by Jeff Mann
Drew’s face crumples. My poor boy.
I rise. “Miss Tessa—”
“I ain’t finished, son. Fetch yourselves more coffee and set down. We got a lot yet to discuss.”
I do what our hostess says, my heart pounding.
“Can you imagine? I’m surprised a Christly lady like her didn’t drop down dead. Just drop down dead. And wake in the bright arms of her Maker. For what she saw was—two men much like you brave boys—their bodies commingling—they were sodomites.” Tessa slams her palm down on the table. Drew and I both flinch. “Law! Then it was a free-for-all! She went a’tearing down them stairs. Her husband wouldn’t believe her. Told her he knew soldiers, that those boys was soldiers indeed, and surely not guilty of such a horrid crime. Then, pore thing, what was she to do, with a doubting Thomas like that? So she runs outside, and she finds her a trio of Yankee troopers and she sets those bluecoats on ’em like her own pack of hunting dogs. There was a grand chase then. Those sodomites narrowly escaped being gunned down. The whole town’s up in arms. Biggest piece of news round these parts since Hunter came through!”
Tessa sits back, shakes her head, and takes a sip of coffee. “Was those sodomites y’all?” Her manner is so casual it defies all expectations. “The description of them soldiers fits y’all right close.”
“M-miss Tessa,” I stutter. “Please don’t think…”
“One other thing. Mr. Harman warned me they were headed up this valley. Said they claimed to be privates in the Confederate army. As if rank sinners like sodomites, all et up with such monstrous, womanly weakness, would ever be man enough to carry arms! He said their names was Ian Campbell and Drew Conrad. Ain’t those the names you two gave me?”
“Yes. Those are our names.” Drew’s voice is that of a frightened child. He stands, head bowed. “We’ll leave now. We’re so, so sorry…”
“So you are those boys indeed?” She studies us intently, with an expression not of scorn but of curiosity. “Then y’all ain’t leaving. I’m detaining you here a while.”
Tessa rises. To my relief, she makes no move toward her rifle. Instead, she shuffles over to the sink. In it is a brownish pink lump soaking in water. She pats it.
“I believes we’re going to have us some ham and fried taters for supper tonight. And some of the whiskey Mr. Harman brought. And I’m a’going to bake us a bread pudding to celebrate. We’ll make us a little sauce for it out of that applejack, if y’all have enough left.”
“Celebrate? W-we don’t understand.” I stand now. “If you’re so convinced we’re the…sodomites…why…?”
“Why ain’t I fetching ole Laurie from the closet and driving you boys out into the snow? Treating you like the folks in New Castle did? Like that angel with the flaming sword did those fallen sinners, Adam and Eve?”
“Y-yes, ma’am,” I stutter. “We’re surely relieved at your reaction, but we’re real perplexed too.”
“Because I been waiting to meet mens like you all my days. As has Lorena Mae.”
“Lorena Mae? Who’s that?” Drew asks.
“Before I answers you, boy, you answers me a question. Little Ian here, is he your man?”
“Yes.” Drew’s brow bunches. He steps around the table and rests his hand on my shoulder. “We been through a lot together; we come a long way. He’s saved my life. I ain’t going to deny him.”
“As Peter did Christ? No, I suppose you won’t. And Mr. Ian, is this big blond soldier your man?”
“Yes, Miss Tessa. He is. He’s saved my life as well.”
“So y’all loves each other. Like David and Jonathan. Like brothers, but more than brothers.”
“Yes, ma’am,” mumbles Drew. “That about sums it up.”
“And Mrs. Pendleton saw what she said she saw?”
“Yes,” Drew responds. “We won’t deny that either.”
“Well, then. To answer your question, Mr. Drew, Lorena Mae’s my woman. That’s why that tune on the dulcimore, ‘Lorena,’ saddens me, for I long for her so. We’s devoted to each other the way Ruth and Naomi was. Have been for years now. And we been looking for other folk—mens or womens—who love the way we do. You boys—the good Lord surely directed y’all this way!—are the first we’ve found.”
I swallow hard. Drew gasps and gapes.
Tessa steps closer and offers us her hands. Drew takes her right; I take her left. “None of them rabid-dog devout sorts from New Castle will bother you boys. I didn’t tell Mr. Harman y’all were here. So may I expect y’all to stay to dinner? That ham’ll be right tasty, I promise.”
