Wilderness Run

by Maria Hummel

  “I told her to do it,” he said. The stale, grassy smell of the runaway returned to him. He saw the man swinging Bel down to the ice. “She wasn’t going to do it on her own. She was afraid of him.”

  “I know,” said George, and Laurence thought he saw a spark of admiration in his father’s eyes. It burned out as he continued. “But the trouble with raising girls to be like boys is that they don’t grow up to be men. They grow up to be women. Your aunt and uncle think she’s safe if they keep her at Greenwood, but it’s not safe. She needs to be around other young people, or she’ll end up—” He stopped and threw up his hands. “It doesn’t matter,” he muttered.

  “She’ll end up what? An old maid? If that’s her future, so be it,” Laurence said, for he didn’t like the idea of his young cousin simpering to attract the attention of some ridiculous suitor. She was to find a husband late in life, if she found one at all. “There are worse fates. If she were a man, she could end up in the infantry like me,” he added bitterly.

  George tugged at his beard. “There are worse fates.”

  Laurence sat back and observed his father, deciding then that he was the kind who would be killed within a few hours of action. George Lindsey would fly out of the cover of woods, or over a rough earthwork with a roar, trying to end the war in a single charge.

  “Anyway, she’s only—what, sixteen?” Laurence said, pursuing the topic as he chewed his last bite of meat. The rich taste of animal blood made it difficult to speak. “It’s hardly too late for her to find a beau.” Although for Bel, he decided, it would always be too early. He couldn’t stand the thought of another man pawing her. “Aunt Faustina will help her,” he added.

  “Will she?” George replied, sounding suddenly weary of the conversation. He glanced at Laurence’s empty plate. “Are you still hungry?”

  Laurence nodded, surprised. George Lindsey had never cared so deeply about matchmaking, and he used to scoff at the tribulations of his daughters. As if to deflect Laurence’s impending inquiry, his father resumed talking about the latest development in the railroad industry—luxury transport that would carry passengers across the prairie and all the way to California.

  Laurence could sense by his father’s enthusiasm that the truth of the war had not really reached him, for how could velvet curtains, manicurists, and full baths on private cars excite him if he knew how easily his rails could be ruined forever, twisted up the trunks of trees? But he let his father cast the spell of a Pullman car around him; he let him explain the ornate tile above the sinks, the hand-carved compartments for ladies’ shoes.

  They left the hotel after his father had ordered a second plate of lamb chops for Laurence, coffee from a silver pitcher, and cherry pie for dessert, then walked back to Washington Square, lingering over the carved doorways and window casings, for George Lindsey had always envied his brother’s easy knowledge of architecture. Their voices rose above the haze of streetlamps, mingling with the conversations of others on their balconies and in their upstairs rooms. Laurence had never noticed before the labyrinthine sound of the city, and he enjoyed how anonymous they were suddenly, not Union or secesh, not one regiment or another, members only of the company of humanity. Were he not still in his ragged uniform, he would have forgotten he was a soldier, just the son of a rich man, or even just a son.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  When Betsey Knox strolled into the Washington Square camp, the heads of every idle soldier twisted in her direction as if pushed by the same strong breeze. Smiling to herself with knowing amusement, she asked the closest blue-uniformed soldier for Sgt. John Addison. The request had hardly left her mouth before the young man scrambled off obediently in search of him.

  Slouched against a nearby oak, Laurence knew Addison was at their tent, but he did not alter his position when he heard Betsey’s high voice say his friend’s name. He was taking in her doll-like perfection, every inch arranged to be noticed: the straw bonnet arched over her blond hair, the curl of lace at her throat, the useless fan she clasped in her right hand. Betsey caught his eye and he lifted his cap, a gesture to which she replied with a barely discernible nod.

  When Addison arrived, Betsey hung back coyly and held out her gloved fingers to be kissed. With an air of utter devotion, Addison bent his head to her hand—and then pulled it sharply so that her arm wound around his back and they stood close.

  “Why, you devil.” Betsey squirmed, raising one blue sleeve to adjust her hat back to its jaunty position.

  “Ladies should never cuss,” Addison said, releasing her slowly.

