‘What about Galloway?’
‘Like I said, might’ve done.’ Hiram glares up at me.
‘Ain’t you checking for names?’ Jeremiah asks.
‘It’s Pennsylvania men in here. Knowing beyond that is officer’s work, you ask me,’ Hiram says. ‘But if the two of you got such a keen interest, I’d be happy to give up this shovel. Edward too, I bet.’
I am halfway to grabbing it from Hiram when Jeremiah puts his hand on me.
‘Let’s get back to work,’ he says, and with his hand pinching my shoulder he steers me back out to the field, back to where we found Emma. I crouch at the first body I find, and as I unbutton that soldier’s coat, Jeremiah gives my arm a squeeze before moving off a few paces.
This soldier don’t have a scrap of paper pinned inside. But neither one of the names Emma gave might mean a thing to finding her kin. Maybe when I get clear of this Army I will find some way to get word of Emma back to her people, but I don’t know how and anyway that ain’t enough. Without the letter in my breast pocket, anyone reading the name Ross Stone stitched in my coat wouldn’t have a way to tie me to Jeremiah Wakefield.
My hands hover over the buttons of that soldier’s coat. Emma’s blood is drying into the cracks of my skin and my mind won’t ever be easy or let me get a moment of peace again. I don’t know how I can ever get clean. It makes me retch and gag again thinking on other people’s blood on me, of myself in Emma’s stead, Jeremiah’s baby gone with me.
It is all I can do to keep from shaking my hands and running down to find the first creek. I just want to walk into that water, any water, and wash myself clean, my clothes, the lot of it, letting the blood and everything swirl away.
‘I’VE GOT TO wash,’ I tell Jeremiah as we march along the National Road, with nothing but heat and dust and sweat, and trees closing out the sky, the patchy light of late afternoon coming down through gathering clouds. Past a big old stone mill, four stories high and clinging on the edge of a twisting creek, I shove off the graveled road, not caring how it looks to anyone else. Artillery pounds from somewhere ahead of us but I make my way down to a wide crossing, water running in small ripples under a stone bridge with two arches. The creek bank is overgrown with tall grass and too steep to walk down to the water. I shrug out of my knapsack and my coat and crouch to slide down the last little bit, through the brambles snatching at my clothes and pricking at my hands. My feet land straight in the creek, cold water splashing up onto me and seeping into my boots, cold enough that I ought to be sucking in my breath, but I don’t. The green of the grass, the trees just thinking on turning, the rocks making up that bridge, all of it shows in the creek. Horses’ hooves shod in steel clatter on stone as Colonel Wheelock and Captain Chalmers lead our Regiment over the creek. Soldiers’ feet tramp across the bridge and on the road, hundreds of tin cups hit against belts and rifles, almost drowning out any of the boys’ voices. Little fingerling fish dart away from rocks along the creek bed and a water skeeter dances across the surface. I don’t care about none of that. I don’t care that my boots are soaked through. They’ve been soaked with worse things.
‘What are you doing?’ Jeremiah asks, pushing through the brush, coming down to the water. He teeters at the edge, his canteen in his left hand, his right hand unscrewing and screwing the cap. ‘We ain’t got time for you to bathe.’
‘I can’t keep on with all this death on me,’ I say, scrubbing my hands and arms. ‘I ain’t going one more step until I’ve got my fingernails clean, at least.’
‘Rosetta,’ he says, his voice low but creeping toward warning. ‘You okay?’
I nod.
‘Well then,’ he says, ‘this bathing, it’s womanish.’
‘I don’t care if it is.’ My voice wobbles. I shove my hands back down into the water and I don’t know where the words come from but they won’t stop. ‘I ain’t going to my death unclean like this!’
‘You’ve got things to ask forgiveness for?’ Jeremiah asks.
‘Course I do! How could any of us not?’ I cry, rubbing at my dirty sleeve hems. ‘I’ve got more sin than most, what with the lie I keep living, the same lie as that girl we left buried on the mountain.’
Jeremiah is silent, but barely two breaths later he wades into the water upstream from me, pushing his canteen under the lazy current. Seeing him in the water beside me puts a warmth in my chest and foolishness spreads across my cheeks because the lie ain’t the part I regret. Maybe it’s the truth I’ve been hiding from him that’s hardest to bear.
‘I’m okay. I don’t have to do this now. It’s just—We’ve got to have a plan,’ I tell Jeremiah.
‘What are you talking about?’ Jeremiah asks. ‘We have a plan.’
‘I ain’t talking about the farm,’ I say. ‘I’m talking about if we get to another battle.’