear of loss and of death. They were women now, and they knew that not every story had a happy ending.

“Gentlemen, in ten minutes every man must be in his saddle.” Geneva sprang to her feet, along with the other twelve hundred men under Stuart’s command, for a mission as yet undisclosed. After making that announcement, the twenty-nine-year-old brigadier general left them to their hasty preparations.

Mars Vickers, leaving most of his men with Benserade, now a major, came along because J.E.B. valued him and because companies of the Fourth Virginia, augmenting the First Virginia and the Ninth Virginia, were without a regimental officer. Colonel Fitz Lee, a nephew of Robert E. Lee, commanded the rear guard, mostly made up of the First Virginia. Rooney Lee, the general’s son, commanded the advance guard. Rooney was described as too big to be a man, but too small to be a horse. Lt. Colonel William Martin commanded the Jeff Davis Legion with the South Carolina Boykin Rangers, and Lieutenant Jim Breathed had two units of Stuart’s Horse Artillery.

Geneva and Banjo, on being selected by Mars, cooked up three days’ rations and were issued sixty rounds of ammunition. They assembled at Kilby’s Station on the Richmond, Fredericksburg, and Potomac Railroad line outside of Richmond.

Mars handpicked twenty of his own men to come along. Nash was not chosen. This precipitated a small crisis when
Geneva hotly contested that Nash was an excellent trooper. Mars said that he was aware of Nash’s skills, but he didn’t think Nash was suitable for a mission which might prove extremely punishing. One needed a touch of Murat or madness was how Mars put it. When she asked why he wanted her, he replied, “Because you weren’t born. You were foaled.”

Nash took the news surprisingly well. While he didn’t shirk responsibility, he didn’t seek it either. He assumed, as did Geneva, that the cavalry was going to reinforce Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley. She said that three days’ rations seemed thin gruel to get over to the Shenandoah Valley. Nash replied that there was nothing to prevent Stuart from foraging after three days’ time or, once far enough away from Richmond, to putting everyone on trains. So she left him without tears. As she bedded down for the night near Mordecai’s by Kilby’s Station, she felt strangely relieved that she was on this mission without Nash. They didn’t argue much, but sometimes the tension between them crackled. She felt protective of him and tried to keep her eye on him. He felt the same way toward her, but the task was more difficult for Nash because he lacked Geneva’s reckless daring. Once he accused her of liking to kill people. She said that she’d rather kill the Yankees than have the Yankees kill her.

One thing did trouble her, however. When she rode over fields dotted with enemy dead, she wanted to laugh. She was glad they were dead. They had no business marching into Virginia. Even more, she was glad she was alive. Was it so wrong to be happy to be alive? To be happy in a victory of arms? If it was wrong, then everybody would go home, wouldn’t they? She didn’t understand Nash.

Forming up in columns of fours—Mars immediately up ahead, Banjo on one side of Geneva and Sam Wells on the other, Private Parker outside of Sam—the regiment trotted out in the dazzling moonlight onto the empty Brooke Turnpike. As they pulled out, an old army friend of Stuart’s called out, “When will you be back, Beauty?”

“It may be four years and it may be forever,” he replied, a piano-wide grin in his bushy beard.

Riding north they sang “Kathleen Mavourneen, the gray dawn is breaking, the horn of the hunter is heard on the hill.” The music swept from the head of the column to the rear. At Turner Tavern, five miles later, the column, which at close
ranks stretched out half a mile, cut left. Geneva was certain they were heading north to the Louisa County Courthouse where they were going to relieve Jackson, who was contending with three separate Federal armies. She reckoned he could use a little help.

Before noon the heat rose up off the meadows of undulating grass in little waves. Good-bye spring. Hello summer. Geneva thought how pleasant the summers were at Chatfield. Here in the Peninsula, shot through with three strong rivers and countless creeks, streams, and swamps, summer was a steambath made even more uncomfortable by the great variety and ferocity of winged irritants that inhabited the place. The mosquitoes flew, fat as yellow hornets. If she never saw a Peninsula mosquito again, she would count herself lucky.

