Finally, as night fell, we saw the outlying buildings of a small village. We reached a farm, and found a bed of straw in one of the barnsâobviously Sheridan's troops had not yet reached this farâand we slept in one another's arms, exhausted, thanking God for giving us one clear day together.
XV
THE FARM WAS DESERTED, THE FARMERS EITHER DEAD OR fled, so we holed up for a few days while Aaron rested and recovered. I raided the farmhouse for clean cloths to turn into bandagesâthere was a well-stocked linen closet that had been untouched by soldiersâand we ate well, thanks to the abandoned livestock. Chickens were living wild in the woods, and I soon found their nests, so we had fresh eggs every day. One or two of the chickens themselves ended up in the pot. A goat gave us milk, and we ate apples from a small orchard. I used the farmhouse kitchen, and we drank fresh water from the pump in the yard, but at night we slept in the barn, where we were harder to find and whence it was easier to make a silent escape, if necessary. We knew that, sooner or later, a foraging party would find the farm and raid it to feed the starving Rebel soldiers. And it was also likely that they were searching for us, if Cadet Lee had got through the valley alive. Aaron was now wanted by both sidesâthe Yankees would love to string up the Black Devil for all to see, and the Rebels would arrest him as a deserter. And if Lee had been telling them tales, they would all want to kill us because we were queer.
But, for all the danger, I was reluctant to leave. There at the farm we were warm and dry and well fed. Aaron could rest and allow his wounds to heal; for all his courage in the face of pain, he was a very sick man, and the infections had left him weak. I knew that if we went out on the road again too soon, sleeping rough and eating only rarely, he would catch the first fever going, and I would lose him. As long as there was no immediate danger, I insisted that we stay in the barn, buried in hay, wrapped in blankets, our stomachs full and our bodies warm.
We slept together, of course, our limbs entwined, kissing and talking and dreamingâand perhaps it was that, more than anything, that made me unwilling to leave our little home. I knew it was a fool's paradise, and that to linger longer was inviting danger, but to sleep beside the man I loved, to feel his heart beating and his strength returning, was hard to give up.
As we lay together one evening, savoring the silence all around us, Aaron instructed me to dig into our few possessions and pull out a filthy oilcloth bag. I had seen it when we were in the cave and assumed it contained money; Aaron guarded it as if it was precious.
“Open it, and read it. I'm going to sleep.”
He nestled into my side as I drew out a wad of dirty paper, tied with a piece of string. As Aaron's breathing slowed and steadied, I read of his journey from Vermont, his career in Richmond, and his transformation into the Black Devil. This last phase of the narrative disturbed me particularlyâI had not allowed myself to think of the sufferings he had undergoneâbut it was illuminated at the end by a declaration that took my breath away.
“Marched south for four days,” began the first of a series of scrappy, sporadic notes.
The boys are footsore, hungry, and scared. Some of them are sick. Charlie has deserted; they say he ran off with the governor's wife but who knows if we'll ever see him alive again? I hope to God he is safe. Billy and Chester are together as man and wife, although Billy has been obliged to abandon his preferred wardrobe for a while. I stay close to Howard, and we are a great comfort to each other. When he is too tired to go on, I carry him. At night, when we rest for a few hours before dawn, too tired to sleep, certainly too tired to fuck, I hold him and caress him and try to allay his fears. He rewards me with the warmth of his young body and the most complete trust and gratitude that I have ever known.
The next few pages detailed the horrors of military life, with which I was only too familiar. The fatigue, the fear, the hunger, and above all the stalking specter of disease. The men of Company K started falling prey to strange fevers, and there was no one to nurse them. Many were left to die where they fell by the roadside or were found stiff and cold in the gray light of dawn.
We were ambushed at 3am just outside Yellow Tavern. Surrounded by 100, maybe more, Yankee soldiers, with guns trained on us as we rested. Taken captive without a chance to fight. Now in prison camp, I do not know where. Howard took a bullet.
