Dominoes in Time

by Matthew Warner

  He harrumphed. “Some gentleman you are, allowing your girl to pose for a nekkid pitcher.”

  He watched me as I weighed my lack of choices. Finally, I spoke in a small voice. “Fine. But you give her back in the morning. Hear?”

  “That I will do, sir. And with a ration of coffee. How’s that to wet your whistle?”

  I nodded. Coffee was like gold, so it was a good compromise. To end the conversation, I switched my rifle to my other shoulder so he couldn’t see my face.

  I still cursed him, privately. Despite what Charles might believe, Emma really had been my girl, once upon a time.

  Yes sir, I’m a woman who loves women. I don’t care what you may think about that. The Bible ain’t held no water for me since my minister father disposed of me in an orphanage when I was four. Emma and me, we was like fire and wood, just a couple of poor laundry girls with nothing but a blanket and our love to warm us. Them days was marked all over by hunger and desperation, but I wouldn’t trade them for all the tobacky in Virginia.

  While I’m at it, here’s something else you can stuff in your hat. Emma and me was Georgians. Yes sir. We lived right here in this very county I was now marching through with Uncle Billy’s army. If not for Emma, I wouldn’t have been no bummer on this day, three years hence. I would’ve been one of them girls burying someone’s family silver as the bummers come skulking up the road.

  It was the whoring that done it. Emma and me slept in a canvas tent not unlike the wedge I now shared with four men. In them days, we made love to stay warm, huddled under a woolen carriage blanket. We’d just finished when she told me the bad news.

  “You did what?” I said, still panting.

  “I earned us a whole dollar.”

  “By letting the blacksmith have his way with you? Oh, Emma.”

  “I’m sorry, sweetheart, but we gots to eat.”

  She showed me the dollar note, but I still turned my back on her for the night.

  To hold to my convictions would have meant not using her earnings. But yes, we needed to eat, and the pennies from washing laundry was never enough.

  Still, a rift soon widened between us. We stopped making love. Then one morning, Emma said she’d met a gentleman, a cotton planter. He was fixing to marry her.

  “But I promise you, sweetheart,” she said, “I’ll get him to take you on.”

  “As what?”

  “As a maid.”

  I snorted and shook my head.

  “But we’ll still be together, Frances.”

  We was sharing the bed, if only to keep warm. I sat up and glared at her in the gray dawn light. “How can you trust him?”

  “Because he gives me things. We’re even business partners.”

  “Partners?” I echoed. My voice dripped with disbelief. Wives did not partner with their husbands in business. We didn’t vote and couldn’t even hold bank accounts. How could Emma be a partner, for Christ’s sake? “Tell me,” was all I could say.

  “He took me to a photographer. They paid me a whole dollar for a portrait.”

  “What kind of portrait?”

  “Thomas is gonna sell them to lonely men and give me a penny for each one sold.”

  “I said, what kind of portrait?”

  Face shining, eager, she dug it out. “He gave me one for my ownself. Here, you can have it.”

  When I saw her bare curves within the tiny frame, I buried my face in my hands and wept. What kind of fiancé was this man?

  I never found out firsthand. A few days later, with the rift a mile wide between us, Emma announced she was leaving to go live with him. Thomas McCombs. I’ll never forget his name. I took a slow gander of his cotton plantation—really just a small, sorry affair with a handful of buildings and a gin—before leaving the area.

  I fled as far as I could from Emma. But I never got me the courage to give up the picture of her.

  I made it as far as Ohio before the war broke out. By then, I was a wisp of a girl, scavenging from garbage pits. That’s when I overheard two Army recruits in a barn. They was congratulating themselves on receiving a $152 signing bonus. Each.

  That same day, I cut off most of my hair. I put on some man’s clothes I stole from a clothesline. Then I straightened my shoulders, widened my gait, and walked into an Army muster station.

  A uniformed man sat behind a desk and looked me up and down. He recorded the made-up name, age, and birthplace I told him. “Have any infirmities?”

  “Any what, sir?” I kept my voice low and whispery, afraid of revealing my sex.

