I Shall Be Near to You (36 page)

I shake my head, but he doesn’t stop talking.

‘It won’t have to mean a thing but in name,’ he says, like it is a struggle getting the words out. ‘We can be the same as we are now. Like friends. And you can live your life as you see fit, and so can I—but I’ll be—I’ll be a father for your child, I’ll give you the protection of a husband.’

That’s what does it, that’s what sets off the bird flapping panic wings in my chest.

I think about me and Jeremiah’s honeymoon, Jeremiah curled at my back, his breath against the nape of my neck, his fingers tracing lace across my collar. It is like a fresh-scabbed wound I am testing to see how much it still hurts.

‘You’ve got a good heart and I thank you kindly for offering, but I don’t want to be wife to somebody else,’ I say.

‘I know who you are,’ Will says, still staring at me. ‘You know what I am. We can help each other—Friendship is more than plenty of men get from their wives.’

‘There’s better things for you than taking me and a baby on, and I don’t want to keep you from what you’ve got coming,’ I say, thinking he don’t know what he is offering.

‘But I’m trying to give you a safe place!’ Will says it loud before starting again, more quiet, ‘I’m trying to be a good friend, give you somewhere to go if you want it, to help you. If you want to live like a lily of the field, I can’t stop you, but the Lord sayeth, “If brethren dwell together, and one of them die, the wife of the dead shall not marry without unto a stranger.” Maybe this is my way to do what’s right.’

Maybe if I were smart, I would take the life he is offering. Will is taking care of me and if it ain’t love, it is still something. But something ain’t enough. I stare out into the dusk and wonder what my best life is now.

W
ILL WON
’
T LET
me alone.

‘If you won’t take my offer, you’ve got to go to Captain,’ he says. ‘Or I will.’

I only let him pull me away from the ridge, from that pretty farm, because I can’t see any other way.

The nerves wash right out of me when I see Jennie Chalmers there outside Captain’s tent, sitting beside Captain, clasping his hand, leaning her head against his shoulder. Seeing the two of them like that, Captain with his free arm around Jennie’s shoulders, looking down at her like she is some angel from Heaven, I turn myself right back around. But it is too late.

‘Ross!’ Jennie calls, jumping to her feet, startling Captain and making his face go serious. It is a good thing I aim to tell Captain everything, the way she’s acting.

Will pushes me forward, stands at my back.

‘I’ve only just arrived,’ Jennie says. ‘Captain Chalmers hasn’t had time to tell me—I’m so glad you’re—but however are you?’

I can’t do a thing but shake my head and her hands go to her mouth.

‘Private Stone—’ Captain nods, working up to telling me I have been inappropriate and disruptive, but there is never going to be a good time for what it is I have to say.

‘Sir—I—there’s something I’ve got to—something that needs telling.’

Jennie moves closer, comes to my side. All my breath comes out of me and the words too.

‘I ain’t what you think,’ I say. Captain’s piercing eyes move across my face, but his mouth stays closed. I swallow but my mouth is so dry my tongue sticks to myself. I try to say what I ain’t had to tell anyone before.

‘I ain’t supposed to be here. I ain’t a man,’ I say, looking at Jennie. Captain stays sitting there on his folding chair, his brow furrowed.

I have done something so stupid I must be touched in the head. I can’t tell him the whole of it.

Behind me, Will whispers, ‘Go on,’ and that sends Jennie to her husband’s side. She puts her hand on his shoulder. He don’t say a thing, but something about her touch takes the edge out of him. When Jennie gives me a nod, I keep talking.

‘My name ain’t really Ross. My folks call me Rosetta. Jeremiah was my husband.’

Captain looks at me like he ain’t ever really seen me before, harder than he looked at me back when I enlisted. ‘Private Stone,’ he says, his voice making me start, ‘this is most irregular—’

‘Only I ain’t got Jeremiah no more and now—’ A gust of wind comes, blows smoke from the fire in a swirl. I gulp a breath. ‘Sir, I’ve got a baby coming.’ I say it quick, staring at Jennie’s hand on Captain’s shoulder. ‘I ain’t ever planned to do a thing but follow the term of my enlistment, and I am grateful to this Army for giving me a life with my husband, but I can’t see a way to stay with the Regiment and keep Jeremiah’s baby safe.’

