by James Lear
“That’ll keep till later. We don’t want to corrupt Sleeping Beauty.”
“I don’t imagine he’s as innocent as he looks,” Aaron said, squeezing the sleeping boy around the shoulders. “But let’s not shatter our illusions just yet. I’d like to get him back to his mama in one piece.”
“Okay, you need to sit up and get some clothes on.”
“Clothes? I don’t see no clothes. What I had on you got off me, you sly dog.”
“Got a blanket?”
“No. There’s a big old coat somewhere, found it lying on the field. That’ll have to do.” He reached into the recesses of the cave and threw a filthy overcoat around his shoulders like a cape.
“Will he wake up, do you think?”
“We need to feed him,” I said.
“Come on then, small fry,” Aaron said, shaking the boy gently. “Chow time.”
It took a bit of doing, but eventually the boy opened his eyes and looked around him.
“I’m starving,” he said.
“There speaks a true Virginian,” Aaron said. “Always thinking of his belly. Can you sit up?”
The boy struggled, and wobbled, but with a little help he managed to prop himself against the cave wall. He asked no questions, just glanced around him, taking in the naked black man swathed in a cape and bandages, me with my filthy face and tattered clothes, the fire, and above all the food.
I passed him the can, which was now cool enough to hold, and he started shoveling it in.
“Hey, these things got bones!” he said, spitting out a handful of stewed baby pigeon.
“Chew the fucking thing, don’t swallow it whole. Didn’t your mama teach you no manners, boy? And say thank-you to the cook.”
“Thank you, mister,” the boy said, holding the baby bird and picking off the meat. I passed the can to Aaron, and he passed it to me, so between us we made, I thought, a reasonable job of breakfast, or whatever this meal might be called. After a few drafts of water, we all felt a great deal better.
“Where am I?” the boy asked, wiping his mouth and belching.
“We’re in the Shenandoah Valley.”
“Who are you?”
“Friends,” I said.
“You’re a Yankee,” he said, scowling.
“I am.”
“Fucking bastard.”
Aaron lifted a huge hand as if to swat him but arrested the movement in midair. The boy cringed.
“This fucking Yankee bastard saved your ass, you ungrateful little shit,” Aaron said.
“And who the fuck are you?”
“Told you they were little cats, didn’t I, Jack? I am the Black Devil. Did you never hear of me?”
The boy’s eyes widened. “The Black Devil? Come on. That’s just a story.”
“Well, you better believe that story, boy. And don’t think that I wouldn’t eat a nice little chicken like you in one mouthful, gobble gobble gobble!” He bugged his eyes and made faces at the boy as one would at a child. The kid laughed, half in fear, half in delight.
“You a Yankee too?”
“No,” said Aaron.
“You ain’t a Confederate.”
“Why not?”
“You’re a nigger.” He said it with such blank simplicity that it was hard to argue with his logic. I feared that Aaron would lose his temper, but he remained calm and reasoning.
“I ain’t Confederate, and I ain’t Union.”
“You gotta be one or the other.”
“Well, not me.”
“What about him?” The boy jerked a thumb toward me.
“He is my friend.”
“Yeah, I bet he is.” The boy made simpering gestures, and spoke with a lisp. “I seen you two fooling around like sweethearts.”
“You better mind your own business.”
“I heard about your type. Queers, you are. A Yankee queer, a nigger queer—”
Aaron raised his hand; at full strength, he could have knocked the boy out with one swat. But instead he let it fall into his lap, and sighed.
“Yeah, a Yankee queer and a nigger queer who just happened to save your dumb ass.”
“I didn’t ask you to.”
This time, Aaron was really incensed, his face twitching. His arm shot out lightning fast and grabbed the boy by the throat. But his voice was calm.
“Now, you’re going to say thank-you to Mr. Edgerton for saving your life.”
“Thank you,” the boy said, grudgingly, struggling for breath.
“Thank you, sir,” Aaron corrected. The boy repeated the word, like an unwilling scholar at his lesson.
“And you’re going to say how much you enjoyed the delicious meal he just gave you. Or do you want me to stick my hand down your dirty little throat and bring it back up for you?”
“Th—thank you for my food… Sir.”
“That’s better. Now wash your dirty face and leave the grown-ups in peace.”
“Hey, don’t treat me like a—”
Aaron aimed a wet handkerchief, and it caught the boy in the open mouth. We both laughed at him.
“What’s your name?” I asked the boy.
“Lee.”
“Like the General, huh?” Johnson said, smiling, trying to make peace.
“Yeah. Damn right.”
“Now listen, Cadet Lee,” I said, “I’ve got to take care of this man’s wounds, do you understand? It’s not going to be very pretty, and I don’t want you throwing up all over me. So why don’t you take a walk, go and find us some more to eat, and come back in an hour.”
“I ain’t stupid. You’re going to steal my stuff.”
“What stuff?” Aaron said. “You’ve got nothing but the clothes you came in.”
“I got money,” he said proudly, “rolled up in the toe of my boot. You can’t have it.”
I resented the implication that I was a thief, especially from one whose life I had taken such pains to save. “Take your goddam boots with you, Lee, and see if you can find somewhere out there to spend your dollars. And if you find a bar, bring me back a bottle of whiskey. If they’ll sell it to a child.”