  “Handicaps. Hysterias. You a drunkard?”

  “No sir. I ain’t had but a sip in ten years.” And that was the truth.

  He stood up and shook my hand, smiling for the first time. “Welcome to the U.S. Army.”

  Concealing my sex weren’t difficult. Hell, men was so modest they slept in their clothes and bathed in their underwear. They wasn’t gonna look twice at the smallest member of their company, who preferred to do his business alone in the woods rather than in the latrine pits everyone hated anyway. The only thing anyone ever said to me was to tease me about my lack of moustache. My favorite was the private who said, “What do you do to shave? Put milk on your chin and let the cat lick it off?”

  Truth be told, I had me the time of my life as a soldier. After getting the signing bonus, I wallowed in thirteen dollars a month wages and was generally as independent as a hog on the ice. The constant drilling with the Enfield rifle-muskets built up my muscles, so when we saw battle in Mill Spring and Shiloh, I held my own. From then on, everyone merely tipped their hats at me. Mine was emblazoned with the infantry bugle, and for the first time ever, I felt like I was home.

  My uniform was baggy, sure—uniforms only came in two sizes—but that was fine since it helped me hide my curves. A scar on my cheek from shrapnel only enhanced the disguise.

  I still kept Emma’s picture at the bottom of my knapsack, but I never looked at it. I tried to forget her.

  I never met another woman soldier—or if I did, she hid it well. Occasionally, tales were told around camp of women being discovered while having their legs sawed off, but that was it.

  My Army of Ohio was absorbed by the Army of Cumberland. Then the Military Division of the Mississippi done swallowed it up. I steered clear of promotion and citation, aiming to stay alive and anonymous.

  It weren’t till late ’63 that I set eyes on our new general, Uncle Billy. It was another year before we burned Atlanta and set off marching to the sea—straight through Georgia. Right through my old stomping grounds.

  I felt Emma up ahead like the sun on the horizon.

  Thoughts of her fanned the old coals. I hadn’t known they were still there. Funny how a fire can smolder long after it burns clean. The Johnnys learned that in Atlanta, when Uncle Billy ordered us to torch their city. On the way out, we also done chopped up the railroads. After heating the rails over large fires, we tied them around trees. Sherman’s bow ties, we called them. I don’t doubt they seared Johnny Reb’s neck all winter long.

  We marched and marched. Didn’t see no Johnnys at first but darkeys of all ages. They left their plantations and trailed in our wake like the sharks I hear tell followed their ships coming from Africa. They sang songs about Moses walking out of Egypt.

  I kept my eyes forward, wondering if we would see her. At night, when I thought everyone was asleep, I finally dug out her picture. I traced my fingers along her naked curves.

  One of them times, Private Charles saw it. From then on, he didn’t give me no peace.

  I thought of burning it just to get him to leave me be. Such were my thoughts when he ragged me on the road about keeping it overnight.

  From the front of our formation, the corporal called, “Hold up. It’s getting dark, so we’ll camp here.”

  “Sir,” Private Charles said. “That plantation’s up yonder. Why don’t we stay there?”

  “Because that’s not our home, private. Our orders are to forag
e, not move in.”

  I saw Charles wanting to argue and wished he would. His getting whupped for insubordination would’ve done me good, but he weren’t no mule brain. Besides, the corporal was right about orders. And a Johnny’s house was too dangerous to sleep in when he was sore about us raiding it.

  As we pitched our tents and hung the cooking pot from its tripod, I kept glancing down the road. I half expected to see Emma approaching. Was it my imagination, or did this stretch of road look awful familiar?

  Uncle Billy would know the details—even the plantation names—but he wasn’t here. I met him once the week before. He liked to walk around camp at night and talk to the men. Charles had been there, and in surprising boldness, asked how he always knew where the best foraging was. Uncle Billy said he had him the census maps, showing crop yields and wealth, and every night planned our route.

  “Corporal,” I said through the smoke of the cooking fire. “You know if that’s the McCombs plantation up yonder?”

  “How are you knowing the local names, private?”

  Damnation. I started to stammer. I fought to keep my voice low and manly.