The next entry was barely legible.
Nursed Howard through four days of fever, unable to secure medicine or clean water or food. Could only hold him and watch him fade away. He died in my arms this morning, and the body was taken from me.
This was the last entry in that particular bundle; I could only imagine how Aaron felt, to have lost a friend so dear.
One final sheet of paper remained, covered on both sides in a script so tiny that I could barely make it out.
The prison chaplain visited me two days after Howard's death. A Boston man, he told me, smooth faced and broad shouldered, one of those âmuscular Christians' that used to go about trying to convert the dark races when I was a kid. But he seemed friendly and genuinely concerned that I had lost my friend. “You did your best to look after him,” he said, smiling. I replied that there was not much I could do, as the boy had been denied proper medical attention and left to die like a dog. Then he asked me, “What are you fighting for, brother?” This, I thought, was where he would try to convert me to the Yankee causeâand in truth I might as well be fighting for them as for anyone else. I told him that I was fighting for my own survival, nothing more.
“And you see where that has brought you?” I wanted to take a swing at him for implying that somehow I was to blame for my current sorry conditionâbut then I realized that he was right. Why was I fighting for the Rebelsâthose Southern gentlemen who hated me and denied me my rights? Why was I fighting at all? This was not my struggle. I joined Company K because I had no choice, because of loyalty to a band of rogues and thieves and vagabonds. I was not ashamed of that
loyalty, but was it worth all this death?
“What is really important to you, Aaron Johnson?” asked the chaplain. “Liberty,” I replied, for want of anything better to say. “Liberty,” he repeated, looking straight into my eyes. “That's a lovely word, but what does it mean? The freedom to buy and sell, the freedom to live and die, the freedom to love and hate?” “The freedom to love and live as I please,” I said. “And is this how you please?”
He left me, and I fell into a troubled doze, thinking about what he had said. Liberty? What had I meant when I said that? To love and live as I please? Well, to love as I please, yes, that was important, but have I ever really loved, or been loved? Howard, for instance, taken from me by a greedy death⦠We were lovers, in one sense of the word, but only because the war had thrown us together and he needed someone stronger than him to take his fears away. In gratitude, and perhaps for the pleasure of the moment, he had given himself to me, but I was not what he wanted. And all those others, those who had bought my love in Richmond, those who had fought with me or betrayed me along the wayâthat was not love. I scoured my memory for one man that I could honestly say I had loved, and who had loved me in return, and I found nothing.
And then I remembered Jack Edgerton. All those thousands of years ago in Vermont, in the cold bright clean air of Vermont, the woods and the streams, and his laughing face, his self-important airs, his foolish belief that we could have whatever we wanted, his arrogance and innocence and joy of life; yes, Jack had loved me, not wisely but really, truly. And I had pushed him away. Yes, my reasons were sound, my reasons for everything were always sound, but perhaps reason was not what I wanted anymore but liberty, as I had told the chaplain. Jack was like me, a lover of men. If we could find each other again, and find liberty, far away from the war and the people who knew us, then perhaps I might live againâ¦
Tears ran down my cheeks. Aaron believed that I had loved him, way back in Vermont when all we seemed to do was fight. Perhaps he was right. Perhaps I had loved him from the first moment. Desired him, certainly, as I did now; my cock was as stiff as an iron bar inside my pants. And yes, I loved him now, more than I had loved anyone. Had he guessed back then what it took me so long to realize? Could he be so certain, that a love like mine could sustain him in his most desperate hour? I felt ashamed, unworthy, but above all exhilarated.
They started executing prisoners yesterday. I saw the chaplain saying prayers as some of the boys were marched out to the woods to be shot. I stole a knife from the cookhouse, cut the throat of one of the guards, stole his gun, and ran from the camp. It was so easy. Regained Rebel lines within five hours. Gave news of the fate of Company K. As I have no papers, they did not believe that I was a soldier. They would have taken me into custody again. Having just escaped from a Federal prison camp, I have no desire to walk straight into a Confederate one. I ran again, stole a horse, joined a gang of foragers who were only too happy to add my strength and courage to theirs. We camped out in the woods. There is one
young man in the group, blond like Jack, who sucks my cock when the rest of the gang is asleep and the woods are dark.
