by Jeff Mann
“Damn that Frederick,” Tessa cusses, sipping on rose-hip tea. “He’s passed his ailing on to me.”
“At least you have an appetite, ma’am,” Drew says, fetching her a plate of roast beef. “That’s always a good sign. When army boys in the hospital tent lost their appetite, we figured they were goners.”
Drew and I spend the days filling Tessa’s woodshed and continuing our reading and writing lessons. The weather has gotten progressively warmer—it’s the first week of April—and green increases, in the yard, on the bushes, in the forest trees.
On the sixth day of Tessa’s illness, she’s showing clear improvement, but now my Yank is hot-faced and tired. In another day, Drew’s in the big bed upstairs, coughing and snorting even worse than Tessa was, I’m drinking cup after cup of tea in an attempt to ward off the disease, and Tessa’s up, still weak but insisting on taking charge. Two days after that, feverish, dizzy, and feeble, I’m tucked in beside Drew in bed, and Tessa, nearly recovered, her dark cheeks gleaming, has become our determined nurse.
“I likes taking care of loved ones,” she says, when we beg her not to overexert herself. “Y’all should know that by now. Don’t you worry ’bout ole Tessa, sugar. My old strength’s about back. Lorena Mae always did call me her mahogany amazon.” Tessa flexes an arm, which looks about as thick as Drew’s, before descending the stairs with dirty dishes.
“I ain’t going to arm-wrestle you, ma’am,” Drew wheezes after her. “I ain’t partial to getting my butt whipped.”
For a solid week, Drew and I, at Tessa’s insistence, stay in bed. We toss and turn in fever-sweat, sip tea and whiskey toddies, and eat invalids’ fare our hostess prepares: mashed sweet potatoes, bowls of cornbread crumbled in buttermilk, and buttered grits. In among long naps, coughing bouts and blowing noses, I read to him from books Tessa brings up from Lorena’s library: the Bible, Shakespeare, English poets Wordsworth, Shelley, and Coleridge, even our old friend Whitman. When we’re feeling a little better, we resume our reading and writing lessons.
“Ca-mer-a-do?” enunciates Drew, pointing to a page of Leaves of Grass.
“Yep. Whitman likes that word. He’s meaning something like ‘manly comrades.’ Like you and me. Use it in a sentence.”
“Sounds funny. Sounds foreign. ‘The camerados with catarrh coughed and were cranky.’ How’s that for a sentence? This sickness ain’t too bad, Reb,” Drew mutters, choking up phlegm and spitting it irritably into a handkerchief. “Not compared to those camp illnesses.”
“True enough.” I scratch at my crotch, catch a louse, and crush it between my fingers. “Goddamn graybacks. Yep, we’re lucky. The grippe and the flux, Lord, and pneumonia, they carried off half our company. At least you Feds had medicines. Thanks to Old Abe’s blockade, we Rebs have been digging up forest roots and herbs for years.”
“Rooting and snuffling! Like a crew of wild boars.” Drew nudges me in the ribs. We indulge in a weak wrestling contest before he pins me, kisses me, then pulls me into his arms for another nap.
By the time our fevers have faded and our limbs have regained their former strength, many days have passed, and with them most of the bruised hurts that George’s pummeling left us with. My Yank has even healed sufficiently from the wounds he received in Sarge’s camp to at last dispense with his bandages. When, one sunny morning, Drew and I, tired of being bedridden, finally wash and dress, then trudge outside to feed the horses, the sarvis has lost its white flowers but displays tiny leaves, and the apple tree George meant to serve as our gallows has burst into bloom.
“Miss Tessa,” Drew says over a late breakfast of ham and corn pone, “what’s the date? Sick as we were, we’ve lost track of time.”
Tessa pours out more coffee before pointing to the calendar on the wall. “It’s the twelfth of April, honey. Y’all have stayed with me—and such wonderful company you’ve been—for nearly three weeks. But I know y’all need to continue on home.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I say, biting into a slice of ham. “I want to see my parents, and I want to get our journey over. I want to get us off the roads, since we’ll be at risk—between Federal scouts and renegade bands like the Iron Riders—till we get to my family’s farm. And even there, who knows what perils might manifest?”
“Ian says we can take Walt Solomon, but we’re going to leave the other horses with you. You can sell ’em or keep ’em, whatever pleases you.”
