I Shall Be Near to You (22 page)

Just like that we are back on the march as the crow flies, scrambling through chokecherry and brambles to get to the Gap, no time for proper roads. Every step is its own battle and every time I lose footing, it jolts my knapsack and makes its straps dig into my shoulders. Jeremiah looks back at me each rail fence we have to climb, and sometimes he starts to reach a hand out to help me across. I get to wishing I could take it, but even just the offering of it pulls me along.

Sully marches in front of us and sees how we ain’t keeping up as we should.

‘Keep coming!’ he says. ‘We’ve got to beat those Rebels. Get to that Gap.’

We finally halt where a creek trickles through the trees. Captain don’t have orders for us, not even dressing right and stacking arms. ‘All right, boys. Fill your canteens and get what rest you can. We won’t stop here long.’

I sink to the ground with the others, tiredness going through me like a taproot, sinking deeper and deeper. We ain’t even settled when Sergeant comes round and takes a few boys out for picket duty. Sully gets to squirming that he ain’t one chosen.

Jeremiah turns to me, saying, ‘Give me your canteen. I’ll go fill it and you rest.’

Before, I might’ve made a fuss, but this is a thing Jeremiah can do, a way he can be husband to me, even here, and so I take my canteen over my head and give it to him. Sully gets himself up off the ground and takes Will’s and the O’Malleys’ canteens off them. Jeremiah goes to ask Thomas and Ambrose. Ambrose holds up his flask, says, ‘I’ve got fluid enough.’ Then Jeremiah and Sully go together, taking all our canteens along.

Will sits, digging through his pack, tossing out his rubber blanket, extra rounds of ammunition, his half of a shelter tent. Finally he pulls out his Bible, a daguerreotype tucked inside for safekeeping.

‘I never thought I’d come to this,’ he says, looking close at the brown leather binding, and then setting it down on the grass, like a mama putting a baby down to nap.

‘Come to what?’ I ask.

‘I can’t carry it all anymore,’ he says. ‘My pack. It weighs too dang much.’

It’s the closest Will’s ever come to swearing, and I’m surprised he even says what he does with his Bible there to witness. I think of the mucket he gave me, but I ain’t so tired yet to leave it by the roadside. Will slips the daguerreotype out and carefully slides it into his chest pocket, but not before I see it’s of a man and woman.

‘That your Mama and Pa?’ I ask.

‘It is,’ he says.

‘Close to your heart, that’s a better place for them anyway. And you got lots of verses by heart, don’t you?’

Will nods but his face crumples, so I say, ‘Then you’re already carrying what you need. You could bury it under a tree or something and when we come on back you can find it. I’ve got some flannel you can wrap it up nice in. Keep it clean.’

I hand him one of the rags I pinched from Jennie, thinking how lucky it is I ain’t needed it before now. He takes the flannel from me, his hand brushing mine. ‘Thank you. That’ll do real nice.’

We both know it ain’t no use coming back for that Bible but it makes him feel better, wrapping that book like a gift.

‘You want help digging a hole for it?’ I ask, even though sitting feels good.

‘That’d be nice,’ Will says as he gets up. I follow him away from the resting boys, down toward the creek. I think we might run into Jeremiah and Sully coming back with our canteens, but Will veers off once we are in the trees. Before long he drops to his knees under a dogwood.

‘This is a good spot,’ he says.

Using our bayonets, we scratch out a shallow grave, Will all the time checking over his shoulder like he is nervous Rebels might find us. Finally he lays the Bible inside the hole, placing it just so before standing up.

‘I’d like to get some stones for a marker,’ he says, putting a hand on my shoulder. ‘If you don’t mind.’

I shrug out from under his hand. ‘I’m happy to.’

We make our way to the creek, and while Will is picking out a few round rocks, I look up and downstream for Jeremiah. There is no one.

Back at the hole, Will scatters handfuls of dirt over the Bible before placing the first rock. Right as I am squatting down to add my rock to the mound, Will stops my hand.

‘Thank you for this,’ he says, still holding on to me. ‘And for your friendship.’

‘It ain’t nothing,’ I say, drawing back.

He don’t let go.

‘Ross—I don’t know how—’ he says. ‘I’ve been fighting with my—There’s something I want, something I’ve been wanting to ask—’ He leans closer, his hand still on mine, and that is when I see what he is about.