“Yes, oh yes!” Drew says, eyes wet and wide with relief. “But your friend, Lorena Mae. Where is she?”
“She’s at the front, son. Company K, Fourth Regiment, one of the Montgomery Mountain Boys.”
“Ma’am?” I say. “You mean—? Mr. Martin is—?”
“Lorena Mae Martin. She looks awful handsome in her gray uniform. Looks the spitting image of her poor brother, Mr. Ferrell, God rest his sweet soul. They fought side by side, till Mr. Ferrell fell at Glendale, when McClellan and his men were a’trying to take Richmond. Why don’t y’all stir up that fire and I makes us another pot of coffee? Then I’ll tell y’all a story I bet you ain’t never heard before, about a lady soldier and a black woman and how they come to love.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
The snow’s stopped now, but wind hammers the walls, whining down the chimney and roaring in the great trees about the house. Tessa rocks in her chair. The nervous little dog’s huddled in her lap, staring at us with vague suspicion. Drew and I sit side by side on the love seat, a blanket warming our laps and legs.
“You soldier boys is downright precious,” Tessa says. “Me and Lorena Mae always wondered about mens who were enamored of mens, how they’d look. Go ahead now, if you want. You’s out of harm’s way.”
“Ma’am?” Drew’s face is still a picture of amazement after Tessa’s revelation.
“You wants to hold hands, don’t you? I seen young folks in love. I studied the way y’all looks at each other. Lorena and I, we’s always snuggling like turtle doves. You all’s safe here.”
Smiling, I scoot closer to Drew. With a deep sigh of thanks, he takes my hand.
“I suspect this will be one of few places in all the world we can feel safe, Miss Tessa,” says Drew. “One of the few places we can lay down our heavy secret. What happened in New Castle was terrible. That lady treated us like heroes of the South at first, then treated us like dangerous animals after she…saw us together. She called us abominations.”
“I can imagine, son. I didn’t mean to be laughing at y’all earlier. It’s just that I’ve done encountered Mrs. Pendleton a few times, and she carries herself terrible high and talks mean to black folks, so I must admit—Lord forgive me—to taking some pleasure in her reported discomfort. Lorena Mae and I knows ’bout secrets. Always telling lies. Always afeard we’ll be found out. Lord, folks we’ve known and liked for years could very well come up here with torches and rifles if they knew. Lorena used to have nightmares about it.”
“It’s a hard way to live, ma’am.” I nod and frown. “If Mr. Pendleton hadn’t had second thoughts and let us escape, his wife would have gladly turned us over to those Yanks. We would have ended up hanged or shot, for sure.”
“So, tell us, Miss Tessa, please? About you and Lorena Mae?” Drew wraps an arm around me. “Ian and me, we’ve only known each other a few weeks, but it sounds like you and her have been together for a good while.”
“Talking about Lorena makes me sad, since I miss her so terrible bad, but it also makes me happy, to remember our days together, and somehow it helps me hope that soon she’ll be home safe and the war will be over. Well, now. It was ten years ago we met. Her brother Ferrell had got into some business, traveled down to Savannah from Richmond, spent time in Mr. Pinckney’s house. Lorena come with him. I was a housemaid of Mr. Pinckney’s—he’d owned my mother till she died of the croup when I was onl
y nine. He weren’t a bad man, treated his slaves good, though he was addled half the time, he was so caught up in his ledgers and his dockside businesses. Ferrell and Lorena spent several weeks with him.”
Tessa takes a long sip of coffee, leans back, and closes her eyes, smiling faintly. “I was directed to show Miss Lorena ’bout the town. Lord, she loved the ’zaleas, the pretty squares, the fountain in Forsyth Park. And she loved the way Mr. Pinckney’s cook, Agnes, brewed iced tea and made shrimp and grits and red rice. My girl always had an appetite, though it never shows, the way it always has on me.” Tessa pats a broad hip. “But Lorena, praise God, likes her women ‘voluptuous,’ that’s her fancy word, a fact that’s only been to my benefit.
“Look here, now,” she says, beckoning us over. She pulls from beneath her dress a golden locket. When she opens it, we see a curl of blonde hair. “Lorena’s hair is as golden as yours, Mr. Drew. That’s her image over there.” She points to a portrait atop a bookshelf. Within the frame are a thin young man with pale yellow hair and a square jaw, and a woman who much resembles him, with blonde hair curling about her face.
