Sisters of Shiloh (23 page)

“He wouldn’t tell, even if he knew.”

“Don’t talk that way. As if you’re preparing for the possibility.”

“Please let me have him as a friend, Libby. I’ve been so lonely.”

“Lonely? How could you have possibly been lonely? I’ve been right here by your side.”

The men were rested, and a spring run of Rappahannock shad kept the hunger at bay. But the camp, once a sanctuary, was feeling more like a swamp that held them firm. Rumors began to swirl of an impending march eastward. Occasionally Stonewall Jackson was seen, his brow knit in concentration. Peace felt like soggy bread to him. He was a man who lived for battle. Libby wasn’t sure of his plans, but she craved movement. The languor of camp was drawing her sister and Wesley ever closer. A new, hard march might shake them loose from each other.

As the drills and the rumors intensified, Libby began to once again sense Arden’s presence. He spoke to her in dreams, or even those times between dreaming and waking, just before morning reveille put an end to him, shattering his words of love and hatred as she was jolted from sleep. Nights of full moonlight strengthened his presence, as did the smell of a hickory fire, and she could not move from the light of one campfire to another without feeling the brush of his hand. Libby had fought no battles since Fredericksburg, and the number of dead men stood at nine. Arden needed blood. He was growing impatient. He was whispering things about her sister. Terrible things.

Josephine and Wesley sat cross-legged, facing each other in the shade of two oaks that grew so close together that the elder of the two was slowly choking the younger one. For now, though, the intertwining branches and broad, flat leaves formed a canopy that held the sunlight out and provided the kind of dusky gloom that makes lovers speak true. “Josephine,” he said, and she drank in her name as he continued. “You are so beautiful, even with that haircut. Even in that uniform. How could I not have known?”

“You knew in the smokehouse. We were both drunk and somehow you knew. Somehow you saw me. And believe it or not, that gave me the strength to get through that terrible march.”

He stroked her hair, kissed her again.

“I have to leave now,” Josephine said. “My sister will wonder where I am, and I believe she already suspects I have revealed myself to you.”

“So what if you did?”

“You know that means betrayal to her. She is terrified of being caught and sent home before her quest is complete.”

“Her quest is crazy. This war is no place for a woman. You both should be home taking care of your ma and pa. I’ll bet they’re worried sick about you.”

“Let’s not argue.”

“Ain’t no argument going on. Just two people talking.”

In these shadows, removed from sun or campfire light, his features looked darker, and his voice had a deeper tone. Wesley leaned back against the tree, and she thought the matter was settled until he added: “It ain’t your job to fight.”

“Libby needs me. I’m her guardian.”

“Guard yourself, Josephine. Just go into the captain’s tent and tell him the truth. He’d send you home in the blink of an eye.”

“If I reveal myself, my sister will be discovered, too. As you know, it’s obvious who we are once the case is made.”

“Would it be so bad for her to be found out? I think it would do her good to go back home. She’s not looking well.”

“It would kill her to leave now. The only thing that has kept her alive since Arden’s death is carrying on his cause. You should have seen her in September. She wouldn’t eat. She was wasting away, and no one could help her, not even me. She would have died, had she not saved herself with this mad plan.”

His expression changed from thoughtful to longing, as though considering her story and then his own aching need for a kiss.

“You should have seen those two together,” Josephine said. “They were one person. Everyone thought so.”

“Maybe that’s not such a good thing. Especially ’cause one of ’em is dead now. You tell me your heart is in this, and I’ll be quiet.”

She sighed and pushed herself off the ground to leave.

He caught her arm. “Let’s go, then. You and me.”

She sank back down.

“Both of us?”

“Lewis is dead. I’ve put in my time fighting. I’ve done my job. We can find ourselves a place in the middle of nowhere and hole up together. Remember the smokehouse? Hell, we could live out the war in some smokehouse, eating cracklings and smoked pig and applejack. We could get nice and fat and drunk, and sleep in hickory ashes.”

“They’ll find us.”

“No, they won’t.”

“You know what happens to deserters.”

“Nothing’s going to happen to us.”

“I thought you didn’t want to be yellow.”

