‘Covering for me?’ I snort. ‘Aside from maybe Jimmy, ain’t none of you covered for me even once! Calling me ma’am and womanish and singling me out for cooking and shooting. Covering for me—’ I spit the words and Jeremiah almost looks sorry. ‘It’ll be easier when there’s more people. Ain’t no one going to notice me.’
‘Maybe you could be like Mrs. Chalmers. You could be a laundress or a nurse—’ he says, but he don’t look at me.
‘How can I do that now? How can I go from being a soldier to all of a sudden being your wife in a dress? You think Hiram would leave me alone then?’
He sighs before saying, ‘I heard how some Companies got a Daughter of the Regiment staying back at the fighting carrying the flag.’
‘Seems like carrying a flag ain’t a way to stay safe. This Daughter of the Regiment gets the same pay? Or laundresses? You think they get paid the same?’
‘That I don’t know.’
‘Well, I ain’t interested if I don’t get paid. You forgetting about our farm? You even still want that farm with me?’ He flinches when I say it. ‘Well then, it don’t matter where I’m at, in the front or at the back, long as the pay’s the same and that’s that!’
‘I could turn you in.’ He says it so slow, looking right at me, like it pains him to say the thing.
‘You wouldn’t,’ I say, lifting my chin.
‘I might. If it keeps you from being in harm’s way.’
‘You can’t be rid of me that easy.’
‘It ain’t you I want to be rid of! It’s just—’
That is all I need, to hear that he ain’t changed toward me, and I reach out for his hand. ‘Can’t you find a way to still be husband to me sometimes? Ain’t this time here, this being together, ain’t that better than the nothing we’d have if I’d stayed home?’
He looks at me. And then he pulls me to his chest, his stubble catching at my hair as he says, ‘I’m always husband to you. But—’
I don’t let him finish. I kiss him full on the mouth.
‘You just keep thinking that then,’ I say, and turn on my heel in the slippery mud.
WHEN CAPTAIN FINALLY gets around to making us look like soldiers, Jeremiah takes a moment from admiring his own outfit to grab my elbow and say, ‘Don’t be getting ideas, Rosetta. It’s just until there’s orders,’ like we ain’t even had that talk out in the woods.
I don’t let it make me sour, though. What gets me is how I thought it’d feel right nice to put on that blue coat, but the Army seems to have forgotten to notice the shape of any of us. My trousers are the most ridiculous articles I ever did put on. They hide my shoes if I don’t roll them, and the brogans are the most crooked things besides, but there ain’t no help for it.
Jeremiah fiddles with his coat. His uniform fits him true, and I want to grab his hands and stop them before he finishes with the buttons. He’s never looked so much like something, not even on our wedding day, and his grin has a pride to it I ain’t ever seen. There ain’t none of that confidence coming over me, wearing these clothes. Only maybe I ain’t got to be so careful now. Maybe these clothes will cover me better than the ones from home.
Jeremiah pushes his way out of the tent and I follow, my cuffs already coming unrolled and dragging in the mud. The whole Company is outside, strutting and posing in the sunny aisle, roosters with new feathers. Even Will looks like he is standing a touch taller in front of his tent, watching everyone else preening. Only Ambrose sits on his crate, always looking like he is grieved.
Sully tells everyone, ‘Getting uniforms must mean we’re getting our orders to the Capital any day now!’
‘You got that on authority?’ I ask.
‘Well, no,’ he says, some of the shine going out of him.
‘You are about the worst gossip I ever met,’ I say. ‘Worse than any woman!’
That sets Sully to sputtering and the rest of the boys to laughing. Still, it don’t take but a minute before they are back to fancying themselves.
I ask Jimmy, ‘How long are your coat sleeves?’
He shrugs out of his coat and even though they say they are the same size, when we lay our coats next to each other, it turns out the sleeves on his come down at least an inch farther.
‘You want to switch?’ Jimmy asks.
Henry watches us, shaking his head, and it is a wonder how one O’Malley got to be so nice and the other so mean.
‘No,’ I say. ‘You’ve got longer arms. Wouldn’t make sense, us switching.’
Even if they don’t fit good, all of us look dashing in our blue coats. I leave one button undone like the officers do and stand up tall and make my face serious. I put my hand in my coat the way Captain does sometimes and that brings to mind that sign back in Herkimer.
‘We’ve got to have our likeness taken,’ I say, thinking on finding a ribbon in town to send Betsy too. I almost fall over when Jeremiah and Sully and Will agree without me even trying. It takes more work to bring the O’Malleys around, but the next day being Sunday it’s no trick at all to get Sergeant’s permission to leave camp and go the few miles to Utica to find us a photo man.
UNION
NEAR WASHINGTON, D.C.:
MARCH-JUNE 1862
‘Entreat me not to leave thee, or to
return from following after thee.’
—Ruth 1:16
CHAPTER
12