“I’s going to keep that chestnut mare, that’s for certain. Already named her Sary. But you boys needs to promise me something before y’all go.”
“What’s that, ma’am?” Drew reaches over and takes her hand. “Whatever you want.”
“We three has found a true kinship, has we not? Sharing our secret—our secret kind of loving that most would scorn—has brought us together. The Lord has brought us together. I don’t want to lose that. When the war’s done, I wants y’all to journey back here. I wants y’all to meet Lorena Mae, who, God willing, will be home soon. Will y’all promise me that?”
“Oh, yes,” Drew whispers. “We’ll be back. We’ll visit you two, and that wonderful Mrs. Stephens in Eagle Rock.” His eyes tear up. “Sorry, ma’am. My brothers always did tease me about how easy I weep. Even Ian here has called me sentimental.”
“I love that about you, Drew,” I say. “You know that. You’re a man of big muscles and deep feelings. That’s a heaven-sent combination, far as I’m concerned.”
“Sentimental? Oh, honey, there’s nothing wrong with that. Especially in a world and in a time where loved things can be lost so easy.”
Tessa pats Drew’s hand, then tugs softly at a lock of his hair. “Lord, sugar. Your hair’s the color of spring sunlight. So much like Lorena’s. All right. If y’all think you’s well enough to travel, travel you shall. Long as you gives me a while to prepare you a little picnic or two to tide you through. And long as you allows me one last night of brandy, fireside dulcimore music, and pipe tobaccer.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
Our saddlebags are full of travel treats: cornbread split and slathered with butter and sorghum, bacon-filled biscuits, and a bottle of brandy courtesy of the late Iron Riders. The morning sun’s warm, though the mountain breezes carry a sharp chill. Drew and Tessa grow wet-eyed as they bear-hug each other farewell. Finally, reluctantly, Drew releases her. He cocks the black slouch hat Mrs. Stephens gave him atop his head, slips his rifle strap over his shoulder, and mounts Walt.
Now it’s my turn to hug her, to kiss her glistening cheek, then her brown hand.
“Bless you, ma’am. Thanks to you, we’re still alive, still together, and we have hope. We’ll always be grateful.”
“Come back this summer, honey, if the war’s done. I’ll have a big garden. We’ll share fine meals, and you and Lorena Mae can take turns making music, and we can watch the lightning bugs rise from the grass. It’d do Lorena and me great good to have boys like y’all in our lives. Now go. And git home safe!”
Throat tight, I shoulder haversack and rifle, then swing up into the saddle behind Drew. Despite our promises, will we ever make it back here? Will Tessa survive? Will her soldier-woman make it back from Petersburg? In times like these, one of the world’s most brutal facts is truer than usual: any goodbye could be the last.
Drew waves. I tip my cap, wrap an arm around Drew’s waist, and we’re off up the creek. When we reach a turn in the road, both of us look back. Tessa’s still standing before her cabin, wiping her face and waving, red kerchief bright as a cardinal bird upon her head.
“Oh, Lord, I’ll miss her.” Drew clears his throat, hacks out a lingering cough, and snaps the reins. “All right, Walt Solomon. Get us up this road. Those West Virginia mountains await.”
By midday, Craig Creek has dwindled into a trickle and disappeared into a gully of dead leaves. Past the head of the stream, the road’s little more than a path between trees. We’ve reached a high, windswept forest, with fewer signs of spring, clouds close and restless overhead. Sun
flashes off pine needles and mud puddles. Here and there, along shady banks, traces of snow linger. There are no sounds but the clopping of Walt’s hooves, the wind through evergreen stands, the rapping of woodpeckers, and the caw of companionable crows.
At last, at the very top of the valley, we come to a crossroads, where the Craig Creek path intersects a larger road laid east to west along the mountains’ spine. We’re about to dismount and share some food when the trotting of other horses’ hooves causes me to pull my pistol and Drew to urge Walt into the shadows beneath a thicket of spruce. Hidden there, we keep still, waiting for the riders to pass.
Two men are moving west along the larger road. They’re both mounted. Both look to be in their twenties, and both are dressed in slouch hats and dirty, tattered uniforms of Rebel gray. Drew and I study them, my pistol at the ready, as they move closer. One’s got short, ink-black hair, piercing dark eyes, and a bushy black beard falling over his breast. The other’s slighter of built, with curly blond hair, pale features, and a clean-shaven, square jaw.
