Confederates Don't Wear Couture

by Stephanie Kate Strohm

  “But you work in Boston,” I said. This was making no sense.

  “That is what I was trying to tell you on the phone,” Garrett said, “when you … hung up on me.” He narrowed his eyes ever so slightly at Beau. “About the Tuscaloosa News. It’s owned by the Boston Globe’s parent company. For weeks now, I’ve been combing every southern paper that the Boston Globe people own, trying to find something, anything, that could get me sent down south, on assignment or on a transfer. And when the Tuscaloosa News published that thing about the ghost of Anne Mitchell and the Fifteenth Alabama, I pitched it to my boss. And because I’d gotten the job because of the ghost thing last summer, they agreed to let me cover this.”

  “You came all the way down here to see me?” I asked in a little voice, my heart melting. I mean, really, talk about romantic! “You transferred from the Boston Globe to the Tuscaloosa News? For me?”

  “Technically, I transferred to the Tuscaloosa News in Alabama, the Spartanburg Herald-Journal in South Carolina, and the Lexington Dispatch in North Carolina. I now have a ghost-hunting, Civil War Unsolved Mysteries–type of column in every southern affiliate of the Boston Globe’s parent company. But, yes,” he said, and smiled, “for you.” I smiled back. “And, well, now I don’t have to sit on the floor,” he added wryly.

  I looked up at him, this sweet, wonderful, amazing boy I was lucky to call mine, and said, “Oh my God, what are you wearing?!”

  “What?!” He took a step back, like I’d splashed water on him. “Libby, what!? Are you serious?! I mean, I know you’re not crazy about my clothes, but this hardly seems like the time! I haven’t seen you in forever, and I thought we were having, I don’t know, a moment, or something.”

  “No, no, not that. Actually, that Ironman shirt’s not so bad. It’s one of your better ones. Is it new?” It really was nicer than his usual T-shirts, kind of cute, vintage print, and … argh! Focus! “No. That’s not what I mean. I mean the camp is closed to the public, and you can’t be here wearing modern clothes. You’ll get in trouble. You have to get out of here!”

  “Get out of here? Are you joking?” He looked at me with utter disbelief. “I just drove sixteen hours to see you!”

  “No, no, I want you here—you just can’t wear that and stay here! I mean, where were you planning to stay?”

  “Uh, here, I guess.” He shrugged. “I need to get to the bottom of this ghost thing, so I’ll have to set up a stakeout.”

  “I think we’ve got a fine handle on catchin’ the ghost ourselves,” Beau said evenly.

  “Yep, you guys have been doing a great job,” Garrett said sarcastically. “Which accounts for that second article about the ghost terrorizing two civilians, so-called ‘close, personal friends of Anderson,’ in the woods.”

  “There was a second article?” I asked. “How? Who’s telling the papers?”

  “OMG, we were in the newspaper?” Dev asked excitedly. “Was there a photo? Or a sketch of us? An artist’s rendering? Anything?”

  “No, Dev.” Garrett sighed.

  “Was my name at least in print?” Dev pouted.

  “No, Dev.” Garrett sighed again. “But it doesn’t matter. Now you’ll have official press coverage. And it’s not really ‘ketching’ the ghost that matters.” He looked levelly at Beau as he spoke. “I’m here to figure out why whoever is behind this is doing what they’re doing. To figure out what’s happening. Not to just catch it. It’s a lot more complex than that. It’s not like you can just tackle it.”

  “Well, actually, I can tackle it,” Beau said, implying that Garrett couldn’t.

  “Okay,” I said, before Garrett could reply. “This is a problem with an easy solution. All you really need is period clothes. I guess you’ll just have to join the unit, or something.”

  “I’m not joining this unit,” Garrett said flatly. “Not in a million years.”

  “What, you got a problem with Alabama?” Beau stepped forward menacingly.

  “No, I’ve got a problem with people glorifying the most obviously evil violation of human rights in the history of this messed-up country—”

  “What, you got a problem with America, now?” Beau interrupted. Oh, dear, this was not going well.

  “Hey, clown, what’re you doin’ with your arm around my woman?” Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, Cody charged menacingly up the lane.

  “Who are you?” Garrett looked down at Cody, who seemed about as tall as his bellybutton.