I yank my hand away and scramble to my feet. He jumps up too.

‘What are you doing?’ I yell, but I ain’t the same kind of scared like when Eli came at me.

‘I didn’t mean—You’ve been so kind—I thought—’

‘Don’t you tell a soul!’ I say. ‘I ain’t leaving this Army on account of nobody.’

‘Ross—I wasn’t—’

‘You say one word to Captain and you’ll have Jeremiah to answer to. He ain’t my cousin,’ I say.

‘Jeremiah? Your cousin? I saw the two of you, at the river—’

‘He’s my husband, so you just get those thoughts out of your head,’ I say. ‘And if you think he’s just going to let you—’

‘Your husband? What are you—’ Will gapes at me. ‘I thought—’

And then I don’t know what Will is about. ‘What did you think?’ I ask.

Will stands there, his mouth open, studying me like he ain’t ever really seen me before.

Real slow he says, ‘All this time, I thought you were—You aren’t a man? You’ve been lying.’

‘It ain’t a lie,’ I say. ‘This is who I am. There ain’t a thing different about me.’

‘You’re not a man! That’s a real big thing, from my way of looking. Knowing, it changes—I shouldn’t be here with you. This is unseemly,’ he says, and walks away.

‘I ain’t no different. It don’t have to change a thing—’ I’m saying when suddenly I am back home, seeing Horace Greaves mourning at Albert Nofrey’s grave. I think on the two of them living on that farm together all those years, old bachelors ’til the last, and how after Albert died it wasn’t long before Horace was buried right beside him. I clap my hand over my mouth and let Will stomp off through the trees.

I
CAN
’
T QUIT
worrying over Will. I can’t even look at him. Not once I am back along the road, resting with Jeremiah. Not when Sergeant gets our lines moving again. Not an hour later when we stop at a white clapboard
church. I can’t think what to even tell Jeremiah, not after he was right about Will taking an interest in me. I keep seeing Will leaning toward me and the surprise on his face when I told him Jeremiah was my husband, when he said I’d been lying. I keep thinking of all the nice things he’s ever done for me and seeing each of them different, how Sully called him out for being sweet on me.

But Sergeant is before us saying, ‘Men, we’ll leave our knapsacks here. You can trust we will return to get them once we beat back those Rebels.’

Those words get me thinking on worse things than Will or being found out. I shrug free from my pack, thinking how my load is heavier now than it ever was, and Will lightened his load too soon.

W
E HIDE AMONG
the craggy mountains, slabs of rock thrown every which way, a scattering of gray-green pitch pines looking like the lace edging of Mama’s church-best petticoat against the blue of the sky, land that ain’t good for a thing except getting through it. Beyond we can see the skinny Gap, barely wide enough for the train tracks and the turnpike.

On either side of us, the slope rises steep and if those Confederates are up on the mountainsides we ain’t got a chance of getting them out.

Will quotes Scripture from where he marches with Thomas, saying, ‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me …’

I pull my rifle to the front, my hands wrapped tight around the stock, telling myself I ain’t afraid of battle, feeling how there ain’t no Rebel bullet meant for me yet. Behind us, the artillery Brigade sets those cannons to work before the horses have even been moved away.

‘Been thinking,’ Jeremiah says, leaning over to me.

‘Uh-oh,’ I tease.

‘Stop it,’ he says, but he smiles, even here he is smiling. ‘A man can think sometimes, can’t he?’

‘Oh, I suppose he can any time he wants,’ I say, and wonder if I should say a thing to him about Will.

He starts again all quiet. ‘When we get out of this war we ought to get ourselves a place with a piece of nice woods like this.’

‘Woods? What do we need to be hiding from on our own place? After this war is done I don’t ever want to hide again.’

‘Not for hiding.’ He chuckles. ‘Well, maybe for hiding. For when you get your dander up. Or for when we want to be alone, away from the children.’

Just for a moment I see myself holding Jeremiah’s baby, laying that child in a crib Jeremiah made, like our papas before him.

‘You’ve been aiming to have a farm that don’t got any trees? Or you just like the looks of these rocks now that you’re standing on them?’ I look around, making sure no one’s listening. Only Will is close enough and it don’t matter what he hears now.

‘No,’ he goes on, ‘but they’re nice for admiring.’

‘You mean I married a man ain’t never thought on having a woodlot on his farm before now? And now that he does think on it, he only wants trees for admiring instead of building and burning? You want some boulders for admiring too?’