“I’m not a coward. I’m not afraid of dying. I just think we have to take what’s ours, because no one is going to give it to us. And if that makes me yellow, fine. I’ll be yellow as a pound cake, yellow as lemonade. Yellow as a field of daisies. Let the cows graze on me, damn it. I don’t care.”

“I’ve told you over and over, Wesley. I can’t leave my sister. God will take her if I leave.”

“What if God takes you?”

“Did you know that she wakes up in the middle of the night and talks to Arden as if he’s sitting there? She seemed better over the winter, but now she’s losing herself. She needs me.”

“You have your own life. She has no right to take it. And she has no right to take you from me. I love you. Please, Josephine. Say it back.”

It was time to march again. Stonewall Jackson had put his fingertip somewhere on a map where the ground would soon be bloody, and it was no man’s call to question him, only to follow him blindly. The men gathered their haversacks, oilcloths, and rations, and prepared to move. Josephine felt shaken out of her beautiful spring with her secret love. Somehow it seemed as though this season would never end and she could live like this—half-soldier, half-darling—speaking in her true voice to Wesley in the darkness of the woods. She had almost forgotten this war, so full of crazy soldiers and their crazy motivations, their crazy ghosts and their crazy gods. Just a sea of delusion: blue at high tide, gray at low.

When the long roll sounded one morning, she nodded goodbye to the escalating warmth of the hut and started the march. Libby was astonished, this time, by the weight of her gear. She had no idea how she’d carried such a burden over the Blue Ridge Mountains in freezing snow. Once she paused by the side of the road and threw away her blanket before continuing on. When the order to rest finally came, she lay down where she stopped without taking off her haversack. Over those few months, the road had turned to ice, then to mud, and then had dried partially in the sun. She smoothed out the dirt with the flat of her hand, breaking the crust and exposing a cool shade of brown, and fell asleep with her gun by her side.

On the third day, they reached Hamilton’s Crossing and camped. Men on horseback with various messages for the officers came in and out of camp, and supper was a subdued affair, each man caught up in his own mortality again, the thought of loved ones at home and in heaven. The long respite was over.

Before she went on picket duty, Josephine found Libby sitting in her tent, holding her stick and gazing off into space.

“At last,” Libby murmured. “I thought another battle would never come.”

“Would that have been so terrible?” Josephine asked.

Libby glanced at her. “Yes, of course it would have been. I would ask you if you have forgotten your loyalties, but I’m afraid of the answer.”

“My loyalties are the same. They are to you. They are what keep me here.”

“And Wesley,” Libby said. “He keeps you here too, doesn’t he?”

The night was too beautiful for picket duty, or any duty at all. Josephine looked at Wesley out of the corner of her eye. They were standing picket together for the first time in weeks, under such a dominant moon that torches weren’t necessary. Owls hooted, and frogs croaked from a stream that ran through a low place in the woods. Wesley had finally had a haircut; his ears glowed in moonlight. He had been so quiet at supper, and even now he said nothing, simply looking off into the woods, leaving her bewildered as to what had changed between them.

He caught her staring, and she looked away.

“It’s warm tonight,” he said at last. “Hot, in fact.”

“The frogs are so loud.”

“Maybe they smell the battle coming.” His neck looked longer now, an illusion common to men whose haircuts had been overdue. She wanted to put her gun down, go to him, and hold his thin body. She was terrified of the coming battle. In every battle, she had lost someone. Who would be next?

Wesley was looking at her now, his face so boyish by moonlight. He stepped closer to her so he could say her real name.

“Josephine, do you remember when I told you about that feeling that I had right before Mechanicsville that I was gonna die? And Lewis broke my arm so I couldn’t fight?”

“Yes, I remember.”

“Well, I got that feeling again.”

Josephine felt a sudden pain in her chest. “You think you’re going to die?”

He shook his head. “I think you are gonna die, Josephine.” He touched the side of her face and left his hand there. “You are.”

“Don’t be silly, Wesley,” she managed. “I don’t believe in those superstitions. How can anyone know?”

“I know. And you know what? I’m not gonna let you. Here I was marching today, thinking I’ll just protect you. Shoot down every Yankee who even looks your way. But you know what? I can’t stop nothing. I couldn’t keep Lewis from dying, and I expect I’ll have just as much luck keeping you alive. But then I realized something. I can keep you alive. All I have to do is tell the captain who you are.”