  “No, I don’t know,” he went on. “Now get back to work. You found firewood yet?”

  “No sir.”

  As I hurried away, Private Charles’s laughter chased my heels.

  When I returned, I done had firewood piled up to my chin. I weren’t no dainty woman under my clothes, that’s for sure. Charles and the other men were making a ruckus around the fire.

  “That fool was carrying an entire pig over his shoulder,” Charles was saying. “And you know what Uncle Billy said? ‘Good work, son. Carry on.’”

  The others whooped with laughter until Private Remy broke in: “Pigs and chickens, why, that’s children’s work. I can get that myself. But I’ll give a nickel to the next man who secures me some horizontal refreshments.”

  There was more laughter as Charles made a lewd motion with his hips. “I got your horizontal refreshments right here, boy!”

  Charles looked up as I dropped my armload of wood. “Here’s Francis now. Francis, show us that nekkid pitcher in your bed roll.”

  The boys hooted as I felt the blood drain from my face.

  “Come on. You know the one.”

  “You mean he has more than one?” Remy cackled.

  “The one of your girl, right?”

  That yellow bastard. I could’ve pulled the bayonet off my rifle and gutted him right there.

  Private Dawson laughed so hard, he dropped his harmonica into the fire.

  I knew if I refused, they’d be on me like flies to dog shit. “Sure, it ain’t nothing.” I retrieved the small frame from my roll and handed it to him.

  The boys gathered around Charles, their eyes popping out like they was frogs.

  “Glory, glory, hallelujah!” Remy sang, causing more laughter. Then he wrenched it free for himself.

  “Give it back,” Charles said. Like it was his.

  Remy tossed it to another soldier, who ogled it before throwing it to the next man. They soon had them a big circle formed of keep-away. The dullard, Charles, chased it around for a couple handoffs before catching on.

  I was bright as the Northern Star by that point, but I kept my mouth closed. I stood in the circle as the picture made its way around—every man except for the corporal, who was off in the woods doing his business. When it come my turn, they was tossing it underhand to me before they remembered I was the original owner.

  I caught it and said, “Thank you kindly, boys.” Then I sat down at the cooking fire like nothing happened.

  The men sobered up and returned to their perches. Charles sat down on the log across from me. He caught my eye through the flames, a smug little light in his eyes. He picked up a stick and began carving it with his knife.

  “Remember your promise,” he said.

  I stayed as placid as the breeze in the magnolias. “You want the picture? Have at it.” I gestured at the fire beneath the cook pot.

  Charles took a moment to catch my meaning, then he was kicking at the logs. But it was too late. The picture had blackened in the flames.

  “You double-crossing bastard,” he said.

  “I told you. The picture weren’t yours, and neither was she. And now she never will be.”

  I stood up, dusting off my thighs, and retired to the tent.

  That was the last levelheaded thing I ever did, I think. Finally writing out this tale don’t count.

  You see, my head, it weren’t right from that point on. I didn’t sleep more than a wink that night, conscious of Charles two feet away from me, glaring at the back of my neck. I wished I could tell him that burning Emma’s picture about killed me. I kept seeing her curves in my mind, kept remembering the way she felt against my skin. She smelled of wood smoke and lye soap, and tasted like salt. She… oh God, what was I doing here with these smelly men? Other than that picture, I hadn’t seen a pretty woman in three years, and now that it was gone, the thought of it and her filled me with need.

  The next morning, I dully rolled up my bed and wiggled a sore tooth in my mouth. I was hungry, but the congealed beans in the cooking pot turned my stomach. There would be food up in that plantation we was raiding. Chicken, bread, salted meat, maybe some cow’s milk…

  I counted all my favorite foods as I stared up the road.

  And in the light of the morning, my breath caught as I recognized it.

  The cotton plantation we was fixing to raid that day was indeed that of Thomas McCombs. It’s where Emma went to live.

  I felt sick as the sun rose higher and we set off. There weren’t no way to convince the corporal to head elsewhere, so there weren’t no use trying.

