The Last Full Measure

by Ann Rinaldi

  Joel had told me that most of the army's reasoning was insane, that there had been nothing but insanity behind Lee's reasoning for Pickett's Charge.

  So there on the tenth of August, Josie and I had Mama on the floor in the hallway, having fainted with the telegram in her hand that told her Pa had been killed. And Josie and I were kneeling over her. All because the Union army had to go south of the Rappahannock with the cavalry to mark the end of the Gettysburg Campaign.

  They had to mark its end?

  They hadn't had enough?

  No. A whole week the Yankees had to run after them, the cavalry with swords flashing, to have what they called "action," which was their fancy word for killing.

  And Pa had to go along. We found out later that it was his own idea. That he'd volunteered to go. Oh, this family is wonderful in the art of volunteering. Josie and I figured out that he went along to be near Brandon and Joel because he'd lost David and he was blaming himself for that. Oh, this family is wonderful in the art of guilt, too.

  So there was Pa, all set up with other doctors in a tent hospital. But unlike the other doctors, he volunteered to run out of the tent when the fighting died down to help bring the wounded in.

  Because he'd heard one of the wounded was Brandon.

  But the thing is, the battle was not yet completely over. A Rebel sniper fired at Pa from somewhere in the bushes. And everyone, from both North and South, knows you don't shoot at doctors. Because if that same sniper were wounded and lying half dead on the ground, or even half alive, Pa would have gone to his aid and fixed him up, proper-like. Everybody knows that.

  But this Rebel sniper shot Pa dead, right there on the field. And somebody else brought Brandon in.

  And here is where what David once said comes into it.

  "God has a sense of humor," David once told me.

  I must agree with him.

  Brandon was slashed in the leg by a Rebel cavalry officer. His cavalry days were over.

  We were advised of that by another telegram, which arrived on the eleventh of August. The United States Army, or whichever entity was responsible for sending such matter through the mails, was considerate enough not to let the two telegrams arrive on the same day.

  So you see why, when I went back to the Young Ladies' Seminary in September, I did not give an owl's hoot whether it is spelled sugar cain or sugar cane. As a matter of fact, I think I shall spell it sugar cain for the rest of my life.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  GOD'S SENSE OF humor has gone beyond all perception of bounds. And if I am to be consigned to hell for this, then so be it.

  When we buried Pa, he and Mama were married twenty-seven years to the day. In 1836, back in Richmond, Virginia.

  I wondered, standing there in the cemetery while the reverend read the prayer about the valley of death, if Mama minded that this was her wedding anniversary.

  She was standing between Joel and Brandon, leaning on Joel, because Brandon was leaning on his sword. He was still in his uniform and he could scarce hold himself up.

  Josie stood a bit apart with Marvelous and her mother and daddy.

  Around us were near a hundred people who'd known Pa. Someone was playing a violin. Pa was being buried right next to David. And although it was the middle of a bright August afternoon, many of the mourners held lighted candles.

  I looked up at Brandon. I touched the sleeve of his short cavalryman's jacket that tucked into his black pistol belt. "Brandon," I said softly.

  He looked down at me and smiled.

  "Today is Mama and Pa's wedding anniversary," I whispered.

  He nodded. He knew. But he lifted a hand and put his forefinger across my lips and shook his head no.

  I saw Brandon's wound. I saw Joel dress it. Brandon had claimed that it was "just a scratch." "I don't know why they made such a fuss about it," he said. "I don't know why they mustered me out."

  "It cut into your muscle," Joel told him, "that's why. You're lucky it didn't cut into the bone."

  I saw where it had been stitched up, saw the ugly red mass and covered my mouth and said "Oh" before my brothers even realized I was in Joel's room. He was kneeling at Brandon's feet. Brandon was on the bed, his pant leg shoved all the way above his knee. Both were startled and looked up.

  Joel scowled. "Now," he said sternly, "you just turn yourself around and get out of here, miss."

  When Joel was displeased with me he called me "miss."