‘You admit you are an impostor, then?’ Captain says, and ain’t none of this going right.

‘Sir, I ain’t ever done a thing but my duty—’

‘This is grounds for a dishonorable discharge,’ Captain says.

‘But Alexander!’ Jennie says, pulling at his arm. ‘After all the good Private Stone has done? Helping me. Nursing the wounded? Surely—’

I can see the moment the knowledge of it hits him. ‘You knew this?’ Captain asks Jennie.

‘Why else would you send me to the Capital with a strange man?’ she asks, so innocent. ‘I thought you found it so obvious as to be unworthy of mention.’

‘I’ve falsified records on Private Stone’s behalf! And now you’re asking for an honorable discharge?’ he says, and turns back on me.

‘Sir, I’ve got need of my back pay and the widow’s benefits coming to me. I earned them just as much as any other soldier,’ I say. ‘Please—you ain’t got to give me an honorable discharge. My family—there’s death benefits—’

Captain narrows his gaze. I am a fool for speaking so plain but I ain’t ever known how to do another way, I ain’t ever been one to turn a thing so clever or sweeten it the way Jennie can.

‘I’m asking you for the truth,’ I say, swallowing. ‘I’m asking you to list the person of Ross Stone as killed at Antietam.’

I
T IS STILL
dark when me and Will climb the stairs inside that hospital, our boots making too much noise on the creaky wood floor. I keep my mind on the steps. On this one thing. It is Will who raps lightly on the door.

A woman’s voice says, ‘Come in,’ and it is that nursing woman sitting at Miss Barton’s bedside, a lantern burning. Miss Barton lies there, her eyes half open.

‘We can take over now. You must need some sleep,’ Will says.

‘Oh, that’s kind,’ the nursing woman says, standing. ‘She’s been restless.’

‘Are Miss Barton’s things packed?’ I ask, when all I can think is I can’t have no one else watching.

‘That’s her valise there,’ the woman says, pointing to the foot of the bed.

‘We’ll see her downstairs when the wagon is ready,’ Will says. ‘So you can attend to others once you’re rested.’

The woman nods, and then she is gone out the door. Maybe I ought to say something to Miss Barton first, but she looks so sick, I don’t think it’s worth bothering her over what I aim to do. I kneel at the foot of the bed and open my knapsack. What I need is inside, rolled up neat.

I unfurl Jennie’s navy dress. Hold it at arm’s length. It is what I have to do. There ain’t nothing else for it.

‘You go stand in the hall,’ I tell Will. ‘Make sure no one comes in.’

He nods, looking from me to the dress, before going out.

When that door closes, I set my knapsack on the floor. My fingers shake but I make them work. I take off my coat, fold it up careful, so Jeremiah’s letter, still in the pocket, don’t get bent. My letter home to Papa and Mama and Betsy is in there too, just like I hoped when I wrote it. Only I ain’t going home to visit like I wanted. I unbutton my shirt, stuff the flannel from around my bosom down in my pack. I almost get to crying. But there ain’t time for that, not now.

I slip that dress over my head, and work my pants off over my shoes. I lay them on top of my shirt, buckle the flap. Everything inside me freezes, to see the name
Stone
painted there, and that part of me, that part of my life, the last of me and Jeremiah’s life together, the last of our dream, all of it packed away. Just like Jeremiah, moldering under that tree, his bones calling to me, going unanswered, and my Mama’s words echoing about how we won’t speak of it. I almost sink to the floor, missing a place that ain’t even on this Earth.

Henry said this war was all for nothing. But that can’t be the truth. Only it weren’t for any of the things I thought. I ain’t ever going to have that farm off in the territories, but I will always have my place beside Jeremiah.

I’ve got to do this. My fingers move fast over the buttons up the front of that dress. Even sucking every last bit of me in I can’t get them all done, not the ones at the waist, not without a corset only I ain’t ever worn such a thing. But it don’t matter. Even with my hair hardly past my ears, there ain’t a soul to care how I look so long as I’ve got that dress on.

I go to the cracked mirror over the washstand but when I look at myself in it, I see the life I ain’t ever wanted, alone in that Little House on someone else’s farm in that same town, a basket full of mending, a baby my husband ain’t ever seen, my family embarrassed into silence. Like my best days are done.