I looked down at Aaron, sleeping peacefully beside me, and I envied that young blond man who had done to him the things that I had never done. I wanted so badly to make love to him, in the fullest way possible, but I was still frightened that the violence of my passion might kill him.
The notes went on.
We reached a farmhouse where a woman and a teenage boy met us on the porch with guns. The men fanned out and aimed their weapons, ready to slaughter the mother and her son for the price of a hot meal and a bed for the night. “We're on your side!” said the mother, waving her gun wildly in the air; I doubted if she could hit a cow at five paces. The boy was visibly shaking; neither of them stood a chance.
“Shut the fuck up,”' snapped Tilbury, our ringleader, a mean son of a bitch with a scarred face and a sick delight in violence. He cocked his rifle and leveled it at the boy's head.
“You see your little baby die first, bitch, then you follow him to heaven.”
Tilbury never knew what hit him; I was standing behind him, and simply swung my rifle around and blew his head off. It exploded like a watermelon.
“Anyone else?” I cocked again, ready to fire. The rest of the gang slipped away into the trees. The blond boy, my cocksucker of a few nights, ran with them.
“You need to leave here. Take water and blankets and get away,” I said to the woman. “They will be back. Hurry.”
“But this is our home.”
“Not anymore, it's not.”
I turned my back and walked away fast, unable to bear the look of sorrow on her face. I had saved her life, perhaps for a day, or a week. And my life? How long a purchase did I have on that?
There followed a pitiful account of Aaron's life as a fugitive from both sides, trapped like a wolf in a cage as the battle closed in around him in the Shenandoah Valley, struggling to survive from day to day, using his strength, courage, and cunning to win out in every confrontation he had with the soldiers of either side. This was when he earned the name Black Devil, that semimythical creature who inspired dread in the Union forces and who seemed, to them, like the embodiment of a crazy vengeance for all the wrongs they were inflicting on the innocent civilians of Virginia. But Aaron fought for neither side, only for his own survival. The final entry showed the state to which he had fallen before I found him.
I know I will die soon, either in my cave like an old black bear, or out in the burning desolation. My time has come and I will find liberty in heaven. Now I want only peace and death. If I could live my life again I would ride as fast as I can to Jack's side and tell him that I love him, but that I know will never be. Even if he is alive I can never find him. I pray that he is safe from harm.
That was all. Aaron slept quietly beside me; I lay and wept as quietly as I could, so as not to wake him. I wept for all his pain and suffering, and for the sheer joy of loving him.
We stayed at the farm for four nights, after which I was satisfied that Aaron's wounds were healing properly and that there was no longer any danger of infection. We packed up in the morning, and I handed him back the cloth bag containing his papers.
“You read them, then.”
“I did.”
There was an awkward moment of silence, as if we both knew too much and could not find the words in which to say how we felt.
“Aaron⦔
“Jack⦔
“No, you first.”
“No, I insist.”
“Did you really love me back in Vermont? When I was such a stupid little bastard?”
“I did.”
“And do you still believe that we have the chance of a life together?”
“It's the only thing that kept me alive in these last few weeks.”
“I see.”
“And you, Jack.” He looked sad. “You're young. You have a family, a future in Vermont. You must get back there, I understand. You don't want to be shackled to a man like me.”
I could think of nothing to say. Tears came to my eyes, and I tried to speak, but I was choking.
“It's all right,” Aaron said. “You don't have to explain. I'm just grateful for everything you've done for me. I'll never forget your kindness, Jack.”
“Oh shut up, you ass,” I said, bursting into sobs like a child. “Don't you know that I love you every bit as much as you love me? For Christ's sake, what do I have to do to prove it?”