"My boys want to get started on that sawmill, sir," Tracy Houston, the diminutive captain of Company D, said, speaking from the other end of the table.
Houston was only nineteen, looking even younger thanks to a shock of unruly blond hair and a cloud of freckles that covered his face. But his features were a stark contradiction to a hardened officer who had won a commission in the field for gallantry during the Wilderness campaign.
"Start them tomorrow right after the ceremony with Ivor. You've got the site?"
"A good one, sir.
About a quarter mile east of the encampment.
There's a good head of water coming through a narrow gorge, so the dam won't take much work. My man Ferguson is a wonder—he's already laid out the site and figures he can have an overshot wheel with a fifteen-foot drop working inside of a month if the whole company pitches in on it. Privates Ivey and Olsen helped build a mill dam back in Vassalboro. The main problem is that we'll need a forge with some good iron to turn out a blade."
Andrew looked over at O'Donald. Every battery in the army had at least one blacksmith assigned to it who could handle the shoeing of the horses and repairs to the equipment.
"Dunlevy's the man," O'Donald stated. "Now if he could build that forge next to the dam and get some power off it for a bellows, why, you'll have the finest blade in this bloody country inside a month. We need a good smithy works here."
"Agreed, then.
I'll get
Ferguson to work on a gear system to give power to a forge and sawmill, but it'll mean a bigger wheel, most likely. I'll get one of the boys to figure out what's needed."
"What about power for a grain mill?" Fletcher, the plug-shaped commander of G Company, asked.
"Why's that?" Andrew asked.
"They don't have anything like it here," Fletcher replied. "These poor sods are still doing it by hand. Figure if we put up a grain mill, it'll be business for us, so we ain't relying so much on that boyar fellow for a handout. One of my boys already found a good quarry site, on the other side of the river, for mill stones. Figures he could carve out a good set in a couple of weeks."
Smiling, Andrew leaned back in his chair. He'd been worried about what to keep his men occupied with, but in the worrying he'd forgotten about their character. They were Mainers, and any man of sense knew that when it came to Yankee traders a Mainer could skin a man from
Massachusetts
or
Connecticut
coming and going.
Andrew looked over at
Ferguson.
"It's your site."
Houston
tugged at his thin scanty whiskers for a moment, eyeing Fletcher with suspicion.
"Give me the men of your company to help build our dam first—do that and we'll give you the first boards for yours, plus a couple of squads to help build your dam. You'll get wood as well—that is after the Methodist committee gets theirs for the church. Anyhow, that gorge could support half a dozen mills and dams at the very least."
"Will you throw in
Ferguson to help lay out the grain mill?"
"Hold on here," Andrew said chuckling. "What is this?"
"Just a little business dealing, that's all."
For a moment Andrew was ready to object. They were all the same regiment, but instantly he realized that if anything these ventures and the concept of company projects were just the tonic they needed.
"All right then, gentlemen.
Trading for labor between companies while on regiment time is all right, but only for approved projects for the good of the regiment.
If any profits are made selling services to the locals, half will go to the company which started and is running the affair to spend as they see fit, the rest goes to the regimental coffers."
The various commanders nodded their agreement.
"Speaking of ironworks ..." Mina, commander of E Company, began.
"Go on, then."
"Has anyone given a thought to where we are going to get iron for blades and horseshoes and other such things?"
"And I suppose you have the answer," Andrew replied.
"Just so happens I do," Mina said proudly. "Several of my boys worked the zinc mines up on the edge of the
White Mountains. I studied a bit of metallurgy myself at the state university. The boys and I have been wandering about, and we've found a likely site for some ore, about four miles farther up the mill stream. We'll need to cut a trail up there, but it could be producing a good supply of ore. All we'll need is a wheel powering a furnace and a kiln to bake the stuff down, and we'll be hauling iron out of there inside three months."
"And I suppose you'd like your company to get started on this."
"With the colonel's permission, of course."
"But of course," Andrew said, smiling. They'd need iron, and, heaven knew, an endless variety of other things as well.
"While we're at it, why not locate Dunlevy's foundry next to the kiln?" Mina said quickly. "We'll get a regular ironworking shop going, straight from the kiln and into a full-size works."
"A number of my boys would be happy to get into that," O'Donald interjected. "It'll keep 'em out of trouble. I think I can dig up some leatherworkers to turn out some good sets of bellows for the works."
Andrew sat back smiling and nodded his agreement, and the various officers started to talk excitedly among themselves.
"Anything else for right now?"
Andrew asked, extending his hand for silence. The officers who had not presented projects looked rather crestfallen, feeling as if their pride had been cut for not coming up with such obvious ventures. Andrew could see the competition was now on. And here he had been worried about morale. Within a week he could expect every company to be venturing into some activity or another.
"All right then, gentlemen.
A good evening to you then.
Don't let the party end on my account—it's just that I have a long day with Ivor tomorrow."
Standing, he left the table. Emil followed him with his gaze, knowing that most likely the real reason was the headache from Andrew's old wound. But if the man wouldn't come to him there was nothing he could do.
Stepping back out into the fresh evening air, Andrew took a deep breath, the light chill helping to clear his head a bit. The pain had set in earlier in the day, and as usual he had borne it in silence. There was no use complaining anyhow. It was just an old reminder, and absently he rubbed his temples as he walked down the company street. Taps would soon sound, and already the men were settling in for the evening.