  And yet I did want to see her, didn’t I? Wanted to show her I didn’t need her no more. Wanted to see how her Mister McCombs had treated her like a common ragamuffin and a whore, not like an honored Southern belle. I wanted her thin and sickly, not a tooth in her head, rode hard and put out wet.

  Any doubt left it was the McCombs plantation vanished as the slave cabins came into sight. Two on the left, two on the right, and the manor house up ahead, its white columns gleaming, just as I remembered. Smoke rose from the kitchen building somewheres behind it, and that’s where we was headed first.

  A negress looked out from her cabin, dirty red rag around her head. She shrieked and withdrew, slamming her door. It set up a commotion, that it did. As we passed through, darkeys was popping up like moles and disappearing. One old feller, he stepped boldly out on his porch, sat down, and stuffed his corncob pipe. He and the soldiers tipped hats at each other.

  “Load up, if you haven’t done so,” the corporal called, and a couple of us paused to load our rifles.

  From then on, we was all business, walking double-time toward the main structures. A white woman on the manor house’s front steps saw us and turned tail, hoop skirt billowing behind her. I couldn’t tell if it was Emma.

  “Halt!” a man up front called. He fired his rifle at her and shattered a window on the second floor.

  We was at a full run now, eyes out for Johnnys. Our squad split up, heading for different buildings. Privates Charles, Remy, and me circled around back to the kitchen and the food there—in my mind the most important reason to forage.

  “This place looks to have some silver,” Charles said as we jogged. “Think them niggers will show us where it’s buried, like last time?”

  “I’m more interested in that damsel,” Remy said.

  I usually talked as little as possible—never knowing when I might lapse into a high-pitched voice—but I found myself speaking up: “How ’bout we just concentrate on getting food? Huh, boys?”

  Charles looked at me sidelong and chuckled. “Ain’t got a hankering for the fairer sex no more? That why you burned my pitcher?”

  I suppressed a growl and pushed into the kitchen building.

  We found a well-equipped room, if not a well-stocked one. It was obvious that back
in the day, Thomas McCombs liked his foods. He had all the things you would expect, like a meat safe, chafing dish, a mill for making vegetable soup, and of course a fireplace that took up most of one wall. But he also owned all manner of high-toned items I hadn’t seen in years, things like a cheese toaster, jelly strainer, and a cake form shaped like a lion.

  But no food. I smelled wood smoke and not much else.

  “Good blue damn,” Remy said.

  Charles poked at the tobacky hanging from the ceiling and traced his fingers along sauce pans, rolling pins, and utensils. He picked up a pointy boning knife and gestured with it. “If there ain’t no food, I say we catch a Johnny and roast him for dinner.”

  I heard someone gasp.

  I crouched down and found a woman hiding behind a cabinet.

  Emma. Of course it was. Did I think I could just breeze through here without God taking his licks? And hadn’t I wanted this?

  Emma was thin, yes, but not as used-up as I’d wished. She wore a white cotton cap, like a servant, and aside from some smoke stains on her cheeks and apron, still looked beautiful.

  She gazed at me without recognition. “Please, don’t hurt me.”

  Charles hauled her up. “Well, shut my mouth. Ain’t we got us a pretty one here?”

  He pushed Emma at me, and I reflexively batted her away. She bounced into Remy, who whooped, “My, my, she’s a looker. Haven’t I seen her before?”

  Charles grabbed her face with both hands. “I swear, but ain’t you… Francis, she looks like the girl from the pitcher.”

  Emma tried to pull away. “Leave me alone.”

  “You are, ain’t you? I know your face.”

  Remy pinched her. Emma screamed.

  Charles smiled at me. “Your girl, huh? I always knew you was from the South, originally. Just like me.”

  “I’m not like you.” The words sounded weak in my mouth.

  “You been posing for nekkid pitchers, dearest?” Charles laughed and lifted Emma onto the wooden table. To Remy, he said, “You owe me a nickel.”

  Remy laughed. He found a spool of twine, then set to cutting off pieces to tie Emma down.

  I just stood there, mouth hanging open. I wanted to tell them to stop, but I was also fascinated and a mite excited.