Josephine drew in her breath. “You can’t do that! You know that once I am discovered, Libby will be discovered, too. You know that I cannot let that happen.”

“Then you have only one more choice left. Leave. Desert with me.”

“No!”

“Then, I’m going to tell on you, Josephine. I know you’ll hate me for it, and maybe you’ll never talk to me again. But if something happened to you, I’d never forgive myself.”

Early the next morning, Josephine saw it with her own eyes. That curiously formal way Wesley walked as he headed toward the captain’s tent. She followed him at a close distance, unable to believe that he was actually going through with his threat.

Just before he reached the tent, Josephine caught up with him and grabbed his arm.

“Very well,” she said. “You win.”

He looked at her and stepped close to her. Too close for one man to speak to another man, but just right for them. “I have won, all right, if it means I keep you alive.”

She lowered her voice as the camp swirled around them in its morning activity. “But even if we get past the pickets, we don’t know the roads.”

“We’ll just have to take our chances.”

“But Libby will . . .”

“No!” he shouted, and she was taken aback by the ferocity in his voice. “Stop thinking of her! Think of yourself. Think of me.”

Libby stepped back from the crackle of torch light and nearly lost her footing in the damp grass of the meadow. Cows were vague shapes in the dark. She rubbed her eyes. Wesley and Josephine had roused her from sleep and brought her here. Libby’s eyes moved down and saw that they were holding hands.

Josephine spoke first. “You’re right, Libby. He did know.”

Tiny bugs had gathered around the flare of the torch.

“I knew you were trouble,” Libby told Wesley.

“I haven’t told anyone.”

Libby crossed her arms. Something landed on her neck and drew blood. She let it live.

“Wesley and I are leaving,” Josephine said.

“Deserting.”

“Yes.”

“You’re a traitor. Lower than a dog. You both are crawling yellow dogs, and I would shoot you if I’d brought my gun.”

“I’m the crawling yellow dog,” Wesley said. “Not your sister. She’s only going with me because I told her I was gonna tell the captain she was a woman, and she knew if I did that you’d be found out, too. This is on me, not her.”

Libby glared at him. “She could have avoided this entirely if she had not revealed herself to you. She put us both in danger. If my sister is shot as a deserter or killed by the Yankees, I know who to blame.”

“Maybe you are the one to blame,” Wesley said, “On account of this whole crazy idea was yours to start with.”

Libby took a step toward Wesley. Josephine moved between the two of them.

“Libby. Come with us. We could all be happy. We can all go home. And live. You don’t belong here, any more than we do.”

“Arden is here to keep me strong. He speaks to me nightly. And you know what he keeps saying? That you killed him.”

“That is only your delusion. I did no such thing.”

“I don’t want to believe it, but he keeps insisting. Maybe you want me to die, too? Is that what it is?”

“No. But I have no control over that. Whether you live or die is God’s will, not mine. Wesley made me see that.”

“Of course. Wesley has made you see so much.”

Libby stepped back, leaving the other two in the circle of light. “Go,” she said. “I hope they hunt you down. I hope they kill you.”

“Libby . . .”

“Don’t come any closer, or I’ll call the guards.”

“It’s no use,” Wesley said. “We should go before it gets light.”

Josephine gazed at her sister. “Please forgive me. I’ll pray for you every night. I’ll ask God to watch over you.”

Wesley picked up the torch. He took Josephine’s hand and began to walk away. Her arm straightened, stopping him, but he pulled on her until she moved.

“You’re a traitor!” Libby called as they walked away. “God will punish you!”

“Let them go,” Arden said.

Wesley had traded some good whiskey for a compass and decided they would find their way through the forest and go west, parallel to the Orange Plank road, and then turn north. His plan extended no further, and there was nothing Josephine could add as a supplement. They moved like ghosts through the trees that night, hand in hand, the torchlight between them. Josephine had wanted to leave her rifle, but Wesley said, “No, don’t do that. We still might need it,” and his voice had carried the warning of danger. Wesley had told her to be very careful where she stepped and stay light on her toes should any crackling reveal their location.