Though Waters Roar (7 page)

I was tempted to stick out said tongue at them, but I knew it would get me into worse trouble. Mother made me sit down at the table again. “And please pay attention to your posture, Harriet. Don’t slouch. If you’re ever going to learn grace and poise, you’ll need to begin with a straight spine.”

I listened in horror as they spelled out their plans for me, conspiring to outfit me in a frilly white dress complete with lace and bows. I had no desire to turn all feminine and fluttery. My short, skinny body still resembled a child’s, which was fine with me. I wanted no part of womanhood.

But after breakfast Mother and Alice marched me down to Daddy’s department store against my will, then stood around my dressing room door
ooh
ing and
ahh
ing and telling me how pretty I looked as I tried on scratchy dresses with lots of ruffles and flounces and frills. “I look like a stray dog trying to fit into a party dress,” I told them.

Alice bounced on her toes and clapped her pretty hands. “No you don’t, Harriet, you look sweet.”

I made a face. The last thing I wanted to be was sweet. “I hope you’re not going to buy me a vial of smelling salts and a crochet-edged handkerchief, too,” I grumbled.

As soon as we returned home, I bolted away as if my bloomers were on fire and ran straight to Grandma Bebe’s house to tell her the terrible news.

“Mercy me, Harriet, who’s chasing you?” she asked as I burst through her door, panting like a hound dog. Grandma sat at her dining room table, which was piled high, as usual, with letters and envelopes and copies of the temperance paper,
The Union Signal
. As far as I could recall, I had never actually seen the top of her dining room table—much less eaten a meal on it.

“Grandma?” I asked breathlessly, “I’m not going to start growing all soft and lumpy like Alice, am I?”

“Not within the next few minutes, I shouldn’t think. Sit down, dear. Tell me what’s wrong.”

“Mother is trying to make me wear frilly dresses and go to tea parties, and I don’t want to. I don’t want to look like Alice, I want to look like you.”

“Horrors! Why would you wish for such a thing? I’ve never grown any bigger than a ten-year-old. Of course, I always blamed my stunted growth on all of the farm work I had to endure while my brothers were away at war, but—”

“Can farm work really stunt your growth?” I was ready to hop on the first hay wagon if it meant avoiding a figure like Alice’s and all the attention that came with it.

“I’m not really sure if it can,” Grandma replied, “but I always figured that since my father needed another son so badly, my body simply complied. Will you be staying long, Harriet dear? I could use some help with these envelopes.”

Grandma was always doing something for “the cause,” and I was willing to help her as long as it didn’t involve going to jail. After my father bailed her out a few months earlier, I’d heard him say that if she got arrested again she would just have to stay there, no matter how many tears Alice shed.

“How’s your tongue, Harriet? Can you lick some envelopes for me?”

“I guess so.” Licking envelopes was much better than sipping tea and acting all ladylike. Grandma brought me a glass of water to “wet my whistle.”

“I wish I were a boy,” I said with a sigh. “Did you hate being a girl, too, Grandma?”

“I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I was your age,” she replied. “I hated doing my brothers’ chores while they were away at war, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to be a woman, either. It seemed to me that boys had more interesting opportunities than girls did.”

“But isn’t that why the suffragettes are marching? So women will have more opportunities?”

“I suppose that’s one of the things they’re trying to change. But back then I didn’t know what I wanted. If you had asked me, I would have told you that I hated doing my brothers’ chores, but I didn’t necessarily want to do housework, either. That nasty war dragged on and on until I didn’t think my life could possibly get any worse—and then it did. . . .”

Spring came early in 1863, and as the weather grew warmer, Bebe steeled herself for another season of work. Last spring she’d held on to the hope that the war would end soon. Now she knew better. In March, when she and her father drove into town one morning to pick up supplies from Harrison’s General Store, the shopkeeper had more bad news for them.

“How old is your boy now, Henry?” Mr. Harrison asked as he weighed out two pounds of sugar.

Henry gestured to Bebe with his thumb. “You mean this one?”

“I’m a girl, Papa,” she said, in case he’d forgotten.

“No, your youngest boy . . . the one who isn’t fighting yet.”

Bebe’s father looked to her for the answer. “Franklin is eighteen,” she told them.

