‘I ain’t any different,’ I say. ‘And it’ll grow back.’
And then his fingers are in what’s left of my hair and he kisses me again, gently. ‘You ain’t got it right,’ he says. ‘Only ladies wear a part down the middle.’
His hands, all shaking, go from my hair to the strap holding my canteen across my chest. ‘And you can’t sling your canteen like that,’ he says.
‘You are plumb full of advice,’ I say, tugging at the leather while he stares at where it cuts across my chest. ‘Does this mean you’re letting me stay?’
‘Rosetta,’ he says, looking and swallowing hard.
‘Ross,’ I say.
‘Always Rosetta to me. I can’t not touch you.’
‘We’ll be secret,’ I tell him. ‘You call me Ross, and when we’re secret you can say Rosetta. But now we’ve got to practice.’
And then his eyes go hungry and he says, ‘Practice what?’ And then his hands, they shake still, but he takes the canteen over my head and then he kisses me while his fingers work at the buttons of my coat and then my shirt and I do the same to his. When he has got to the binding around my chest, he stops.
‘What—’
‘It’s to hide—’ I start, but then he unwinds it, unwrapping like he’s turning a wheel and I am the hub.
He sits back to look at me, catching my left hand, pressing it to his mouth and I know what at least one part of him is thinking.
I shiver in the cold and try to draw my hand away before Jeremiah can see the bruises and scratches marking my wrist. He holds tight and a fluttering feeling rises in my chest and all I want is for him to drop my hand.
‘Let go,’ I say. ‘That hurts.’
‘What’s wrong?’ he asks, his blue eyes darkening as they go to my wrist. ‘What’s this?’
‘It’s nothing.’
‘It ain’t nothing,’ he says, looking me full in the face.
‘I got lonesome. And I thought I’d go see my Mama and Papa and Betsy.’
Jeremiah’s eyebrows knit together, making two creases above his nose. ‘And?’ he says.
‘And I didn’t get there.’
‘You didn’t get there?’ he repeats, and stares at me.
‘Eli stopped me.’ The words come fast. ‘But I punched him and he was done with me.’
‘Eli did this?’ Jeremiah’s voice climbs.
I look down, the shame of it coming over me as I nod.
‘That white-livered son of a bitch! He touched you?’ Jeremiah jumps up, standing over me.
‘He just grabbed me and shoved me. It wasn’t nothing I couldn’t handle,’ I say.
‘I promised to protect you,’ he says, sinking back down on the log.
‘You weren’t there!’ I turn away, dragging my shirt up from the ground where Jeremiah dropped it.
‘Is that why you came all this way?’ Jeremiah asks, his voice pulled like harness traces.
‘I ain’t going back there, not without you,’ I say.
Jeremiah is quiet a long time, looking down, his hands opening and closing in his lap. The cold breeze moves through the trees, moves between us, and I don’t know what he is thinking.
‘I wanted something to make it back for,’ he says.
That does it then. The feelings coming over me are all mixed up. It is maybe the best thing anyone has ever said to me, but I ain’t thought about us not making it back, not really, not if we’re together.
‘There’s other things to make it back for! We’ve still got our farm. We’ve still got a family to raise. With me making the same pay, we can get all that sooner.’
‘It’s a three years’ enlistment, Rosetta. It wouldn’t matter if we got the money now, there ain’t nowhere to go but with the Army.’
‘Then we’ll go where the Army does. Everybody says this war’ll be over soon.’
Jeremiah shakes his head, pushing furrows in the mud with his toe.
‘I never want to see you hurt,’ he says, and stands. ‘We’ve got to get back.’
CHAPTER
9
UTICA, NEW YORK: FEBRUARY 1862
I don’t know at first what Jeremiah means to do. We walk through the melting snow and mud, through a small village of men. Most of them look to come off farms like we’ve done, but as we pass one of the tents, that wiry-looking man says, ‘That fucking mill don’t pay damn near enough for the three of us. ’Specially not if that shit work is going to kill me.’
The Black Eye man answers him, ‘Don’t I damn well know it! That mill took my brother’s arm and I can’t hardly keep us fed on what it pays.’
‘Canal work ain’t no good either. I about break my back doing it and couldn’t even pay for a pine box to bury my wife in,’ says the serious-faced man who was marching near me.