“I thought you’d said it was just the commander coming.”
Polk shook her head. “The Blues are moving east from the Texas oil fields,” she said. “Our boys are going out to meet them. They say if they move fast enough they can keep them from getting any further into Louisiana.”
Martina looked around her for someone who fit the description of a field commander. “Is he here?” she asked.
“Yes, honey. But he’s busy. He won’t talk to no one but his men.”
“Point him out to me.”
“Just wait a while,” Polk pleaded. “Won’t do no good to try talking to him now.”
“Show me where he is.”
Reluctantly, Polk guided Martina to a man at the table in the garden. He was tall and skinny, perhaps five or six years younger than Martina. He wore a neatly trimmed beard that narrowed down to the upper tip of his sternum like an arrowhead. He was dressed in black, from his boots to his military cap. Around him, many of the fighters seemed to hover in elongated orbits, rushing to various parts of the temporary encampment to fulfill his orders before returning to be given a new assignment. He spoke softly enough that, until she was standing directly opposite him at the map table, Martina could not make out a word he said.
When he saw her, the field commander said nothing. He looked over at Polk.
“This is my neighbor I told you about,” Polk said. “The one whose husband was martyred.”
“He wasn’t martyred,” the man said. “He died.”
The field commander was silent once again. The men around him seemed to regard Martina with hostility, but in his eyes there was only stillness.
“I understand you keep a house near Vicksburg for the martyrs’ widows,” Martina said. “A safe place for the women and the children.”
The field commander did not respond.
“I have two little girls and a son, just babies the three of them,” Martina continued. “Their father’s dead and we got no means to support ourselves.” She turned to Polk. “Ms. Polk here’s our only neighbor, and her generosity’s kept us from starving, but she’s leaving now. All I ask is you let us go with her to Vicksburg, where no harm will come to my children. I don’t ask anything more.”
“Can’t be done,” the field commander responded.
“Why not? We can be packed in an hour. We can go right now, just the clothes on our back.”
“We keep a home for the kin of martyrs,” the field commander said. “Unless you got some other man died fighting for the cause, that ain’t you.”
He turned back to the maps on the table, and quickly around him the fighters resumed their orbit.
“C’mon honey,” Polk said, taking Martina by the arm. “Let’s leave them be for now. We’ll sort something out, I know we can.”
Martina pushed Polk’s hand away.
“Your men killed my husband,” she said to the field commander. “Your men killed one of their own and they have a responsibility to do right by his family.”
The field commander walked around the table and over to where Martina stood. Up close she could see he had beautiful green eyes. No movement in them, but beautiful.
“My men kill Northerners and traitors,” he said. “Which of those is your husband?”
Polk tugged at the field commander’s shirt sleeve, pleading with him to come talk to her alone inside the trailer. The two walked to the home, leaving Martina standing amidst the fighters, many of whom had stopped what they were doing to watch.
“You got some balls talking to him that way,” one of them said. “I’ve seen him shoot men for saying less.”
“I don’t care what you’ve seen,” Martina replied.
In a while the field commander and Polk emerged from the trailer. The man approached Martina.
“Tomorrow at dawn there’s a bus coming up the road along the east bank. It’s headed to Mississippi, up to Camp Patience. Because this lady here vouched for you and because of what her men gave to the cause, I’ll send word that if you and your children are there tomorrow, they’re to make room for you.”
“You’re telling me to take my kids to a refugee camp?”
“I’m telling you to do what suits you.”
The field commander turned back to the maps on the table. “Go on now,” he said. “Nothing more for you here.”
Martina looked around her at the assembled soldiers.
“Not one of you man enough to speak up? None of you got mothers, none of you got kids?”
The men continued to watch her, some of them cold, others snickering. None spoke.
Martina left them where they stood and marched back the way she came. At the edge of the sorghum field Polk caught up to her.
“Oh, honey, I’m sorry,” she said. “I did the best I could.”
“So we’re not Northerners because we’re from the South, and we’re not Southerners because we tried to move north,” Martina said. “Tell me what we are, then. Tell me what we are.”
Polk gave a piece of paper to Martina. On it was scribbled the time and location where the bus would be the following morning. “It’s not so bad at the camp, Martina,” she said. “They got good food—food straight from the aid ships, and free too. And they got places for the children to play. You’ll be safe there.”
“We’ll be cattle there.”
Polk pointed west. “Honey, it’s for the good of your children. They say the fighting’s closer to us now than ever before, and moving further east every day. The traitors in the Louisiana guard are letting the Blues march right onto our land, and they don’t care who they kill. In Patience you’ll be among your own. Your children will be safe, Martina. What else matters but that?”
Martina looked into the small steady eyes of her neighbor. “I’m staying in my home,” she said. “I’m going to claim my husband’s body and I’m going to bury him on his land and I’m going to stay in my home and if the war comes to my door then let it. I’m done waiting on the good favor of little boys with guns.”
“I did the best I could,” Polk said. “But you shouldn’t have said what you did about his people killing one of their own. They’re very sensitive to that.”
WHEN SHE RETURNED HOME Martina found Sarat buried up to her neck in mud by the riverbank. The girl squealed with delight as her brother piled on handfuls of the brown sludge. Dana sat on a nearby stump, watching with vague disapproval.
When he saw his mother Simon sprung to his feet. “She asked me to,” he said.
“Dig her out and get cleaned up,” Martina said. “And then go to bed.”
“Mama, Simon called you a liar,” Dana said.
“I did not,” Simon replied. He threw a scoop of mud in Dana’s direction.
“I won’t tell you again,” Martina said.
The children marched up the embankment. Sarat skipped ahead of them, slick with mud, the brackish scent of the earth latched on to her skin. She undressed as she walked, dispatching her overalls in the dirt path behind her, and stepped into the shower. Of the three children, she had the darkest skin; Dana and Simon had inherited the brown of their father, Sarat the black of her mother.
Martina brought a change of clothes for her daughter and left them on an upturned water bucket by the stall. Soon the children had all washed and changed. One by one they kissed their mother and retreated into the house.
Martina sat alone on the hickory chair. She ate the sandwich crusts the children had left behind, and the last wet remnants of the canned meat. Still hungry, she stepped quietly into the house and took from the refrigerator a packet of apricot-flavored gel. It was an orange-colored paste of gelatinous texture. It came in a plain silver packet and had once been part of a military ration kit. In the South such kits, sold or discarded or given away, inevitably found their way to the gray market, where they were ripped open and their parts sold off individually. It was highly prized food, not for its taste but because of its utility, the energy it provided.