  “I’m Libby’s boyfriend.” Cody puffed up his chest. “Who’re you?” Cody looked him up and down.

  “Um, I’m Libby’s boyfriend.” Garrett shot me the most quizzical look in the history of quizzical looks. One eyebrow had traveled all the way up to his messy hairline, and the other had furrowed so deeply, it was below the plastic rim of his glasses.

  “You have got to be kiddin’ me.” Cody snorted. “Him? Really? This is some kinda weird Yankee joke.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding!” Garrett said. “Libby, if I knew you were doing God knows what with half the army, maybe I wouldn’t have come down here at all! I’m almost expecting them to burst out into ‘If You Knew Libby Like I Knew Libby’ in three-part harmony or something!”

  “Stop it! Just stop! You’re not my boyfriend!” I shouted. Garrett’s brow furrowed further. “No, no, not you.” I patted his chest reassuringly. “You are my boyfriend. He’s not my boyfriend!” I pointed at Cody. “I’m not a cradle robber! I don’t have a creepy The Suite Life of Zack and Cody fetish!”

  “This is the best summer ever,” Dev cackled joyously.

  “And Beau and I are just friends.” I stood up on my tiptoes so I was slightly closer to looking Garrett directly in the eyes. “Just friends. There’s nothing going on with him or with the midget. The only person I’m involved with is you. The only person I have feelings for is you. The only person I want to be with is you. Okay?”

  “Okay,” he muttered. It didn’t sound particularly convincing, however.

  “Garrett, you trust me, don’t you?” I asked, sort of hurt and surprised by how doubtful he sounded.

  “Yeah, yeah, I trust you.” His arm was still around me, and he kissed the top of my head, but it still really didn’t feel right. Why was he being so weird and suspicious?

  “Well, I’m really glad you’re here.” I squeezed his hand. “Really, really glad. And I don’t want you to leave. So where are you gonna stay?”

  “Um, I dunno.” He looked from Dev, to Beau, to Cody. “If I stay here, do I really have to wear a costume?”

  “’S not a costume,” Beau muttered. “It’s a uniform.”

  “Ah, yes, the pretend uniform of the imaginary army for the make-believe war,” Garrett said quietly. “Could a band of fairies weave one for me out of unicorn hair?”

  “Be nice,” I hissed. “But, yes, if you want to stay on the battlefield, you have to wear period dress.”

  “If I have to.” He sighed heavily. “Which way to the Union troops?” he asked pointedly, emphasizing “Union.”

  “Um, that way.” I pointed across the field. It was small enough that you could see them easily. “Are you just going to waltz over there and ask a unit of total strangers to take you in? Dressed like that?”

  “I’ve got a press pass. I’ll be fine. One of these units will be more than willing to cooperate for the press and let me stay with them and toss me something to wear, in exchange for a positive mention in the paper. Some people just love seeing their name in print.”

  “How dreadfully shallow,” Dev murmured, batting his eyelashes.

  “There’ll be a unit from Maine. I saw Gettysburg. There was that guy who went to Bowdoin, right? We studied him in school, as one of Maine’s heroes. They’ll be more than willing to, uh, take in a son of the native soil, I bet,” Garrett said, and hitched up the messenger bag that was flopping behind him. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then, Libby.”

  He walked off into the night, just as the bugle sounde
d for All-Quiet. Dev grabbed my hand, and I squeezed his tightly. Wordlessly, we walked off into the dark, toward Sutlers’ Row, leaving Beau standing alone in the lane.

  “So … you wanna talk about it?” Dev asked the minute he’d swished our tent flaps closed.

  “Not particularly.” I gritted my teeth as I contorted my arms around my back to try to undo the buttons. “Help me out of this, will you?”

  “Of course. You sure you don’t wanna talk about this?” he asked skeptically.

  “Pretty sure.” Once I was in my shift, I flopped onto my cot, staring up at the dark muslin top of the tent. This just felt like an impending disaster. And it should have been perfect! Spending the summer in hoop skirts with my best friend, my boyfriend, and a new friend who was an even bigger history nerd than I was? It should have been great … but it felt like everything was about to go wrong.

  “If you’re sure …” Dev flopped onto his own cot.

  After a few minutes of silence, I exploded. “I just don’t get it!”

  “Don’t get what?!” Dev propped himself up.