“Ferrell and Lorena Mae. They was twins. That’s why they favor each other so. Well, in Savannah Lorena Mae and me grew mighty fond of one another…and Mr. Pinckney was having some money problems, and Mr. Ferrell had some money on his hands, so Lorena, she convinced him to buy me. They took me back to Richmond. Lived up the hill from the Capitol, pretty brick townhouse with white columns. They was fairly well off, thanks to Mr. Ferrell’s business smarts. I used to help Lorena dress for their fancy parties. Lord. Out she’d come, with her golden hair all up in a twist, and spangles on her ears, rustling ’round in those big dresses of pearl-gray and violet…her bosoms, the shape of her hips… Her eyes was blue as summer skies, her lashes so long…boys, I couldn’t keep my eyes off her. Lord, I can see her now!”
Tessa pauses, gazing into the fire. When she looks up, her eyes are wet but her lips are curled into a mischievous smile. “There was that time that Mr. Edwin…she called him a popinjay, that popinjay cousin of hers came to town, and grabbed my breast, and tried to force me into a bedroom. She came looking for me, found him a’pulling my dress off my shoulder and me begging him to stop. Lorena, she had her a delicate fan with little Chinese scenes on it—it was the prettiest thing, pretty fan for a pretty woman—she broke that thing ’cross his face and then she drew her little arm back and swung and launched that boy across the bed! Ferrell apologized and apologized to him. That popinjay—Lorena had a nasty mouth when she was crossed, she called him a ‘frigging fop’—that fop, he never darkened our door again. Lorena always was stronger than Ferrell. Poor boy was like his late mother, always scared to death about what folks would say. Lorena, she never cared a whit about that.”
“How’d y’all get all the way up on this mountain, Miss Tessa?” I ask, snuggling closer to Drew. “It’s a far ways from Richmond.”
She chuckles. “Lord Jesus, you two together is just adorable. Please, Lord, bring my Lorena home, not just to share our bed and to eat my cooking till her breasts plump out again, but to meet you honey boys! Well, we’s indeed a far piece from Richmond. Lorena loved the woods. She and Ferrell had grown up in these mountains before Ferrell—they were both book-smart—went to university in Charlottesville and set up business in Richmond and Lorena moved down to run his house and see how she liked the city. They bought this cabin for a summer escape—to get away from the hot summers in Richmond. Then the war broke out. They left me here to keep up the place, put an aunt in charge of the Richmond home, and joined up with those Montgomery Mountain Boys.”
Tessa shakes her head and chortles. “Mercy, what a scene, that night that Lorena told Ferrell that she was going to dress up like a man and volunteer for the army. They argued and argued, as you might imagine—I was listening, right upstairs. Ferrell weren’t going to see any sister of his go to war, he said, but Lorena, she was just as stubborn, threw a wine glass against the wall, said she weren’t going to sit in a Richmond drawing room sipping cordials and munching cheese straws while ‘the goddamn Yankees’—as I said, her language got awful harsh when she was riled up—was swarming over the Rappahannock and the Rapidan and the Potomac determined to gut the South—those were her words, like Mr. Lincoln was ’bout to take a bayonet to us all.”
Tessa stops long enough to take another sip of coffee. “Then poor Mr. Ferrell, he knew he was overmatched, no one can tell Lorena anything when she has her mind set—believe me, honeys, after loving that women all these years, I know—he fell silent, and pretty soon Lorena had me in the bathroom with her, a’helping her cut her beautiful hair short. I begged her not to go—I was in love with her by then, though I hadn’t admitted it—but she wouldn’t listen to me neither. The next day those twins, they give me my freedom, and then they went down the mountain and volunteered. I cried for days. I stayed up here, as I’d promised. Lorena wanted me here, high up in Giles County, out the way of the war, since the Yankees was always a’trying to take Richmond. She knew I loved it up here, knew the city clawed up my nerves when she weren’t there. I been here ever since.”
“So how did you…” Drew stops, choosing his words. “How did you tell her how you felt? How did she become your woman?”
“It was in this very room. She come up here on furlough to tell me that Mr. Ferrell had died at Glendale, during the Seven Days. He’d been shot through the face by the Yankees, right in front of her, and Lord God, if she hated Yanks before, well, now she’s ready to slaughter every one of them.”