‘Just woods.’ Jeremiah says. ‘No rocks. They ain’t good for much besides fireplaces. Trees, now they’re good for lots of things. Hiding …’ he says, but he don’t finish because we finally catch sight of what we’ve been waiting for. Coming down the slope of the mountain to the East, there’s flashes of gray through the trees, quick enough I almost ain’t sure what I’m seeing, but the buzz going through the boys is answer enough.

Down the line from us, Hiram yells, ‘Secesh sons of bitches! Goddamned traitors!’

I wonder what is going through Hiram’s mind, drawing the Rebs’ attention and maybe their fire, but then he yells real loud, ‘Suck my ass, skunk eaters!’ and sets us all to laughing.

The laughter don’t last, though. We watch those Confederates move down from the mountain until they are as close as a privy to the house—close enough to see, but not to smell. In the splashes of the last light through the trees, their rifles look the same as ours. They look nothing like what I
expected of plantation owners’ sons and slaveholders and such, not a one of them wearing a matching uniform. They look like any farmer from home and except for the gray they’re wearing it is almost like we are coming out of the trees to kill ourselves, coming for our hill, flanking our own rifles.

Jeremiah shakes his arm. ‘Rosetta, let go! We’ve got orders!’

He fires, the roar loud and fast, and he don’t look at me once after that, too busy watching the Rebels running for cover behind trees or moving back away from our skirmish line, loading his rifle without needing to look at what he’s doing. He aims his rifle again and when the crack of his firing sounds, I don’t even aim, I just close my eyes and pull my trigger and try not to think where those bullets go.

I
T IS FULL
dark when the gunfire dies down. Sergeant musters our Company back together.

‘Boys,’ he says, ‘we’re falling back to Haymarket—’

There are a few cheers, and I can’t help looking back at Will. He keeps his head down.

‘—and then we’ll be joining the rest of the Army at Manassas. There’s more fighting to be had tomorrow.’

‘We’ve been sent on a fool’s errand,’ Edward says low. ‘Should’ve saved our energies.’

‘All we do is fucking retreat when the damn Rebels come! I didn’t sign on for goddamned running,’ Hiram says.

‘Those Rebels were running for cover,’ Sully says, ‘running from shots I was making!’ and it gets me thinking about Will running away from me back in the woods and what all he was taking cover from.

‘Our duty is doing what we’re told,’ Thomas says, shaking his head and making all the boys go quiet. ‘Even if we’re too late to do a thing worthwhile.’

CHAPTER
21

BULL RUN: AUGUST 29, 1862

All night, marching back the way we’ve come, the picture of Preacher posting the casualty list that brought this war right to us keeps playing in my head. He stood there next to the church door, silent and somber, waiting as Mrs. Waite hefted herself up the steps, her round belly bulging beneath her dress, Alice Wakefield holding her arm. And then, after what seemed forever, Mrs. Waite just dropped to the ground, too heavy for Alice to catch her, too fast for Preacher to grab her arm. Papa and Jeremiah’s Pa carried her inside, the churchladies hovering and fanning, but I went to that list, read where it said
Killed at Bull Run, July 21, 1861, Clarence Waite
, killed at the same field we are marching for.

I
N THE BLUSH
of morning, the road before us teems with Union troops massing, a tangle of lines marching and horses galloping and flags waving
and thousands of men. In the light, Jeremiah’s hands are black from shooting, and Jimmy’s face too. The only boy who ain’t got smears of sooty gunpowder all over him is Will, though he looks almost as tired as Thomas Stakely, who is more than twice his age. It must be fear of battle that made him forget himself under that dogwood.

There is a seriousness to all our boys, and the men we pass on the road look even worse. One man sits on the grass, his head on his knees, his shoulders shaking. The man beside him stares off at nothing.

Another soldier, his face black, his jacket sleeve stained with what looks like blood, stands at the edge of the turnpike. As we come to him, he says, ‘Charles Combs? Have you seen Charles Combs?’ His voice is dull like he’s been asking so long he don’t even know he’s still at it. Off behind him, a Company rallies around their flag. We march past officers yelling out orders from all over that field: ‘Forward, March!’ and ‘Left Flank!’ and bugles calling and I don’t know how anybody can keep straight which ones to listen to or where they are meant to go.