‘How’d you know?’
‘I don’t know, little things. I had a hunch about something the day I met you on the road. And then the way you rolled bandages, so nice and neat. That’s what made me stop and take notice. Your voice. And then you almost fainted when you caught sight of the hospital.’
‘Captain—does he know?’
‘I can’t tell you how many times I’ve laughed at my husband when he can’t find his belt, even if I tell him it’s hanging on the hook in his wardrobe. Or if he’s looking for his knife and it’s right before him, sitting on the table.’
I ain’t had much occasion to see Jeremiah do things like that, but I remember how my Mama could always find the missing bit-brace in the lean-to or the dropped gate hinge, even after Papa swore he’d looked everywhere.
‘He doesn’t know, that’s what I mean to say. But I wonder—will you consider coming to the hospital with me again?’ Mrs. Chalmers asks.
The feeling comes up in her eyes and maybe there’s things about us that ain’t so different, so I say, ‘You asking or is Captain ordering?’
‘I’m asking,’ she says, her voice small.
‘I can’t be talking to you again. It ain’t safe and I don’t want no more trouble with Captain, so unless he’s ordering it—’
‘I understand,’ she says, but I wonder how she can. ‘I won’t ask it of you again.’
We part ways near the tents, but first she takes my arm and says, ‘My name’s Jennie. And thank you.’
Only when she has left does the relief come, and when it’s gone I feel how tired my whole body is.
I AM PAST ready to drop by the time I lay myself down under our tent, but Jeremiah and me ain’t had time for talking yet and he wants it. He wraps his arms, his whole arms, around me. When a shiver goes up my spine, his arms tighten.
‘Rabbits running over my grave,’ I say.
His lips find my neck and plant tiny kisses there, telling me what he has in his mind. I can’t help it though and sink toward sleep like a bucket down the well. But what I see there in the dark makes me want to draw back, and Jeremiah’s kisses are the rope pulling me up.
‘You okay?’ he asks, his finger tracing my jaw.
‘I’m fine.’
‘You’re real quiet.’
‘Mrs. Chalmers knows what I am,’ I whisper.
Jeremiah starts. ‘What?’
‘She guessed it. And now she knows.’
‘How does she know?’ Jeremiah asks, and even if I can’t see it, I can feel him looking at me.
‘Because I got sick, seeing that hospital, seeing—She just knew, and I couldn’t lie,’ I say in a small voice.
‘You told her?’
‘No, not in so many words. She already knew!’
‘We’ve got to be more careful. You can’t go around—’
‘I know.’ My voice cracks.
Jeremiah props himself up on his elbow and looks down on me. ‘Was it bad, at that hospital?’
‘That hospital makes Doc Cuck look gentle,’ is all I can bring myself to say, when any one of those boys in that hospital could be Jeremiah, or me, how maybe Joseph is already gone, never seeing his Mama again. I think about if I will ever see my folks back home again in this world, if my Mama would come if I sent her a letter like the one Joseph sent. I hope that what Thomas Stakely says is true, that all the Union needs is one good win and this war will be over.
CHAPTER
15
FORT CORCORAN, VIRGINIA: LATE APRIL 1862
This ain’t what I signed on for, sitting here watching them Rebs, letting them get ready and we just wait! When’s McClellan going to move on Yorktown? He ain’t hardly even bombarded those Seceshes! We should be chasing those fools back to South Carolina! Or at least to Richmond!’ Sully says, getting all worked up for his morning sermonizing about McClellan this or Rebs that, his spindly arms flapping about while we finish our breakfast and drink what passes for coffee in this Army. If he’s the one coming off picket, he’s even worse.
‘Seems to me the farther away you get from those Rebs, the more you talk about killing them,’ I say. ‘You talk this big sitting out on the line in the dark? How many shots you fire last night?’
The rest of the boys, Jeremiah, Jimmy, and Will, laugh, and that shuts Sully up for a quick moment. Then he sends me a look fit to kill a hog and says before making off for his tent, ‘You got the heart of a woman and no stomach for war, so your words don’t mean one thing.’
‘He ain’t lying,’ I say. ‘I like getting paid and not getting killed and still doing right by the Union.’
We sit like that for a spell, watching Jimmy rake his fingers through his ginger hair sticking up like a mad porcupine. When he’s got it looking almost presentable, he asks what we’ve all been starting to wonder.
‘Where do you think Henry got to?’
‘You know Henry,’ Jeremiah says. ‘He’s got his own time for things.’