  “Devil ain’t a cussword,” she said, making a moue.

  “Isn’t. Ladies should also never use improper grammar.”

  “Aw, what do you know about ladies?” She chucked him on the chest with her fan.

  “Not much, ma’am,” Addison confessed, taking her by the elbow and towing her away from the ring of onlookers. He stopped as he passed Laurence, who was still posed by the oak tree. “But my friend Laurence Lindsey, he’s an expert.”

  Betsey fixed her round brown gaze on Laurence, making his cheeks go hot. “Are you?” she asked, tilting her head to the angle of her hat.

  “I suppose,” he mumbled.

  “Well, in just about everything else, then,” said Addison, grinning. He hadn’t looked so happy in months. “His pa got him educated in a Boston private school. He’s the schoolmarm of us all.”

  “You must be terribly smart,” Betsey said, not absorbing Addison’s delicate insult.

  “Not smart enough to find a lady like you,” Laurence answered with his courtliest bow. He still did not smile, but his eyes remained on hers.

  “What do they teach you, then?” she teased. Her lips were the color of ripe apples.

  “How to be an upright, self-reliant man—”

  “Who don’t have to work for a living,” said Addison. Ignoring Laurence’s glare, he tugged Betsey’s elbow. “Shall I show you the camp?” he asked, and she turned away reluctantly.

  Laurence watched as the two of them began their promenade, and then he left the oak to return to his tent. September had covered the ground with orange leaves and he sat down to sketch them on the back of one of his mother’s letters. He wanted to remember them when the army returned to Virginia; he wanted to memorize their outlines and dry, waxy smell, as they reminded him of home. So absorbed was he in the task of drawing the curl of a stem that he didn’t notice when Addison and Betsey ended their stroll in front of him.

  “Well, I didn’t come to see you to be marched in circles like one of your colts, Mr. Addison,” Betsey said. Laurence looked up. Her face was red and seamed across the forehead with a light layer of sweat, and he suddenly saw that in her prettiness, Betsey was more like his mother than his aunt Faustina, possessing something in the flesh that would fade, rather than in the architecture of the bones, which stayed.

  “Please,” Addison pleaded with an uncharacteristic whine. “I never get to talk to you alone.”

  “We can talk right here.” Betsey deposited herself on a crude camp stool opposite Laurence. He withdrew his outstretched legs but did not stand or offer Addison the other seat. “I ain’t ruining my new dress sweeping it through another layer of dust and spiderwebs. Mr. Lindsey, with all your fine upbringing, I don’t understand how you can live with all this dirt.”

  “You shouldn’t understand it,” Laurence said. He couldn’t help noticing the curved outline of her breasts as she tipped slightly forward. “War isn’t for ladies.”

  Addison snorted at this platitude, hovering like an angry bee.

  “Your father is the most divine-looking older gentleman,” Betsey claimed, changing the subject. “I see him riding his carriage down to the lumberyards every morning.”

  Laurence had never thought of his father as handsome before, and he considered this statement. “Do you think I’ve inherited any of his charm?” he asked seriously. Addison’s boot ground into the earth beside him.

  “All
of it! And I suppose you’ll inherit his whole legacy,” Betsey answered.

  “I suppose I may.” Laurence frowned at this comment and returned to his sketching. He couldn’t decide if he should approve of this girl, pretty as she was.

  “Ready for another round, Betsey?” Addison asked in a tight voice.

  “Why don’t you sit beside me, instead of trying to trot me over all them stumps,” she ordered, lifting her chin. “I told you I’ve had enough promenading, and I am so enjoying the company of your friend.”

  “He’s a bully friend all right,” Addison mumbled as he settled on a patch of ground beside Betsey. He fixed an insolent stare on Laurence.

  “Addison saved my life,” Laurence offered, hoping to appease him.

  “Did he?” Betsey tilted her hat toward her sweetheart. Addison did not peel his eyes from Laurence’s face.

  “He saves lives all the time. I’ve never once seen him afraid—in battle,” Laurence added, thinking of the house in the clearing, Spider’s stolen chicken lying in the yard. “And he rescued at least two dozen horses at Bull Run.”