  "I just wanted to make sure Brandon is all right."

  "He's going to be home from now on. You have plenty of time to make sure. Go." The tone was as severe as I'd ever heard from Joel, who'd always spoiled me.

  I turned, crying at the rebuke, and fled.

  Later he came to me and kissed me. "I'm sorry I scolded," he said. "It's difficult for all of us with Pa gone and Brandon temporarily incapacitated. The family structure is broken. We're all fumbling around, trying to put it together again."

  Joel had to report back within a week, but he and Brandon had long confabs, some with Mama, before he left. I begged not to go back to school, but Mama was adamant and my brothers laid down the law.

  "They won't hear of your staying home," Mama said.

  They? We were sitting around the parlor on a pleasant August evening with the windows open and the lace curtains fluttering, for there was something unusual happening. An August breeze that hinted of fall. Fall, with all the anguished summer memories to be forgotten.

  They? My brothers were sipping coffee. Brandon had already had a visit from Dr. Henry Baugher, president of the Pennsylvania College, asking him to come back to his old teaching position as soon as he was able.

  They? I looked at the faces, one at a time, of my mama and then Joel and Brandon.

  "What do you mean they, Mama?" I asked. "You know I love Brandon and Joel, but since when are they making the decisions?"

  I saw Brandon lower his head and try to hide a smile. Joel didn't try to hide it. He leaned back in the chair instead and lit a cheroot.

  "Well, darling," Mama said in her most reasonable voice, "you know how it is out there in the world. Women are always better off when men run things. In matters of money and commerce and all decisions that have to do with lawyers and legal matters, why, it's always so much better when men run things. Women are treated with hostile attitudes when they try to take over the place of men. Your father knew this, and so he set things up in his will. That when he died, your older brothers were to be in charge of your welfare."

  I nodded slowly.

  "When I grow up," I said, "the world is going to be a different place. Women are going to be allowed to do things."

  "You mean," Joel asked, "that you don't like the idea of us looking after you?"

  "I thought you loved us," from Brandon. He looked at his brother. "Fickle," he said. "See that? Didn't I tell you all women are fickle?"

  Joel nodded. "You were right. But then, you usually are when it comes to women. Remember that girl back in—"

  "Never mind." Brandon stopped him short.

  Tears came into my eyes. I'd hurt their feelings. Joel was going away to fight and Brandon was wounded. I ran first to Joel, threw myself into his lap, and hugged him. "I'd rather have nobody else," I told him. "And you just take care of yourself."

  I held him tight, then ran to Brandon, sat on the arm of his chair, and flung my arms around his neck. "You won't be sorry," I said.

  "I know that, or I would have turned down the job."

  He tweaked my nose. "Though something tells me I'll have a lot of work to do."

  He smiled again and it came to me. Today, this evening in this parlor, was the first time he'd smiled since he'd come home wounded. Something told me that I had a lot of work to do, too.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  IT WAS MAMA who noticed the chilling distance that had developed between me and Marvelous. And she went and told Brandon that something was not right between us.

  Soon after Joel left, Bra
ndon spoke to me about it.

  He'd been staying quiet a lot, healing his leg and studying, getting his work ready for the classes he was going to teach when he went back to the college. Literature, history, and philosophy.

  Mama had been busying herself making me new dresses for when I returned to school. There was a shortage of good fabric, but her sister in Philadelphia had sent some.

  She was even sewing up some frocks for Marvelous, who was being tutored privately by a Quaker woman, along with two other negro girls in Gettysburg.

  "Have you and Marvelous had a fight?" Mama asked me one day when she was pinning up the hem of one of my dresses.

  "No, Mama."

  "You don't talk so much anymore. And you used to help her with her reading."

  I shrugged. "She doesn't want me to," I lied. "She wants to see if she can do it herself. She feels uncomfortable because she doesn't read as well as I do."

  Mama gave me a cautious look but said nothing. My mama is not stupid. She knew I was lying.