But I ain’t alone. If there is the least little thing of Jeremiah left to me, there ain’t a thing else to do.

And so I go to the door.

I
N THE BARELY
light, Will helps me settle Sully onto the wagon’s boards, Miss Barton already bundled beside him, moaning in her fever. From where he squats inside the wagon bed, Will reaches down to help me, and I gather up the long blue skirt in one hand and let him help me up with the other.

For a moment before he jumps down, Will holds me fast to him, the words
Heavenly Father
coming from his lips, not bothering to keep his prayers for me and Sully to himself.

I’ve got nothing to offer him.

‘I’ll send you letters,’ I say. ‘And you come visit when this war is done.’ A gentle smile moves slow across his face, but my words ain’t enough, nothing is ever enough, and then he is jumping down to the ground.

He knocks on the wagon bed for the driver, who clucks at the mules. We lurch forward, the wagon creaking, leaving Will standing there in the darkness, his hand lifted to wave as we rumble off into the mist.

I lean against the back of that wagon, the soft sounds of leaves blowing in the wind rising and falling, Sully’s breath coming long and slow from the laudanum.

‘Jeremiah said I might have to force you,’ he mutters as he sinks into sleep, and then Jeremiah’s tree rises up over the valley. I watch it one last time, all my love going to whatever is left of him until that tree disappears into the dawn before me. I close my eyes against the tears and there is Jeremiah rising early, kissing my forehead, whistling under his breath. Mama and Papa stir in the dim morning light, Mama feeding the stove and boiling water, their voices coming through the walls. There is the warbling trill of
a bird, so close I could see it winging off to the trees, but there ain’t no birds left here; they have all flown and my eyes ain’t opening, they want to stay closed. And then it is me winging across the land, the battlefield stretched out below. I see where the cornfield stood before the war harvested it too soon, the soil soaked with blood, the farms scattered with the dead in rows, an orchard full of rotten fruit. Somehow I am in a cellar, all that dead fruit plucked and canned and forgotten on the shelves. I take up a jar, holding it up to the light, breaking it open, the berries spilling over me, covering my hands, and I will always be stained, the land will always be scarred by what we’ve done, its harvest will always bring the taste of blood to our mouths.

I look up then, and it is the nicest blue I ever saw spreading against the whole sky and it is Jeremiah looking down on me. I want to lift myself up to him, to feel him again. A smile spreads across my face and I think on asters opening with the sun.

‘You came,’ I say.

‘You knew I would,’ he answers.

I close my eyes.

And then I am dreaming again, dreaming of our farm, the farm we might have had. I stand at the stoop, chickens squawking away from me. Cows grazing on a gentle hill. A stand of woods off in the distance. I watch those trees, waiting for someone to come out of them, always waiting. I see all these things, standing there alone, but then I feel a small hand in mine.

Something like peace settles into my bones. There ain’t no place for this baby but to be back home, with our people, in the one place where I can still find Jeremiah, where I can make him come alive for this baby I’m carrying. One place where every room has something of his love in it, where I can talk about what Jeremiah was to me, what he was to his family, where every person left alive who ever really knew him will be. One place where I can swim in the creek and feel the water rush past me like it is him swimming fast, where I can walk across the fields he worked with his own hands and he will be near to me again, living in my memories.

That does it then. I see how Jeremiah has worked it so I ain’t going back the same as I left, so there won’t be no shame for me over what I’ve done, not carrying the only gift he has left to give. There is no one now who can say I should not have gone.

Going home don’t mean I’ve got to go back to how things have always been. Even wearing this dress, I can still do as I please, like Miss Barton or even Jennie Chalmers. Eli don’t hold any sway over me, or Jeremiah’s Ma neither. I have seen something bigger than that old neighborhood and I have done something of real service and I ain’t keeping it secret. Anyone who tries to say different will see I’m independent as a hog on ice.

And then my mouth is working.

‘Home,’ I say, and it echoes. ‘Home.’

OFFICIAL LIST OF KILLED, WOUNDED, OR MISSING SINCE SEPTEMBER 17

The Late Battle at Antietam
97th New York State Volunteers
Company H

KILLED

Blalock, Levi

Price, Josiah