Jeremiah looks off in the distance, like he ain’t heard.
‘I don’t like getting separated,’ I say. ‘What if one of us gets hurt?’
‘That ain’t going to happen.’ Jeremiah shakes his head.
‘There ain’t no way to tell a thing like that. You know it. You’ve seen how it is when the shooting starts. That girl—’
‘I don’t want to think about that!’ Jeremiah says, his voice getting louder. ‘I don’t want to think about any of it!’
‘Well, we’ve got to. We ain’t got a choice. If you push me down like you did at Bull—’
Jeremiah cuts me off. ‘We can’t ever go back home after all this,’ he says low. ‘It won’t ever be the same, not after—not without Jimmy and Henry.’
‘I thought we weren’t planning on more than visiting,’ I say real quiet, trying to look him in the face, but he keeps watching the current.
‘It ain’t only the one soldier, Rosetta. On the field—He was just like Jimmy—Our families, how can I tell the folks back home?’ He looks at me then, his hands up in the air.
‘That’s why I’m here,’ I tell him. ‘So we ain’t got to tell anyone. I’ve done the same as you. We all have.’
‘I never thought it’d be like this,’ Jeremiah says.
‘We’re too far into all of it. Ain’t a bit of it that can be undone now, so we’ve just got to do accordingly,’ I say—for myself, too. ‘I want to be with you when things happen. That girl we found—I don’t want to be like that.’
‘That won’t be you,’ Jeremiah says. ‘And there’ll be time for bathing after.’
I don’t have to ask what he means by after. I clamber out of that creek, slipping in the mud and wet grass, and sling my knapsack and coat across my back. Jeremiah hauls himself up out of the water and rests his hands on my shoulders. The look that comes over his face ain’t peaceful, but it ain’t the same drawn look he had before, and that is something.
‘We’ll make ourselves a good life,’ he says, leaning toward me, his eyes open, his lips brushing mine, and then he moves past me and we make our way to the road. My heart aches, thinking how the life we dreamed on is already something different than what we started with, how there is already more to it than he knows and he won’t ever forgive himself for not sending me back if something happens, how maybe I won’t either.
CHAPTER
26
NEAR ANTIETAM CREEK, MARYLAND: SEPTEMBER 16–17, 1862
We make our bivouac on a treed ridge, the rattle and bang of skirmishing echoing below us. Me and Jeremiah walk off a little piece from the rest of the boys, looking for a place for our tent. We find a sheltered grassy spot under a poplar where the boys’ hushed talking almost doesn’t reach us, and Jeremiah stares down at the valley of farms spread out below. The closest one is a farm so pretty it makes my heart ache. I know Jeremiah feels it too from the way he stares at the cluster of whitewashed barns with their stone foundations and plank sides. I dream how many cows and how much hay will fit, anything nice.
‘You ever think what we’d be doing if we ain’t left Flat Creek?’ I ask.
‘There ain’t no way around the war.’
‘Maybe,’ I say, even though he is right. ‘I just wish we could have seen this countryside without the war being the cause of it.’
Nothing takes my mind off the jittering coming from the boys all around us, not even when we busy ourselves with setting up our tent. My hands shake as we unfold the canvas pieces of our tent and snap them together in the gentle rain that’s started up. We’re stringing the canvas across two poles when Sergeant comes round.
‘There are to be no fires tonight,’ he says. ‘Not with the enemy so near.’
There’s some groans from the boys about a cold supper of teethdullers and coffee grounds, but the words alone get my stomach riled up, thinking of carrying a baby into battle or leaving Jeremiah’s side. It is too much to ask, judging the worth of one for the other.
We settle on our blankets, the long night stretched out before us, listening through the patter of rain on canvas to make out the sounds of Rebels coming, counting how long between the rolling thunder of artillery firing. When Jeremiah talks it ain’t like he’s keeping me from sleep.
‘How you feeling?’ he asks.
‘I feel like myself,’ I say, thinking he means after washing.
‘We’re fighting hard tomorrow for sure,’ he says.
He’s thinking of me standing in the creek washing away that dead girl, so I say, ‘My place is with you.’
Jeremiah leans over me. ‘Lord knows I love you. But if anything happens to you …’
And then he kisses me and clasps me to him tight and my heart grows so it might burst right through my rib cage.
‘I love you more than anything,’ I say, and there is my answer. More than anything.