They don’t continue west past our shadowed hiding place. Instead, they pull up only a few yards from us, in a patch of pale yellow sunlight. Both are as lean as we. Silently, the dark-headed man pulls hardtack from his haversack and shares it with the fair one. Silently, the fair-headed man digs apples from his haversack, bites into one, and tosses his companion the other. Their faces are drawn, dirty, and grim. Their shoulders are slumped, as if with exhaustion and a heavy sorrow. Wind whips leaves around their horses’ hooves. The animals themselves tug hungrily at tufts of new grass.
“They don’t look belligerent, Drew,” I whisper. “Maybe they can give us further news of the war, or even directions. Shall we take the chance?”
Drew nods. I holster my pistol. Drew clucks his tongue, shakes the reins, and Walt moves forward, out of our shady concealment and into the sunlight. The two strangers look up at us with dull surprise.
“Howdy, gentlemen,” I say. “Are y’all Rebel soldiers?”
“Yes. Y’all?” says the dark one. He’s handsome, the spitting image of General Turner Ashby, with whom I was so infatuated, who fell so early in the war.
“Yes, sir. We are,” Drew says. I can feel the tenseness of his body against my chest.
“Glad to encounter you. Y’all been paroled yet?” says the blond stranger.
“What?” I cock my kepi over my brow, studying him. He looks familiar. Who knows in what battle we might have crossed paths?
“Paroled.” The dark one pulls out a paper. “Here’s mine.”
“And here’s mine,” says the other, patting his jacket.
“No, sir. Paroled? I don’t understand. Like prisoners?”
“Oh, Lord God, he don’t know.” The black-bearded man shakes his head. The two strangers trade glances. Both bow their heads, as if over the grave of someone long loved and newly buried.
“What don’t I know? My comrade and I here have been on leave, and we took sick. We’ve had little news. You have word of the war?”
The dark one takes a deep breath. “Son, I truly hate to tell you this, but…Richmond has fallen, and General Lee has surrendered his army.”
“What?” I shake my head. “Can’t be. He’d never.”
“It’s true,” says the other. “It was four days ago. In Appomattox. We were there. The Yankees cut us off. Hordes of them, and little left of us. Lee and Grant parleyed. The war’s over.”
“You’re both lying to me.” I keep shaking my head. “Why are y’all lying to me?”
“Ian,” Drew says, gripping my thigh. “Ian. Easy.”
“Boy, we aren’t lying.” The blond man shakes his head. “Why would we lie?” There’s no note of offended anger in his tone, just flat resignation. “We were there. We were paroled. Now we’re going home.”
I slip off our horse. “No. Nope. Can’t be.” I look up at the rushing clouds—high as these mountains are, strong as is the wind, we might well be at the pinnacle of the world. I look down at the earth, at a mud puddle still rimmed with the last of winter’s ice. I stare at my tattered trousers, the same oft-repaired ones I wore into the ranks beside my brother, into battle after battle, then into the wilderness with Drew. Along the rutted road, small yellow flowers, like tiny suns on scaly stems, are blooming.
“Can’t be, gentlemen,” I say, looking up at the strangers. “Just can’t. After all our years of fight, and all the men we lost. For all our dead to have died in vain? Can’t. My brother’s gone. Almost all of my company mates. Can’t be.”
“Ian.” Drew’s voice is soft and deep behind me. “Ian, buddy.”
The blond man swings off his horse. “Come here, friend.”
The dark-haired man swings off his horse. “Yep. Come on.”
I step forward, dazed, foot first into a puddle. Another step, another. I stand before them. The blond one takes my right hand. The dark-haired one takes my left.
“Friend, we know how you feel,” says the fair one. “Big strong soldiers, grown men, wept like children when the news came, when we stacked our arms. Green here and I, we’ve both done our sharing of weeping. Go ahead now, brother. Cry if you want. We aren’t stopping you.”
“We fought as hard as we could,” says the dark one, gripping my shoulder. “It’s over now, brother. Now everyone—even all those bluecoats—can go home. And the world will remember us. Mark my words.”
The blond man squeezes my hand. “Heroism defeated is heroism nonetheless. The fame of our Southern soldiers will last till the end of time.”
