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Authors: Kathy Hepinstall

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BOOK: Sisters of Shiloh
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Wesley spoke again. “Lewis believes he’s fighting for the South. But I think he just likes shooting things.”

They had reached the top of the rise. He stopped there and gazed down at the farms below them. “I’m hungry, Joseph. Let’s go get us some food.”

“You mean, steal it?”

“Borrow it.”

“We’ll get shot.”

“We’ll be quiet.”

 

The farmhouse sat in the middle of a huge plot of land, the field in fallow, skinny cows grazing. Apple and fig trees stood behind the house, their branches bare. A barn, an old shed, a smokehouse, and a field full of dry cornstalks completed the property.

“Where are the chickens?” Wesley whispered. “I want a chicken.”

“How would we cook a chicken?”

“I don’t care. I’ll eat it raw. Follow me.”

He crept down the hill. Josephine caught up with him, drawn by the adventure. It had just enough danger and just enough Wesley in it to spark her intrigue. Besides, she felt starved. She understood now why soldiers would pause in battle long enough to shoot a pig. Hunger, like Jackson, demanded to be served.

They entered the cornfield, moving through the stalks. When they reached the edge, Wesley hunched down and considered his plan.

“Whoever’s in that house,” he said, “has got to have food.”

“You’re one smart man, Wesley.”

Wesley punched Josephine’s arm, so hard she had to rub it.

Raccoon skins dried on the back porch. A bentwood chair faced the outbuildings. A pocketknife stuck straight out of the rail. Wood shavings littered the pine boards. “A whittler,” Wesley whispered. “And he’s old. Look at the birdseed scattered everywhere.”

They approached the house, bending down low and darting forward, ever mindful of guns and dogs. Wesley peered into the window, pressing his forehead to the glass. “I don’t see nobody. They must be upstairs.” He shot Josephine a look of companionable sneakiness and turned the doorknob slowly. They entered a short passageway that led to the kitchen, which was spotless and smelled of bread. She pointed wordlessly at the hearth, where a fire was burning. He shrugged and opened a cupboard, pulling out a can.

“Oh, no,” he whispered. “Condensed milk. I hate condensed milk. Then again, beggars can’t be choosers.” He stuffed the can in a pocket and kept looking, his efforts rewarded when he pulled out a jar of apple butter. “Look!” he whispered. He opened the jar and took a scoop that proved too ambitious when a clot of apple butter slid from his finger and landed on the table. He leaned over and licked it off, gathering some old cracker crumbs on his tongue in the process. He held the jar out to Josephine, and she tasted the treat. It flooded her with pleasure and a homesick feeling.

She heard a sound.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“What?”

Sudden footsteps thundered down the stairs. An old man’s voice called, “Who’s there? Who’s there?”

Wesley rushed Josephine out of the kitchen. She looked behind her and gasped. An old man in overalls stood at the end of the passageway and leveled his rifle.

“Run!” Wesley shouted.

They rushed out the back door and across the porch as the gun went off, then ran a zigzag pattern through the yard and took shelter behind the smokehouse. They caught their breath. Wesley peered around the corner.

“What’s he doing?” she asked.

“He’s reloading . . . now he’s walking into the yard . . . damn, now he’s coming this way.”

Wesley tested the smokehouse door and found it unlocked. The smell of wood fires and cured meat filled up her nostrils as he pulled her inside and closed the door behind them. The floor was sticky with grease. Wesley pressed his nose to a crack between the boards and said, “He’s looking in the shed now. If that old man goes in the direction of the cornfield, we’ll bust out of here and run the other way, toward the fence.”

The sun was positioned directly over the smokehouse, pouring its light down on them through the vents in the roof, illuminating the flayed carcasses of hogs and deer. Barrels lined the wall, and jars of crackling sat on a shelf above the barrels. She stepped backward into a pit of old hickory ashes. Her pulse fluttered and, despite the cold, her face was wet with perspiration. A little bit of battle fear had crept inside her, that feeling that comes from having no control over what happens next.

“Ah,” Wesley said in relief, “the geezer’s going back into the house. Too old for bloodshed, I guess.”

Josephine wiped the sweat from her face.

“What happened to the apple butter?”

“I dropped it. I’m sorry.” He gestured toward the carcasses. “Well, at least we got meat. And, oh, yes, canned milk. Let’s see what’s in those barrels. Maybe molasses. Maybe honey.”

