Those men are in their old clothes, dirty now from days of wearing and traveling and drilling, but that ain’t what gets me thinking of Mama’s thick squares of soap, the foul mouth on that man worse than anything I ever tried saying, worse than anything Papa said when our cows busted through the fence and trampled Mr. Snyder’s corn. I stay close to Jeremiah as we walk between the rows of tents, wishing I could grab his hand, how maybe then I’d know something of his mind.
There’s a laugh I know and Jeremiah stops in front of the tent it’s coming from. He catches my eye before calling out, ‘Hello!’
I step from behind Jeremiah and there, gathered around a campfire, are Henry and Jimmy and tent-pole Sully between them.
‘What took you so long?’ Sully asks from where he sits on a wooden crate, his long skinny legs folded up like a grasshopper’s.
Those three look between each other. Henry snickers and digs his elbow into Sully’s ribs.
‘We thought you might need some time to work things out, but damn! That was a while!’ Henry says. Jimmy turns away, his face red enough to almost hide his freckles.
‘This is important,’ Jeremiah starts to say, but Sully ain’t paying him any mind. He has got his knife out, whittling away at a stick, keeping his hands busy. Henry looks at me, every part of me, and then Jimmy asks, ‘What did you say you’re calling yourself now?’
‘Ross Stone,’ I say, and Sully’s head snaps up then too.
‘Ross is staying here,’ Jeremiah says. ‘With us.’
‘For tonight?’ Jimmy asks, and the air goes still like when a herd of cows is about to do something stupid.
‘No. She’s—Ross is coming with us. With the Regiment,’ Jeremiah says.
Henry looks between us and takes off his cap, rubs his ginger hair, so greasy now from days of going unwashed that it almost looks brown. He slaps the cap back on. I can’t think of a time when these boys ain’t let me join in with them.
‘Have you lost your mind?’ Henry says. ‘This ain’t no place for a woman. You got to get your wife in hand—’
Jeremiah takes a step closer to Henry. ‘You keep your voice down.’
I stay where I am.
‘You mean just ’til we get orders,’ Henry says.
‘I’m enlisted,’ I say, and stare at Henry. ‘I ain’t going home.’
‘Rosetta—you hush for once!’ Jeremiah’s hiss almost knocks the wind out of me.
Sully says, ‘You ain’t kidding?’ and Jimmy keeps his head down, like his feet are something special to see.
‘Is that the most fool-headed plan you ever heard?’ Henry asks, looking at Sully and Jimmy.
‘Pretty much,’ Sully says.
‘Well, it ain’t my plan!’ Jeremiah yells. ‘But it’s what happened.’
‘You think you’re going to be a soldier?’ Henry turns on me.
‘Being a soldier don’t seem so tough,’ I say, straightening up. ‘I already marched with you and nobody thought a thing about it.’
‘Jeremiah—you agreed to this? It ain’t right!’ Henry says.
‘It look like I got another choice?’ Jeremiah says, throwing his hands up.
‘The other choice is you send her home!’ Henry says, like I ain’t even standing there.
‘I ain’t going. Captain Chalmers has got his wife with him,’ I say.
‘Maybe you ain’t noticed, but she’s wearing a dress!’ Henry practically shouts.
Jeremiah clears his throat, his face looking pained. ‘Ross is staying. If that don’t suit you, maybe you’d best find another tent.’
There is a long silence. The boys look at each other and then Jimmy shrugs, shaking a crick out of his back, and smiles at me and shoves his hands into his pockets. When Sully sees Jimmy’s smile, he throws the stick he’s been holding into the fire, making a spray of sparks.
‘I’ll find myself another tent,’ Sully says, and my stomach drops, thinking I am breaking the boys apart and that ain’t what I meant to do at all.
‘If that’s how you feel, I ain’t stopping you,’ Jeremiah says.
‘I sure as hell ain’t sharing a four-person tent with no newlyweds,’ Sully says low, and then he shoves himself off the crate and toward the aisle.
‘Damn it!’ Jeremiah shoves the crate that was Sully’s and then sinks down onto it without even offering me a place to sit. ‘Lord knows it’s madness,’ he mutters.
‘Madness don’t even begin to cover it.’ Henry shakes his head, looking straight ahead, past me.
I forgot to take any of them to mind, to think how Sully can’t hardly keep his mouth shut, and how Henry gets meaner every year since his Pa up and left, and how the three of them could get me sent home just as easy as Jeremiah can.
NEXT MORNING, I am up before the sun even starts creeping over the hills because I’ve got to be, because I barely slept the whole night for fretting. That and sleeping on the hard ground, Jeremiah’s back to me and the cold seeping through my blanket. Jeremiah is still breathing deep and slow next to me, but now his arm’s across my belly, his mouth curved into what almost looks like a smile, now that he is too sunk in sleep to remember to be mad. I can’t help myself, I turn to him and kiss his cheek.
‘Mmmmm,’ he says, not moving a bit.