“Yes, sir,” I say. I shake their hands. Then the blond one pulls me into his arms, and I start to whimper. I wrap an arm around his bony back and burst into tears.
“Oh, Ian.” It’s Drew right behind me, his voice quavering. He’s dismounted. He’s kneading my shoulders. “I’m so, so sorry.”
What a sight we must make, four soldiers standing in a tight circle, exchanging low words, handshakes and hugs, while one sobs like a child, slips to his knees, buries his face in his hands and weeps as if everyone he ever loved were leaving him.
I come to myself slowly. The yellow flowers are there beside me, and three sets of worn shoes. The firm touch of men’s hands consoles me. The low murmur of men’s voices comforts me.
I wipe my face, shake my head, cough up the residue of my recent illness, heave a low laugh, and, with my friends’ help, climb to my feet. It’s beautiful here, on top of the world, the clouds so close, the sun shafting through the forest, the horses standing by, munching on grass, or drowsing, glad for a pause in their labors. In forests so lofty and so thick, you could forget the human world, the world of musket ball, canister, shot, and grape, the screams of the wounded and the gasps of the dying, the corpses heaped up at Antietam and Spotsylvania. For a second, I can almost believe that my brother Jeff has made it home and is waiting for me to join him.
“I’m Ian Campbell,” I say, drying my face on my sleeve. “And this is my camerado. My buddy, Drew Conrad. He was cavalry; I was infantry. We were part of a partisan band. We’re just about the last members left.”
“I’m Green Carden,” says the black-bearded man, doffing his hat. “I was in the artillery, Lowry’s Battery, with my older brother Allen and my younger brother John. They’re about a day’s ride ahead of us.”
“And I’m Loren Martin. I was a sharpshooter with the Montgomery Mountain Boys. I live just down that valley there,” the blond soldier says, indicating the way Drew and I just rode.
“Loren Martin?” Drew grins broadly. “You got a housekeeper named Tessa?”
“Do you know her?” Loren says excitedly. His expression softens and gleams. Suddenly I can see the woman’s face inside the grim features of the soldier.
“Yes, sir,” I say. “We stopped with her for three weeks. Her hospitality was sterling. We just left her this morning.”
“And is she well?” Loren’s face fills with mingled apprehension and hope.
“Yes, sir!” Dr
ew laughs. “She’s well indeed. We all three caught the catarrh, but we’re all hale now. These saddlebags are filled with food, thanks to her. She saved our lives. We’d been captured by some raiding scum, some renegades, and they were bound to hang us till she shot all three down.”
“She shot down renegades? Christ, Loren. That’s some housekeeper you got.” Green rubs his voluminously whiskered chin and shakes his head. “Hell, I wish she’d have been in the army. She could have blown ole Grant to kingdom come. We might have won.”
Loren chuckles. “We might have at that. She’s ferocious indeed. Well, boys, that’s all welcome news, but now we’d better part. Want to get home before dark.” He shakes my hand with vigor, then Drew’s, before grasping Green in a hard hug.
“Green, my friend, safe travels to you. Let’s keep in touch. I’ll miss you powerfully bad.”
“Loren, I’ll miss you too. I’ll write,” Green says, slapping Loren’s back. “Thanks again for those years of friendship. You helped keep me strong.”
“Thank Tessa for us, Loren,” I say. “She’ll have you some tales to tell about us, that’s for sure. Turns out that she, Drew, and I had much more in common than we ever would have imagined.”
“Now you have my curiosity stoked. I can’t wait to see her.” Loren leaps nimbly into the saddle, tips his slouch hat with a sunny smile, and spurs his horse down the Craig Creek Road. “God keep you all,” he shouts before vanishing into the trees.
“I’ll miss that pretty bastard.” Green sighs. “What a warrior. I never would have survived this grim war without him. Well, gentlemen, where are you bound?”
“West Virginia,” I say. “My parents have a farm near the Greenbrier River.”
“Christ almighty! Truly? I’m heading that way. My family’s farm isn’t too far this side of that stream. We Cardens have a good bit of land in Forest Hill.”
“I’ve heard of your family, Mr. Carden. May we travel with you? We’re not entirely sure of the way. We had been planning to ride the river, but Drew here would have been mightily pained to part with this horse.”