The chill was refreshing, a reminder of home. Kal had said there was a winter here with snow, and that harvest time would be upon them in another month. Funny—back home another month would show spring in
Virginia
.
Perhaps the last spring for the war.
The war.
How was it going? Strange, something that had been a part of his every waking moment for nearly three years was now an infinite distance away. Gaining the parapet, he climbed up to an empty picket box and looked out over the river, which shimmered silver in the starlight. Overhead the Wheel, as the men had taken to calling the vast spiral above them, shone in all its glory, filling near the entire sky in a swirl of light.
"Think it's up there someplace?"
"Ah, Kathleen," Andrew said softly, extending his hand to help her up the wooden steps.
"A beautiful night, colonel."
"Please, just 'Andrew' is fine when we're alone."
"All right then, Andrew," she replied softly. "Tell me, do you think home is somewhere up there?" As she spoke she looked heavenward.
For a moment he looked at her with a sidelong glance. The starlight played across her features, giving her a soft radiant glow. He felt a tightening in his throat at the sight of her like this. For weeks he'd been so overwhelmed with business that the thought of her presence barely crossed his mind. This evening was the first time he'd truly noticed her again, and the memory of their first conversation had come back. And now she was alone beside him.
"Would you care to venture an opinion, Andrew?"
"I wish I could," Andrew replied awkwardly. "We had a telescope at the college. Dr. Vassar would invite me up on occasion and we'd look at the heavens. He believed the stars had worlds around them, perhaps the same as our own. But as to where home is ..." He trailed off into silence.
"Well, I'd like to think that somewhere up there is home," Kathleen replied, her voice almost a whisper. "Maybe that star right over there," and she pointed vaguely to one of the arms of the wheel.
"And perhaps Vassar is looking here right now," Andrew said softly. "Perhaps looking and wondering what is happening here."
Kathleen looked at him and smiled.
"What empires are being dreamed tonight, beyond the starry heavens?" Andrew whispered.
"A touch of the poet in you, colonel.
You surprise me—I thought you more the cold military type."
Andrew looked over at her and smiled, shrugging his shoulders in a self-deprecating manner.
"Just a line I once penned back in my student days."
Kathleen smiled softly and reached out to touch his arm.
"Would you escort me back to my cottage?"
"But of course," and leading the way, Andrew helped her down the steps.
As they started back up the avenue, the sound of taps echoed over the encampment, and the two stopped for a moment and listened.
"Such a sad sound," Kathleen whispered as the last note drifted away with the breeze.
"Why do you think that?"
"Just strange that the army should play it to lull the men to sleep, and when they bury them as well," she replied, as they continued on their way.
"Fitting, perhaps.
It always makes me think of
Gettysburg. I remember the night before the battle hearing it played for the first time, as we settled down to sleep. And then for weeks after, while I was in the hospital, I heard it played over and over as the boys who died were buried up on the hill outside town. But it's a comfort somehow. It speaks of rest at the end of day, and at the end of the strife, both for a day, and finally for a life."
"Such a melancholy turn to our conversation," Kathleen replied. "Or is it that our war has just marked you and me far too much, and haunts us with its presence?"
"But maybe it isn't our war anymore."
"You mean you think we'll never get back home."
Andrew looked over at her and smiled his thin sad smile.
"Would that upset you so much, Miss Kathleen O'Reilly?"
"No, I don't think it would," she said evenly. "After all, my fiance is gone."
Andrew looked over at her.
"We were engaged shortly before the war. He left for the army in '61, a three-month enlistment," she said softly. "He promised to be back, saying the war would be over before the summer was out and then we'd be married."
"And he never came back," Andrew whispered.
Kathleen nodded and turned away.
Andrew reached out his hand, resting it lightly on her shoulder.
"Oh, I'm all right," she said, looking back and forcing a smile.
"And is that why you became a nurse, because of him?"
"I had to do something, and it seemed somehow fitting. Funny, I often wondered what I'd do when the fighting stopped, for it was a way of losing
myself
. Now maybe I'll never have to face that question. Perhaps this fate of ours has decided it for me."
Andrew could not help but smile. So she was more like him than he'd thought. The war, which in its horror repulsed him, had at the same time woven a spell about him. A grand undertaking of which he was a part had come at last to sweep him into its tide and carry him away. Try as he could, he had not been able to imagine returning to Bowdoin after the war, to a life as nothing more than a professor of history in a small college town. He had felt the strange grandeur of becoming lost in a vast undertaking, a knowing that he was a part of something beyond himself.
Could she understand that?
he
wondered.
Reaching the town square, he walked with her to the door of her cabin.
"I lost myself in it, Andrew, and I learned as well that never again would I ever risk the pain of seeing yet another love walk out the door with a promise of return. I've learned that at least," she said, a sad gentle smile lighting her features.
She turned away from him and opened the door. To his own surprise he reached out and took her hand so that she turned back to face him.
"Kathleen, I understand all of that. Perhaps someday I'll tell you of my reasons, my fear, as well. But for right now I would enjoy the honor of your allowing me to escort you into the city tomorrow." His voice tightened up with nervousness.
The slightest of smiles crossed her features.