  That evening when Marvelous had gone over to the church to have supper with her mother, as usual, Mama went with her, which was not usual, and it was only me and Brandon and Josie at the table.

  After supper Mama and I, Brandon, and Josie would always retire to the parlor to catch up on things. This evening Josie excused herself and I was left with my brother.

  He wasted no time. "Would you get me that ottoman for my leg, honey? I like to prop it up."

  I fetched it and set it before him. As I did, he held my wrist, pulled me down, and set me on the ottoman. "We have to talk," he said.

  "What did I do?"

  He smiled. "Don't look so guilty. I don't know if you did anything. Ma is concerned. She says you and Marvelous aren't getting on anymore. Is this true?"

  "Oh, that."

  "Then it is true. Is there a problem?"

  Tears came into my eyes. "I don't know, Brandon. If there is, I don't know if I can even talk about it."

  "That bad, huh?"

  Now the tears started down my face. I looked at him appealingly. "It's terrible, Brandon, it's just terrible!"

  He took out a handkerchief and wiped my face. "Why don't you just try telling me. Maybe it isn't so terrible after all."

  "Do you promise not to tell Mama? Or anybody?"

  He hesitated a moment, then nodded yes.

  I sniffed then, and told him. "I love Marvelous. Always have. We've always been best friends. Until—" I had to stop to stifle a sob and begin again. "Until the day the telegram came that told us Pa was killed." I stopped and looked at him.

  He did not understand. He raised his eyebrows and waited.

  "And then the next day the one came about you being wounded. Mama went crazy. You don't know what she was like, Brandon. You don't know what it was like for me and Josie."

  He was eyeing me carefully, nodding his head slowly.

  "What," he asked, "has all this to do with Marvelous?"

  I lowered my head, aware that he was watching me studiously, aware also that he already knew what it had to do with Marvelous but waiting to hear it from me.

  I did not answer. I could not answer.

  "Tell me, Tacy," he said.

  "You already know," I accused.

  "I want to hear you say the words."

  "Why?"

  "Because if you can think them, you can say them. And if you say them, you will realize how stupid they sound. So say them. Now. To me."

  "I started to realize then," I choked, half crying, "that Pa was killed and, and you, you were wounded, because of the war. And—" I hiccupped. "I can't, can't, Brandon..."

  "Say the words, Tacy."

  "...and the war happened to free the Negroes. And so I didn't like her anymore. Because it was on account of her and her kind. So there, I've said it, damn you!"

  I burst into full-fledged crying then and started to get up, but he grabbed my arm and wouldn't let me. He leaned forward in the chair, put his arms around me, and held me fast.

  I leaned against him, bawling. He patted my back, my hair. He shushed me.

  "Am I bad?" I asked.

  "No, you're just confused. We all are. We're all questioning things we hold dear and those we love. We have to, because everything we know is on the line and we're being tested, and when we come through, and we will, we'll all be stronger. And we'll find the things we hold dear and those we love will still be there, better than always."

  "I'm so glad you're here, Brandon, I really am."

  "So am I."

  "You're not going to punish me for saying 'damn you'?"

  "Next time," he said, "I promise."

  I drew back to look at him. "I don't really dislike Marvelous or blame her for anything. I was more afraid of myself because I was thinking that way."

  "Then you make it up to Marvelous," he said. "Promise me."

  "How?"

  "You'll think of a way. Just promise me."

  So I did.

  * * *

  EPILOGUE

  IN LATE AUGUST Brandon received a circular from the lawyer who had handled Pa's will, Mr. David McConaughy.

  I usually took in the mail, and so I stood next to Brandon while he read it.

  "Mr. McConaughy," he told me, "is also the president of the Board of Evergreen Cemetery."

  What McConaughy and a man named David Wills wanted was land laid aside in Gettysburg for a national cemetery for the men killed in the battle.

  A note that came, too, said that the circular was sent only to "the town's most prominent citizens." McConaughy wanted a Memorial Association to oversee the operation. And he wanted Brandon to be on it.