Tessa’s lips set; she shakes her head. “She and I got to crying and hugging on each other. Fell down on that cot together. Then the touching that started as comfort in the face of death and grief come to something more. We was both surprised. And blessed by God. His grace, it tends to come when you least expect it. And when you need it most.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Drew says, giving my cheek a light kiss. “We know about that indeed.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
It’s brisk work, chopping wood in this wind. Drew and I have chapped lips, chilled feet, and aching finger-knuckles by the time Tessa calls us in for lunch. My big Yank and I gratefully gobble up bowls of leftover chicken and dumplings.
“Y’all worked enough,” says Tessa. “Mr. Ian, while I scrubs this ham, whyn’t you play us a few more melodies on the dulcimore? And Mr. Drew, I gots more cider a’mulling. Whyn’t you pour us out some mugs, with a drop of applejack apiece? Then y’all needs to tell me how you two met.”
Drew and I exchange glances. We’ve shared the secret of our loving with Tessa, but another one looms. It’s up to Drew, not me, to make the decision, whether to divulge that secret as well, or to construct the usual set of deceptions. I can see the conflict in his face as he prepares our warm drinks. Now he joins me on the love seat, quaffs his cup, arranges the blanket across our laps, and looks at me.
“You tell it,” I say. “However you feel you should.”
“We have another secret, ma’am, one that won’t be so welcome.” Drew leans forward, props his elbows on his knees, rests his face in his hands, and rubs his forehead hard. He sighs. “I was a Yankee soldier.”
“Oh, Lord.” Tessa ceases her labors at the sink. One moist hand flies to her breast. She’s open-mouthed, her dark eyes wide.
“We been telling folks that I’m a Rebel like Ian, but I’m tired of lying.” Drew sits straight now, his hands clutched together in his lap. “And, after what you shared with us this morning, well, I most especially don’t want to lie to you.”
“A Yankee? Truly?”
“Yes. I’m from Pennsylvania. I was with Sheridan’s cavalry till late last fall.”
“Sheridan? Oh, Jesus.” Tessa’s eyes widen. “Lorena Mae used to say that she wanted to feed his guts to our pigs. She hates him with a burning passion.”
“Yes, ma’am. I understand that hate. Like lots of soldiers, I was ordered to do things I deeply regret.” Drew bows his head.
“Things that haunt me.”
Tessa wipes her hands on her apron. “And you, Mr. Ian? Is you truly a Confederate soldier?”
Belly tight with tension, I reply. “Yes, ma’am, I am. Volunteered when Virginia went to war and have been fighting ever since. My uncle’s band truly were the Rogue Riders, and we did indeed fight alongside the Stonewall Brigade for most of the war.”
“Miss Tessa, I’m so sorry to misrepresent myself,” Drew says. “If any Virginians we met knew I was a Yankee… Ian and I would never have gotten this far. We’re done with this war.” Face grim, Drew takes my hand. “But if you want me to leave—”
“If you want us to leave. I go where Drew goes, ma’am.”
Tessa studies us. “Mr. Drew, I can tell you’s a good man, no matter where you hail from, so lie back now and stop looking so scared. I ain’t a’going to pull my rifle out and drive y’all away. Though of a sudden I’m glad Lorena Mae ain’t here. She might have some sharp things to say, and a rifle to wave, at that. I must confess, I’s standing amazed. How in God’s name did you two boys end up together and all the way up this mountain?”
“We can stay then, ma’am?” Drew’s voice is hoarse with anxiety. “We’d understand if you wanted us to move on.”
Tessa chews her lower lip and looks at us. For a few moments, there are no sounds but the wind in the chimney and the crackle of the fire. Then she smiles. “Well, if you was just any Yank, Mr. Drew, I might feel differently, but since us three—four, if you include Lorena Mae—have such a rare secret in common, yes, y’all’s welcome to stay.”
Turning, she resumes her scrubbing of the ham. “Like I said before, if you was to play on that dulcimore some, Mr. Ian, I’d very much enjoy that. And you, Mr. Drew, if you will, get on with that story of how y’all came to be a couple. You’ve heard how the black woman and the lady soldier came to be devoted, one to th’other. Now I wants to hear how the Rebel soldier and the Yankee soldier got to be such a handsome pair of lovebirds.” Tessa heaves a belly laugh and shakes her head. “I must say, it sounds as unlikely as Lorena Mae and me. But miracles, especially those that catch up the heart, they don’t arrive on no schedule, do they?”