He pried off a lid with his pocketknife. Flour motes danced in the shafts of light. He grunted and moved on to the next barrel. “Oh, sweet God,” he said after he’d eased the lid off. “This here’s applejack, Joseph. If the boys back at camp knew there was a barrel full of applejack sitting here, they’d trample women and children to get to this farm.”

Wesley poured the water out of his canteen and submerged it in the barrel, listening to the deep slugging sound with an expression of increasing contentment. When the applejack had filled his canteen, he toasted the carcass of a pig hanging nearby, threw back his head, and took several deep gulps. He paused to catch his breath. “You’ve got to try this,” he said.

She shook her head.

“Just take a sip,” he said. “It will warm you up.”

He handed the canteen to her, and she tried a sip as he began hacking on the carcass of a pig with his pocketknife, freeing hunks of smoked meat. She tried another sip, then another, feeling the burn of deepening insouciance travel down her body, undoing things. War, hunger, cold, fear, various privations. Even touching her deep and terrible secret and at least dulling its knifing effect. She started to hand the canteen back to him, but stopped and took a gulp this time, letting the applejack travel down into her like a dove alighting on a field of battle.

Wesley had his pockets full of smoked meat. He sat down with her, and they rested their backs against the wall, tearing into the meat and washing it down with applejack until it was gone. He stood up, somewhat unsteadily, and hacked off some more, and they repeated the process, trading the canteen back and forth until it was empty and he had to visit the barrel again for more.

Their filling stomachs and emptying canteen drew the sun closer until Josephine was no longer cold at all, but warm as though it were high summer. The influence of applejack had made her feel forgiven. Maybe she was innocent, after all, and subject not to a hellish punishment but to, perhaps, a continuous receipt of small good fortunes. Starting with the man who was looking at her now.

“You are a good friend,” Wesley said. “As good as Floyd, even. I thought this war was gonna bring me nothing but misery. I never counted on meeting such good people.”

He took off his jacket, and she almost took hers off as well, drunk enough to peel back the layers of clothing until a secret lived in the smokehouse. But she caught herself just in time. Slats of light moved across Wesley’s face, revealing freckles. She felt warm and yet her breath still made a fog. The carcass Wesley had cut from swung slowly back and forth, a peaceful motion that imitated the rocking of a cradle.

“I think it’s time to go back,” she said.

“Oh, no, no.” Wesley touched her arm. “Let’s stay in here.”

She rose and tried to regain her balance. Wesley did the same. His cheeks were flushed pink and his eyes were shining. One leg buckled and straightened.

“I don’t want to go,” he said. “I want to stay here with you. Things are so simple with you.”

“Things are simple with you, too,” she said. Her head was swimming. The hanging carcasses slowly rotated. The smokehouse smelled sweet, like peace. And there was Wesley. Smiling at her fondly, drunkenly. Looking for all the world like a boy just come back from a fishing trip or a wrestling match with his favorite dog.

“I want to stay in here, too,” she said. “I want to never leave.”

He stumbled, hitting the carcass of a pig. He looked at her as the pig swayed gently and then hung still.

“You don’t belong in this war. You’re too good. Can’t even kill a man.”

“You don’t know everything about me, Wesley. I’ve done some things that would surprise you.”

He laughed. “Like what? Slap a mosquito? Roll over in your sleep and crush a butterfly?” He touched the side of her face. “God,” he said. “Even your face is smooth. How could that be?”

“You’re drunk.”

“So are you.”

He moved toward her, so close that she could see flour motes in his eyelashes. Josephine looked in his eyes, and suddenly she reached her hands up to his face, pulled him down to her, and kissed him. He pressed his lips into hers, then pulled back in astonishment, his eyes wide, moving backward away from her, losing his balance, and stumbling against the smokehouse door. It flew open and he fell into the yard.

 

By midafternoon the ammunition wagons were fixed. The bugles had sounded. The men gathered up their weapons and began falling into rank. Libby cupped her hands to her face and called into the woods. “Joseph! Joseph! Joseph!”

Lewis’s concern over Wesley had taken the form of an itch on his back. In his effort to scratch it, he had already contorted himself to the point that his shirttail had come out. He walked over to Libby and gazed out into the woods with her, still scratching. The two enemies stood together, bonded suddenly by their mutual fears.