  “See now? He writes the dullest letters and never tells me these things,” she said in an injured tone. “‘I saved the lives of two dozen horses’ would be a bully way to start a letter. But I get them ones that begin ‘Dear Betsey, it snowed today and yesterday, too.’”

  Laurence laughed and she joined in. Addison’s face twisted. “I was just doing my duty,” he said.

  The misery in his voice finally attracted the attention he sought. Betsey let her gloved hand run lightly through his hair. None of them spoke for a few moments, and against the tableau of their young love, Laurence felt the whole city of New York go quiet. A cool breeze swept over them, filled with the scent of cooked meat and horse manure, of wet dirt, and even the faint salt breath of the sea.

  He rose and took his leave of them, suddenly ashamed for staying so long, then went on his own promenade around camp, listening to the hushed tones of lovers. Maple seeds spun earthward and squirrels rustled through the fallen detritus of autumn, looking for acorns. Around him, Laurence felt the summer dying by slow degrees, and he began to dread another winter in the camps. He was tired of the company of men.

  On his return to the tent, he was surprised to see Betsey standing alone near a loud, involved argument between Addison, Lyman Woodard, and Spider. Her expression of demure knowing had vanished, replaced by a wide-eyed uncertainty. Clapping the fan into her gloved palm, she gave Laurence a tremulous smile as he approached.

  Addison was reprimanding the two drunks for escaping camp to visit a house of ill repute. They had been warned three times not to leave the park, but they had disobeyed, despite the punishment of latrine duty that awaited them each morning when they returned. A few days before, Woodard had whispered to Laurence to come along and find a cyprian of his own. He himself was nightly enamored of a Negress whose tongue had been cut out by an overseer in South Carolina, and he told Laurence that one day he would return from the war and buy her freedom from the madam. In the meantime, he promised that there were women of every shape and description just longing to be bedded by a soldier. Although Laurence refused to go—for such excursions made disease rampant in the army—he envied his two comrades, especially when the other men’s sweethearts and wives began to visit, rustling and jangling their feminine way through the camp.

  Woodard’s sneer vanished as Addison grabbed his collar and threw him to his knees. Spider looked on, myopic, swaying slightly.

  “Mr. Lindsey,” Betsey said just as Addison loosed Woodard’s collar with a final shake.

  “One more time and Davey will have you lashed,” growled Addison. He appeared more handsome than ever, his red-blond hair a helmet of autumn light. In contrast, Woodard had come to resemble his cohort Spider, eyes bloodshot as an old man’s, his complexion tinged with purple.

  “Mr. Lindsey, if you would escort me to the gate,” Betsey said with trembling firmness, tucking her arm into his. Clearly, Addison’s heroism was lost on her. “I’d like to go.”

  “One more time,” said Woodard, and licked his lips, which were thinner now than they used to be. “That would make eight in eight days.” Even his voice had changed since the beginning of the war, the high nasal pitch permanently lowered by smoke and a lingering cough.

  “To the gate?” Laurence repeated dumbly as Betsey tugged on his coat.

  “If you please.” The dimples around her mouth had completely vanished.

  Obediently, Laurence led her away from the scene, his head down. He did not raise it when Addison called to them.

  “Betsey,” the sergeant pleaded. “Wait.”

  “Keep right on walking,” she ordered Laurence, a bright spot of color appearing on each cheek. Her fingers clutched the muscle above his elbow and he flexed it, wondering if she found his arm weaker than Addison’s, or if she noticed at all.

  “Don’t you think you should say good-bye?”

  “I come all this way,” Betsey replied as she stumbled on a tree root and righted herself. “I come all this way to see him, but I ain’t going to stay to watch him pick on a couple of fellows just to impress me.”

  “It’s a little more complicated than that,” said Laurence. They were nearing the iron gate to the park. He looked back, but Addison was nowhere in sight. “They were shirking, Miss Knox. They aren’t supposed to leave camp.”

  “The old one said they went out sight-seeing,” she protested. “Why does he have to punish them for that?”