  “I’ve been, like, perfectly faithful, haven’t I?”

  “Perfectly,” Dev grumbled. “Annoyingly so. Boringly so.”

  “Like a model girlfriend, right?”

  “If you were a model girlfriend, you would have been doing coke and screwing pro athletes. Which would have been a lot more interesting. So, no. Not a model girlfriend.”

  “You know what I mean.” I reached over to try to smack him, but my arms were a hair too short to reach across the tent from my cot.

  “Yes, I know what you mean, and, yes, you’ve been a very good girl.” He sighed heavily.

  “Then why was Garrett being so weird?” I asked plaintively.

  “Are you kidding?” Dev asked. “Please. It’s so obvious. It’s like textbook trust issues. This is the kind of ‘Dear Cosmo’ that writes itself. You said his ex-girlfriend cheated on him, right?”

  “Yeah,” I said warily. Dev clearly had a better memory for gossip than I did, even when I was more involved in it than he was.

  “So he’s obviously afraid you’re going to do the same thing and cheat on him, too. He has trouble trusting women now. Especially in the company of handsome manly-man, good old Southern soldier-boy history buffs.”

  “Well, okay, maybe, but that’s not fair,” I argued. “I would never cheat on Garrett. I’m not his ex-girlfriend. I’m not Hannah Ho-Bag. He has absolutely no reason to be suspicious of Beau.”

  “I didn’t say it was fair; I said that’s what it was.” I heard a rustling sound that I assumed was Dev shrugging. “Did you really hang up on him because Beau was there?”

  “It wasn’t like that,” I said with a grimace. “I just didn’t want any of the reenactors to see me with a cell phone.” I rolled over, away from Dev, to face the wall.

  “Okay,” Dev said quietly. I was already pretending to be asleep.

  After a restless night, we woke to the sound of yelling.

  “I’m knockin’ on your tent!” It sounded like Cody. “I’m carefully and respectfully announcin’ my presence, so I suggest you cover yourself, Libby.”

  “What the what,” Dev mumbled, staggering toward the tent flaps in his union suit. “Why do we only get awoken in the most unpleasant of manners? They might as well just start throwing buckets of water in our faces.” He pulled open the tent flap. “Yes, tiny gremlin?”

  “Sorry to disturb you, Gramps,” Cody said. “But you’re gonna wanna see this.”

  Carefully pulling my quilt up to cover any see-through parts, I followed Cody’s pointing arm. There was a large cluster of men standing around one spot in the Confederate camp. Sutlers’ Row was right in between the Confederate and Union camps, and because the field was so small, we had a pretty good view of both.

  “What are they all doing?” I asked. I mean, random clumps of men were de rigueur here, but not that many, and not all in one place.

  “Y’all’re gonna wanna see for yourselves,” Cody advised. “Put on some clothes and scoot.”

  “Don’t tell me to scoot,” Dev said imperiously. “I’ll come when I’m good and ready.” He swished the tent flaps closed. “All right, let’s go hurry and see what this is.”

  Dev helped me into a plaid day dress with a white Peter Pan collar before pulling on his own pants, shirt, suspenders, and plaid neckerchief. He hauled me out of the tent and dragged me into the field until we stood, breathless, on the outskirts of a cluster surrounding one Confederate tent.

  Using skills honed by years of elbowing people in the face to get to the front row of Lady Gaga concerts, Dev effortlessly pushed us to the front of the crowd. Beau and Captain Cauldwell were standing there, regarding the tent with dismayed looks on their faces. Painted smack in the middle of the tent, in what looked like more chicken blood, was an upside-down star inside a circle. An inverted pentagram. I shuddered.

  “This is your tent, I take it,” I said, patting Beau’s arm.

  He nodded grimly.

  “Excuse me, excuse me.” From somewhere back in the crowd, Garrett pushed his way toward the front. “Hey,” he muttered breathlessly, moving in to stand next to me as Dev wandered over to examine the tent more closely. “Dammit, I can’t believe I missed this,” he added in an undertone, running his hands through his hair. He’d made the minimum concession possible to period costume, wearing navy wool pants and a button-down plaid shirt. It wouldn’t have looked totally bizarre on a modern street corner, but he was technically historically accurate. “Ghost strikes again. I should’ve been over here.”