Mr. Harrison shook his head. “That’s hard luck for you, Henry. Looks like he’ll be leaving for the war, too, before long.”

“Leaving!” Bebe stared at Mr. Harrison, waiting for him to break into a grin and tell her that it had all been a joke. He was known to be a big kidder. But his expression never changed as he slid the sack of sugar across the counter.

“Yup. Just got word that Congress has passed a new draft law. They’re conscripting boys from age eighteen on up—which means my boy will have to go, too.” He twirled the ends of his handlebar mustache and shook his head. “Seems the Union army needs more soldiers—which is hardly surprising the way our generals have been sacrificing them left and right. I’m guessing there’ll be a lot of folks needing farm help this summer. Don’t know how I’ll manage the store shorthanded.”

Henry scooped up the parcel of sugar and pointed to the shelf behind Mr. Harrison’s head. “I’ll take some of that lamp oil, too, Herbert.”

Bebe stared at her father. How could he remain so calm after hearing the news? She wanted to scream. “What are we going to do if Franklin has to go away?” she asked on the way home.

“One day at a time,” her father murmured. “One day at a time.”

Franklin’s draft notice arrived in the mail a few weeks later. Bebe sat at the dinner table with her family that evening waiting to hear what he and her father planned to do about it. Franklin was the only one who seemed cheerful about the situation. Bebe tried to be patient, waiting until the chicken and potatoes and carrots were all eaten and the rhubarb pie was cut and served, but no one seemed willing to discuss the matter. She cleared her throat, taking it upon herself to start the conversation.

“People in town are saying you can pay three hundred dollars to hire a substitute and get out of fighting in the war,” she said. “That’s what Mr. Harrison down at the store might do so his son won’t have to go.”

Henry frowned. “We don’t have three hundred dollars.”

“Besides, I want to go,” Franklin added.

Bebe could no longer sit quietly. She pushed her chair away from the table and sprang to her feet. “You can’t let him leave, Papa! How will we ever manage this farm all by ourselves?”

Hannah laid her hand on Bebe’s arm. “Hush, Beatrice. We’ll be fine.” She would never dream of telling her husband what he could or couldn’t do.

“But I’ll be the only one left, Mama, and I’m a girl! I can’t do all the work that needs to be done around here without Franklin.”

“Hush now,” Hannah soothed. “With the Lord’s help, we can do anything. God is asking the men to do their part to help free the slaves, and we need to do ours.”

“Well, I can’t do it! I won’t!” Bebe ran from the house, past the vegetable garden and through the barnyard, wishing she could run all the way to Canada like the other escaped slaves. That’s how she thought of herself—as a slave, forced to labor against her will.

Milkweed and chicory whipped against her legs as she sprinted across the pasture behind the barn. Mud clung to the bottoms of her shoes, but she didn’t stop running until she reached her brothers’ swing near the river, out of breath and out of tears. She straddled the seat and backed up to push off with her feet. She wished she could make it go as high as her brothers used to go.

It wasn’t fair! She wouldn’t mind doing something noble and brave, like hiding slaves or fighting a battle, but why was she stuck doing farm work? Endless farm work. She dangled uselessly from the swing, kicking at the dirt and feeling sorry for herself for nearly half an hour before Franklin came looking for her.

“You’re not swinging very high, Bebe. Need a push?” He grabbed her from behind and pulled the swing back as far as he could, then let go. Each time Bebe swung back, Franklin gave her another push until she was soaring higher than ever before. The rope creaked as it rubbed against the tree branch and her stomach dropped every time the swing did. Her eyes watered in the wind. She felt like she was flying.

Franklin stopped pushing after a while and sank down on the ground with a sigh. He tore out a wide blade of grass and stretched it between his thumbs to whistle through it—a feat that Bebe had never been able to do. “You have to pump with your legs if you want to keep going,” he told her. “Stretch out your legs every time you go forward, then try to scoop air with them on the way back.”

Bebe tried it, pouring all of her anger into the task as she reached and stretched, remembering how her brothers used to do it. When she felt the swing respond, she pumped harder, going higher.

“That’s it! . . . I think you’ve got it!” Franklin called.

Bebe pumped as hard as she could, no longer afraid of falling, wishing she never had to stop. “I don’t want you to go!” she shouted.