  “There’s more than one kind of sight-seeing,” Laurence said, still hoping Addison would appear. The girl’s carefully tended hair had sagged a little during the afternoon and her round, uncomplicated face was marred by a frown. It was as if the glamorous Betsey Knox who had entered the camp that morning had been replaced by her plain younger sister. Laurence liked the replacement better.

  “But he’s changed all over, Mr. Lindsey. He’s not the same,” she explained slowly, as if speaking to a child.

  “You can’t expect a man to go to war and come back exactly like he was,” Laurence said.

  “He’s changed,” she repeated. “I don’t know him anymore, and I don’t think I have the strength to try.” She let go of his arm and gave him a stiff curtsy. “I thank you for the escort, Mr. Lindsey. Perhaps we will see each other again some day in Allenton.”

  Laurence responded with his own jerky bow. “I still think—” he began, but his advice was interrupted by Addison’s jogging approach.

  “Betsey,” Addison said, breathless. Laurence backed away. “I didn’t mean to scare you. Did I scare you?”

  “Good-bye, John Addison.” The young woman raised her chin, making her bonnet’s blue ribbons tighten. Her skirt swayed about her ankles as she turned toward the gate.

  “It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” he said to her, retreating form. The camp grew still, and the soldiers guarding the entrance blinked in the sunlight. “I was doing my duty. Can’t you see that?” he asked accusingly, but Betsey Knox did not slow her stride out into the busy New York lane. She raised her gloved hand and hailed the next passing hack, waiting with a set mouth as the driver dismounted and helped her onto the worn red cushion.

  After the hack jiggled away on high wheels, Addison spun on Laurence. “What did you say to her?” he demanded.

  “I was trying to tell her to stay,” Laurence insisted, folding his arms across his chest. “To wait for you.” He did not budge as his friend moved closer, assuming the old posture of the angry Gilbert, neck thrust out, hands flexing to fists.

  “I don’t believe you.”

  One of the soldiers at the gate sneezed and the other blessed him in a polite voice. They were new recruits from another company and they each had sweethearts who visited them daily. Veterans like Laurence and Addison were a mysterious tribe to the novices, full of their own language and custom.

  “You would have once,” said Laurence. Less than a foot remained between him
and Addison now. Laurence could see where the sergeant had nicked himself shaving that morning, and hard beads of blood dotted his chin.

  “Funny thing is,” Addison said softly as he halted, “I can’t understand why they don’t run off for good. That what gets me so riled.”

  He turned back to the ornate iron gate. The wind once again filled the camp, lifting up the pale undersides of the last remaining leaves. A long spray of dried mud ran down the back of the sergeant’s coat, like a road between two invisible destinations. “Once they go, why don’t they stay gone?” he demanded.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Because they could not light a fire, they invented a game to keep warm while they waited for battle, and played it in a small clearing beside the heap of knapsacks the Fifth Corps had left behind when they’d stripped for the charge. The two companies, Davey’s and the one filled mostly with new recruits, faced each other across some Virginia farmer’s abandoned woodlot. The opposing team had a balled sock they would try to advance across the clearing by tossing it to one another. Davey’s crowd could intercept, or could knock a man down after he caught it—but never before—and thereby gain possession. Then they could drive in the opposite direction. To reach the far oak on either side was to gain a point.

  No one knew who had invented the game, or its simple rules, of which one was tantamount: It had to be played in absolute silence. The Johnnies, who camped nearby beside a comfortable haze of fires, could not know of their presence. The Vermonters’ running steps, their waving arms, the grunts of one man tackling another—all had to be utterly quiet. Standing at the edge of the glen, the captains and sergeants watched, their arms folded across their chests. The men knew they would stop the game if a single noise were made, and so they played with silent, lunging desperation, their muscles screaming while their mouths knit shut over bloodied teeth.

  Alfred Loomis turned out to be the best player on Laurence’s side, for his height enabled him to reach above the others’ heads and his slowness melted away as it did in battle, replaced by a swift dexterity. The new recruits, in turn, had a quick Canadian with a knack for anticipating the movements of his opponents. His black hair beat against his cheeks as he sprinted for the far oak. Point for point, he and Loomis matched each other.