  Between his teaching and his meetings for the new cemetery, Brandon was very busy. And several of the meetings were held at our house.

  The meeting at which Mr. Wills came up with the idea to invite President Lincoln took place there. I remember that Mr. Wills was eating my chocolate cake when he said this.

  The date was set for November 19, 1863.

  ***

  BECAUSE HE WAS on the Memorial Association, my brother Brandon was at the train station in Gettysburg the day President Abraham Lincoln came to our town at six in the evening.

  He met the president, shook his hand, and was introduced as a war hero.

  Mama was on one of the committees to plan the food to feed the thousands of people who came. Every house had opened its doors to supply sandwiches and coffee and cake, and Josie and Marvelous and I were stationed at our house to do so.

  The weather was mild for a November day. Our house was dressed up in American flags. Cassie wore a red, white, and blue kerchief around her neck.

  But first we had to go to hear the president's speech, all of us.

  I did not hear it, though I was there, right next to Josie.

  I did not hear, at ten a.m. the next day, the words that were to become so famous, the words people would never forget. Because right after "Four score and seven years ago," Josie whispered to me the words I would never forget.

  "Tacy," she said, "I have to tell you. I'm pregnant. I'm going to have David's baby."

  ***

  AND SO IT was that we would, henceforth, have a little bit of David with us always.

  Mama was happy, Brandon was happy, and I was happy. And Josie continued to live with us, though Mama refused to have her work for us anymore and had to hire someone else instead.

  She hired a woman named Nancy Buckrin, who had been a nurse during the war and gone everywhere from working for Dorothea Dix in Washington, to the fields of Antietam, to Gettysburg. She was thirty-five years old and after Gettysburg had seen enough, she told Brandon, who interviewed and hired her. And she did not wish either to marry or to go home to New York State, but she wanted the comfort of being with a family.

  There are so many things to say that I could go on forever, but I will say only that the war went on for two more years. That Brandon and Emily Sedgwick did not wed, for she'd never come back from that trip
to Philadelphia, never inquired after him when he was wounded. But now he is seeing Isabella McKay, only daughter of one of the professors at the college.

  Brandon has proved to be very good to me, very kind. As I said, we never argue. When I do something not to his liking he can be quietly stern, but never as much as when I sass Mama. He will simply not abide that for any reason.

  I love him so, that I go out of my way not to offend him. We are good friends.

  As for Marvelous, the only way I can put it is that she is the sister I never had.

  There are things that should be put down here.

  The young officer Lieutenant Stover, who gave me his sword to keep that day so long ago, never came back for it, so I suppose he was killed. I have the sword still. Brandon said I should keep it.

  About Culp's Hill. The Culps, for whom the hill was named, had two sons, Wesley and William. Before the war, Wesley left Gettysburg and went south, where he married a Southern girl and lived in Virginia. When the war came he enlisted in the Second Virginia. He died in the fight on Culp's Hill. His brother William enlisted in the Eighty-seventh Pennsylvania.

  ***

  IN AUGUST we learned that Johnston Hastings Skelly, who was engaged to wed Jennie Wade, and who was with the Eighty-seventh Pennsylvania Volunteers, had been shot at Winchester, Virginia, on the fifteenth of June, two weeks before the battle of Gettysburg. Jennie Wade had never received word of it. Skelly died on the twelfth of July and he did not know that Jennie was already dead.

  Joel came home to us unscarred from the war, and went back to medical school.

  Josie's baby was a boy. She named him David.

  People are coming to our town in droves to go to the battlefields for specimens. Everyone wants a relic of Gettysburg. On November 16, the Compiler ran an article that said, "The trunks of two trees have been sent from the battlefield of Gettysburg (Culp's Hill) for the Pennsylvania and Massachusetts historical societies. One of them has two hundred and fifty bullet holes in the space of twenty-one feet, and the other one hundred and ten in the same space. These specimens attest to the fierceness of the fighting."