“I know,” he said quietly. “But I have to. Somebody needs to lick those Rebels once and for all.” She looked down at him, lounging on the grass, and knew that what Franklin faced was much worse than what she did. He could be killed. She stopped pumping and allowed the swing to slow, dragging her feet in the dirt.

“Are you scared, Franklin? Tell me the truth.”

“I’ve decided not to think about it. I’m just going to do what I have to do and take it one day at a time.” That was what their father always said—“one day at a time.” But those days had already added up to more than two years.

“I’ll knit you some socks,” Bebe said suddenly.

“Ha!” Franklin laughed. “You hate to knit.”

“I know. But you’ll need them to keep your feet warm.” She pushed off with her feet and began to pump again, going higher, faster.

“I think you’ve got the hang of it, Bebe.” He gave another piercing whistle, then tossed the piece of grass aside. “We’ll be fine, both of us. We’ll do what we have to do, and we’ll be fine.”

When the day finally came for Franklin to leave, Bebe couldn’t bear to watch him go. She hugged him tightly, then ran upstairs to her bedroom, stuffing her fingers in her ears so she wouldn’t have to hear the wagon driving away. She forced herself not to cry as she wandered into her brothers’ room and gazed around at their empty beds. Franklin had left his bureau drawer open, and one leg of his work trousers hung out of it. Bebe started to tuck it inside and close the drawer, then changed her mind. She pulled out the overalls and held them up in front of her. They were miles too long for her, but if she hiked up the straps and rolled up the legs she could make them fit.

“Beatrice, what in the world are you wearing?” Hannah asked when Bebe came downstairs a while later.

“I’ve decided to borrow Franklin’s overalls until he gets back.

It’ll be easier to do his chores.”

“They look quite unbecoming on you. And the Bible says that it’s wrong for women to wear men’s clothing.”

Bebe felt a surge of anger. “The Bible also says not to kill people, and everyone is killing each other, aren’t they?”

“Beatrice . . .”

She crossed her arms and lifted her chin. “And what does the Bible say about women doing men’s work?”

Hannah displayed relentless patience. “God’s Word says that whatever your hands find to do, do it with all your heart as unto the Lord.”

“Well then, I don’t see why the Lord would care if I did what I have to do in a pair of pants.”

Even in trousers, Bebe found it difficult to do her work “as unto the Lord,” especially when her father demanded that it be done his way. Before long, the only time Bebe wore a dress was when she went to church on Sunday. That’s where she was when she heard the news that General Lee and his Rebel army had defeated the Union forces at Winchester, Virginia, and had now crossed the border into her state, Pennsylvania. The townswomen were all aflutter about it after the service.

“We need to make preparations,” Mrs. Harrison told the gathered group of women, “or the Rebels will take all of our food and ravish our daughters.”

Bebe wasn’t worried about being “ravished”—how would anyone even know she was a girl, dressed in Franklin’s clothes and smelling of manure? But she would fight to the death before she’d let those Rebels steal one morsel of the food she had labored so hard to grow.

“We need to buy some extra gunpowder for Papa’s shotgun,” she told Hannah as they walked back to their wagon. “I’m going to shoot those dirty Rebels if they come near our farm.”

Hannah’s habitually mild expression grew stern. “Now, listen to me, Beatrice. It’s bad enough that my sons are forced to kill—I won’t have my daughter killing, as well.”

“But what if they try to take our food?”

“Jesus says that if someone asks for your cloak, you should give him your coat also. If the Rebels need our food that badly, we’ll let them have it.”

“Mama, no! Not after all my hard work! I’m not going to let anyone have it!”

Hannah smoothed back Bebe’s hair and caressed her cheek. “Don’t borrow trouble by worrying about something that may never happen. ‘Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.’ ”

Bebe wondered if she really could kill a Rebel soldier. Two weeks later on her fifteenth birthday, she thought that perhaps she could. On her family’s weekly trip to town, she found all of her neighbors talking about the series of battles that had been fought near the village of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Her parents found a telegram waiting for them in Harrison’s General Store. Hannah’s hands trembled as she tore open the envelope. Bebe watched her face turn pale as she read it.

“What happened?” Bebe asked. “What does it say?”