By late afternoon the force crossed the Richmond, Fredericksburg, and Potomac Railroad, west of Ashland Station.

The column veered right. At first Geneva paid little attention, assuming the road was better and they’d soon turn back north.

After an hour of this rightward direction, she said, “Banjo, we’re heading east.”

“Maybe the bold general is lost,” Banjo replied.

“With Mars in the line? You know he can be a real maiden aunt about roads. If a pissant walked over a meadow, he’ll declare it a shortcut.”

“I heard that,” Mars called over his shoulder from up ahead.

“I thought officers had better things to do than eavesdrop onus lowlies,” Geneva said to tease him.

“I eavesdrop on you all the time, Jimmy.”

“Is that a fact? I had no idea my conversation was so fascinating to you.”

“It isn’t. I’m waiting for your voice to crack.” At this, titters rippled through the ranks.

“You know, Colonel, I have an Auntie Sin-Sin. She says if you take a strand of a person’s hair and nail it to a tree, it will run that person crazy. When you’re asleep tonight, I’m gonna snatch a piece of your curly hair and do just that.”

“Don’t bother. You’re already driving me crazy.”

The good-natured banter went on until the men stopped for the night. They were on Winston Farm near Taylorsville, twenty-two miles from Richmond. No fires. No bugles. As
Banjo rolled up in his blanket, he said to Geneva, “We aren’t going to the valley.”

“Maybe we’re going to the dogs,” Mars said, rolled up behind Banjo.

Geneva stealthily crept around Banjo and yanked a hair right out of Mars’s head.

“You little shit.” He grabbed her wrist. “Gimme that.”

Banjo propped himself up to enjoy their horseplay.

“Let me go.”

“Give me that hair.”

“Why, think you’ll need it? Afraid you’ll go bald?”

“You’re the one going to be bald in a minute.”

“Bully.” She tossed the hair on the ground.

Mars let her go. “I’m no bully; I just don’t want you to nail my hair to a tree. I wouldn’t mess with Sin-Sin’s potions and spells.”

An hour before sunrise, Geneva was awake. She drank cold tea from her canteen and pulled out her Bible. The lesson for the day was 1 Kings 20:1-22 and Acts 18. The travails of St. Paul made good reading. In yesterday’s lesson, Acts 17, St. Paul told the Greeks at Athens that their altar with the inscription TO THE UNKNOWN GOD was to worship the only God. He was proclaiming that God was the true God. St. Paul was a clever man. Many of the Greeks had a tough time believing the resurrection. Geneva sometimes did, too. Why did it apply to only one of us? Although right now she was rather glad the dead stayed dead. Imagine if those rotting soldiers rose out of their mass graves to turn on one another anew, or worse, to turn on her?

She noticed that Mars’s bedroll was made up. Banjo stirred.
Mars spoke to the other officers, then they all scattered to their units.

Mars strode up to Geneva. “We are going behind McClellan’s right! General Lee wants us to gather as much information as we can about entrenchments and disposition of troops. Then he’s going to attack.” Mars was jubilant. “There’s nothing between us and one hundred thousand Yankees! Can you beat that?” His eyes sparkled. The sheer impudence of their venture outweighed the danger for him.

Geneva picked up Gallant’s feet after Mars left her. Shod a week ago, the shoes fit him perfectly. Good, she thought. The last thing I need on an assignment like this is a horse that throws a shoe. Gallant nuzzled her behind as she held his foreleg between her knees.

Banjo joined her and inspected his own sturdy roan, which had a touch of Connemarra in him. “Ever ball a horse for worms?”

“Sure.” Geneva moved to the left foreleg.

“I’d hold the ball between my first three fingers and pull his tongue out with my left hand. Then I’d shove that ball down there as far as I could and zip my hand out! Stand there until I could see it go down his gullet. Course, if I were to be nervous, oh, what a mess!”

“Ever use a big peashooter to shoot the pill down?”

“Tried that once. Horse blew back first.”

“Well, at least you didn’t have worms that season.”

“Mount up.” The call came down the line.