Lewis spit some tobacco juice into the grass. “Where do you think they went?”

“I don’t know. I went to fill my canteen, and when I came back, they were gone.”

“You don’t think the Yankees got them, do you?”

“Of course not,” she said, but the question had already stung Lewis on the spot between his shoulders he couldn’t quite reach. She watched him flailing at it, first reaching his hand over his shoulder and then up the small of his back, his escalating torment finally driving Libby to reach over and scratch between his shoulder blades. He turned and gave her a look of naked gratitude.

“You two come on,” Floyd said. “We got to go. And where are those two peas in a pod?”

“They’re missing.”

“Missing?” The old drummer had spent the day asleep, his slouch hat under his head and his handkerchief folded on his chest. His brow began to contort as though it had a terrible itch of its own. “Wesley is missing?”

“And my cousin,” Libby said.

Lewis pointed at the clearing, where two figures were stumbling into sight.

“Looky here,” he said.

She squinted. “Are they drunk? They look drunk.”

The three of them stood in silent disapproval as Josephine and Wesley, wobbling and leaning on each other for support, made their way up the small inclination to the place where they stood.

“Where have you two been?” Libby asked.

“In a smokehouse,” Wesley said. He and Josephine burst into laughter, doubling over and slapping their thighs.

“Damn fools,” said Lewis. “Could have been left behind. Could have been killed. We’re about to move again. How are you two gonna march, all drunk and twist-legged?”

“March?” asked Wesley. “We’re not marching. We’re our own army, now. Not blue, not gray. We have no color. We are the army of the middle.”

“Stop your babbling, you idiot,” Floyd said. “Unless you’d like to wear a barrel shirt up that mountain pass.”

“The army of the middle,” Josephine repeated, whirling. All her masculine attributes had fallen off somewhere in the woods.

“Got you all something,” Wesley said. “Gather round and reach in my haversack. Don’t let anyone see you or there’ll be a riot.”

“What you got, boy?” Floyd said.

“Smoked ham.”

“Oh, dear Lord, son. You are forgiven.”

 

The sunlight waned as the army moved. Migrating hawks flew overhead. Wesley and Josephine sang a marching song.

“You two quit,” Floyd said. “I can’t stand your infernal singing any longer. Why don’t you concentrate on keeping in step, you two applejack-soaked varmints?”

“Yeah.” Lewis walked with his musket on one shoulder and Wesley’s guitar hanging by its leather strap over the other. “Old man’s right. Shut your mouths.”

Wesley and Josephine paid no attention.

 

I hear the distant thunder-hum, Maryland!

The Old Line’s bugle, fife and drum, Maryland!

She is not dead, nor deaf, nor dumb . . .

 

“I wish I was deaf,” said Floyd.

“I apologize for my cousin,” Libby said. “He has very little experience with liquor and has no tolerance of it.”

“You know how Stonewall Jackson feels about liquor,” Lewis said. “He won’t touch a drop.”

Josephine stopped singing. “Stonewall Jackson doesn’t sound very fun. In fact, he seems rather boring.”

Libby shook her head. “Joseph, don’t talk that way about our general.”

“His horse is ugly,” Wesley said.

Lewis shot him a stern look. “You shut your mouth, boy, if you know what’s good for you.”

“Close up!” the sergeant commanded, and the line moved together.

For once, Josephine couldn’t feel the chill in the air. The liquor had leveled the world until the war slid off of it, and she was free for the first time since the whole ugly thing had begun. She stumbled, fell, climbed to her feet, and fell again.

Floyd took her gun. Lewis handed Wesley’s guitar to another soldier to carry, then picked her up and threw her over his shoulder. The Jackson Brigade was upside down, and the sky was mixing clouds until they lost their shape. She dangled over Lewis’s shoulder, swinging back and forth in time to his perfect route step. She could not help smiling. For once she had not had to share a day with Jackson or Lee or even Jefferson Davis, for that matter. She had left the army and become a civilian and lived in a house full of smoke and meat and cracklings and sunlight and the company of a good man. Everyone should live this way. She arched her back and stretched her arms out. She could fly if she wanted. It all seemed so possible, the war so short and tiny and stunted, it would never seem mighty again.

BOOK: Sisters of Shiloh
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