Dear Rosetta,
The Farm misses you. There is work aplenty with Planting coming on but you know Isaac Lewis is hired to help do the work and he is a good worker and strong. The North field will be in wheat this year, and I think to plant potatoes in the rest. There’s 3 new calfs just this week, one spotted.
We first thought it a Relief to get word, but the news of Your letter goes Hard with Mama and Betsy and adds to our Worries. I see how you try to do Right, but they are feeling the Stain of it on their heads, Seeing how Most Everyone here has been talking of you being gone. We wish you had Spoken to us of those plans on your last visit.
Mama says for me to tell you to Keep the Money you earn for whatever kind of Future you Hope to have.
It is a hard thing, you being Gone this way.
We Pray for you,
Your Father, Charles Edwards
My hands are shaking before I get to the end. Papa don’t say it, but from the words he put on that page and the way Mama and Betsy ain’t added a thing to it in their own hand, I have shamed them. I shouldn’t have put what I’ve done before them; I shouldn’t have sent that tintype. Mama don’t want nothing to do with me, and Betsy ain’t said even a word of thanks about the ribbon I sent. It is a long time before I stand up and push my way out of our tent. Only the campfire is still there, dying down to embers, the boys all gone. I take big strides and thrust that letter in the coals and there is no one to stop me.
The letter curls its edges in the flames and goes black and fluttery. The breeze picks up some of the flakes, blowing them down the line to where a circle of boys play cards outside Edward Stiles’ tent. That must be where Jeremiah has got to.
No one notices when I walk up. Jeremiah stares at his cards, a pile of matchsticks in front of him. When he glances up at me, he wears a sly smile that tells me he is winning. It ain’t the time to try talking to him. I shrug and turn away, telling myself it is better he thinks I’ve got things of my own to do, that I don’t need attention all the time the way some girls do.
When Will sees me walking away, he calls out, ‘Ross! You’ve got to play! I’ve been wanting to win something off you!’ and the boys laugh.
I don’t turn back, making my way through camp instead, up our Company street, past the rows of shelter tents, where clusters of men gather, finding ways to pass the time ’til dinner. I ain’t ever thought I’d get to feeling lonely, but there’s all these men doing men things and no proper company for a woman. When women gather, they are always doing something of use, quilting to make the work go faster for each other, keeping company while they sew for kin, making long days nursing babies easier, passing gossip and family news. Here the men sing bawdy songs and play at cards and lose money their families need.
I find myself walking round to the other side of the parade ground, past Sergeant’s and the other Company officers’ tents, until I get to Captain’s big tent, set way off from the rest, where the stench of the latrines almost don’t reach. At his camp, there’s signs of a woman with too much time on her hands in the fresh-swept dooryard and the dripping washrags even-spaced on the line stretched between two young pines, the water leaving little dimples in the dirt below.
I’m turning to go, my feet ruining the broom’s crosshatching lines, when the tent flaps fly open and Mrs. Chalmers stoops to look through, holding a lantern up, even though it’s only getting on dusk now.
‘Oh! I thought I heard something out here! You startled me! Captain Chalmers isn’t here at the moment. Perhaps I can relay a message?’
‘I—I didn’t come to speak to Captain,’ I say.
‘You didn’t? Well, then what brings you?’ She hangs the lantern on the hook standing outside the tent.
Any made-up reason for coming flies clean out of my head. I ain’t even sure why I’ve come myself. I see how it’s got to be, but before I can turn to go, she ducks inside the tent and comes back with a basket and her arms full of flannel strips.
‘I was rolling bandages. Please. Sit.’ She points to the cleared folding table and chairs in front of the tent and sits down herself.
I look this way and that before saying, ‘Mrs. Chalmers, it ain’t prop—’
‘There isn’t a soul who pays what I do any mind,’ she says, holding a strip of oatmeal-colored flannel out to me. ‘And if anybody starts, well, there isn’t any harm in you helping me on a hospital project to aid our wounded soldiers, is there?’ She smiles at me, tucking a loose strand of auburn hair behind her ear before saying, ‘There, now that’s solved, what brings you here?’
‘I can’t—It ain’t right, you being a married woman, and me being a soldier. And Captain, I don’t want trouble with him.’