  “An upside-down star? What is this, like, the stupidest ghost ever?” Dev asked, peering at the bloody pentagram. “Doesn’t it know what a star looks like? Only one point points up.”

  “It’s an inverted pentagram,” Garrett explained. “It’s meant to call upon evil spirits and draw them to us.”

  “Primarily popularized by Aleister Crowley, the Satan-worshiping occultist, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,” Beau chimed in.

  “The inverted pentagram had been an invocation of evil long before Crowley,” Garrett challenged.

  “Wasn’t sayin’ it wasn’t,” Beau shot back.

  Sheesh. What was this, a nerd-off? If it had been a joust or something, it might have been flattering or romantic, but this was just lame.

  “All right, everyone,” Captain Cauldwell yelled. “Let’s give the boy some space. We’ve got a raid to get under way. Move it. Let’s move it.”

  Gradually, muttering, the crowd dispersed, until only Beau, Garrett, Dev, and I remained in front of the satanic tent.

  “So, do you have any idea who’s doing this?” Garrett asked stiffly after a few minutes.

  “If I did, I’d’ve caught him by now, wouldn’t I?” Beau replied testily.

  “I mean, it could really be anyone,” Dev said, jumping in. “No one would ever notice, because you guys go to sleep mad early.” I shot Dev a look. “What?! They do! All-Quiet lights out is like ten p.m. at the latest. That’s just insane.”

  “He has a point,” I agreed.

  “Thank you.” Dev sighed. “Wanna help me make a ‘Later Bedtime’ petition?”

  “No, not that.” I shook my head. “The camp is very quiet at night, and All-Quiet hours are strictly enforced. People take them very seriously. No one leaves their tent. Anyone could be running around and doing this.”

  “Hmm.” Garrett pulled out a pen and used it to scratch his head meditatively. “Anyone here who doesn’t like you? Got a problem with you? Issues? A grudge?”

  “Not until yesterday when you showed up,” Beau muttered. “Naw, the men seem to like me fine,” Beau said at a normal volume. “Well, Randall’s got some problems with me, maybe, what with the rank issue, but he’d never do anythin’ like this. That kid would take a real bullet for this unit.”

  “Randall?” Garrett extracted a notebook from somewhere and started feverishly scribbling. “Wh
o’s that? And rank issues? What’s that?”

  “Hell, I don’t have time for this.” Beau gestured toward the field. “I can’t stand around and answer these dumb questions that have nothin’ to do with anythin’.”

  “I can explain,” I offered quickly.

  “Good,” Beau said, nodding. “The men are formin’ a line for the raid.”

  “Oh, of course. By all means. Go ahead. I understand. If you don’t hurry, the South might … lose,” Garrett said drily. “Oh, wait …”

  The two of them glared at each other for a moment before Beau ran off. Dev cackled audibly.

  “Can you please try to be nice?” I asked quietly, touching Garrett’s arm.

  “I’m being perfectly nice,” he said stubbornly. “It was a joke. I can’t help it if no one has a sense of humor down here. Or understands sarcasm. God, it’s worse than I thought. I don’t know how you’ve survived.”

  “It’s not so bad.” I shrugged. “But it’s better now that you’re here,” I said, taking his hand.

  “Vomit.” Dev rolled his eyes. “I’ll see you guys later.” He sashayed up toward the battle.

  “So you found a unit?” I asked once Dev had gone.

  “Yep.” We strolled up the lane toward the battle together, holding hands. “I joined the Twentieth Maine Volunteer Infantry. I remembered them from that Gettysburg movie our AP U.S. history teacher showed us after we took the exam. They’re pretty cool, actually.”

  “Yeah?” I smiled. Garrett had never really taken much of an interest in history before. But maybe now that he was actually living it, he’d understand just how cool it really was. Maybe I’d converted him!

  “Yeah.” We arrived at the top of the hill, where the skirmish had already begun. “See, at Gettysburg, the Twentieth Maine was in charge of holding down this hill called Little Round Top. They were all the way at the end of the line, alone. No one could help them out. And then Little Round Top came under heavy attack from the Fifteenth Alabama.”

  I shot Garrett a quick look. He was looking stonily down at the battlefield, at Beau’s unit, which was, of course, the Fifteenth Alabama. “They—they did, huh?” I asked nervously. I mean, what are the odds?