“Go on, kid,” Aaron said, laughing. “Beat it.”
Lee crawled out of the cave—by his energy you would never have guessed how close he’d come to death—and for the first time, Aaron and I were alone. I made myself busy with the boiling water, tearing bandages and dressings, conscious that he was watching my every move.
“Jack.”
“Yes, Aaron?” My voice was too high, too bright.
“How did you find me?”
“You just…appeared.”
“Did you ever think about me?”
“Of course I did.”
“What did you think of me, Jack?”
“I thought of you as the friend that I had lost.”
“Yes.”
“And I thought of you as someone I should have treated better than I did.” I felt tears stinging my eyes as I remembered my stupidity and arrogance.
“Yes. And did you think of me in other ways?”
I stopped fussing with the fire. “I thought, often, that you were the man I should have loved.”
“Ah.” He closed his eyes. “Then it was all worthwhile.”
“What?”
“All this. The death, the war, the pain, and the waste of time. It brought us back together again, didn’t it? And now we’re ready, aren’t we Jack?”
“Ready, Aaron?”
“Ready to love each other.”
“Yes. We are. We’re ready.”
I knelt by him, took his hand, held it to my heart, which was beating so hard I could swear it echoed in that cave. I kissed the fingers, rubbed my face against his palm.
“At last,” I said, feeling, in that strange hole in the ground, beside the tiny fire and the magical spring, that I had finally come home.
I wanted so badly to give myself to him, to take him for myself, to express through the union of our bodies all the fear and hope an
d pain and love of the last months and years—and I could tell, from glancing down at his body where the overcoat fell open around his hips, that he was ready to do the same. His cock was hugely, magnificently erect.
“I want you so badly, Jack.”
“I’m yours. But we must wait. You’re not as strong as you think you are. If we…do it now, your wounds will open.”
“I don’t care. I want you.”
“Well, I do care, and for once in my life I’m putting good sense first. I want you more than I’ve ever wanted anything. I want this”—I took hold of his cock, which jumped at my touch—“inside me. But more than anything, I want you to get better and live a long, long time.”
“With you, Jack?”
“With me. Forever.”
“That’s enough for me.”
He lay back, and I held his cock for a while, resisting the temptation to jerk it back to full hardness. And then I cleaned and dressed his wounds as best I could.
I wanted nothing more than to lie naked with Aaron, for the first and—who knew?—possibly the last time, so I stripped myself of my clothes, laid them over us, and wrapped the coat around us both. We kissed sleepily, our hard cocks pressed against each other, and within a few moments I came, unexpectedly but copiously, all over his thigh. He kissed me throughout, and we fell asleep as the sperm glued us together.
Lee did not return; neither of us was surprised. We both knew that he would have run like a rabbit straight to the Rebel Army, or would have caught a bullet somewhere in the burning valley. Either way, we would not see him again. And if he had survived, we were in danger. He would repay me for saving his life by betraying us, the Yankee queer and the nigger queer. So Aaron and I stamped out the embers of the fire, rolled up everything that we could in the coat, and dressed ourselves in an odd assortment of tatters. We would need to find better protection before nightfall, but we had enough to get us away from the valley and into the nearest village. At least we could not be recognized as either Rebel or Yankee—the clothes we had were so filthy, and so distressed, that they could no longer be called uniforms. Aaron wore a blackened shirt, the tails torn away to make dressings, and an old piece of sackcloth wrapped around his waist like a skirt. I still had my pants, and I improvised a tunic from another sack in which I cut a hole to poke my head through. We looked like a couple of scarecrows from a very badly tended melon patch.
We crawled from the cave and threaded our way through the trees away from the dead valley. There were other figures on the move, furtive and blackened like us; now we all stood out against the untouched green of the woods. But none of us wanted confrontation. In this deserted world, we were no longer fighting a war. We were no longer enemies. We were simply fugitives, clinging to life, fearing each other, and keeping our distance. That suited me fine.
A patrol of Confederate soldiers burst into the woods; we avoided them by crouching behind a rocky outcrop, holding our breath, ready to play dead if they got too close. They passed by so close we could hear the squeaking of their boots. They marched like automata, left, right, left, right, from who knows where to who knows where. Perhaps their mission was to round up deserters or pick off Union snipers; whatever it was, they had forgotten it, in that land of death.
Finally, as night fell, we saw the outlying buildings of a small village. We reached a farm, and found a bed of straw in one of the barns—obviously Sheridan’s troops had not yet reached this far—and we slept in one another’s arms, exhausted, thanking God for giving us one clear day together.
XV
THE FARM WAS DESERTED, THE FARMERS EITHER DEAD OR fled, so we holed up for a few days while Aaron rested and recovered. I raided the farmhouse for clean cloths to turn into bandages—there was a well-stocked linen closet that had been untouched by soldiers—and we ate well, thanks to the abandoned livestock. Chickens were living wild in the woods, and I soon found their nests, so we had fresh eggs every day. One or two of the chickens themselves ended up in the pot. A goat gave us milk, and we ate apples from a small orchard. I used the farmhouse kitchen, and we drank fresh water from the pump in the yard, but at night we slept in the barn, where we were harder to find and whence it was easier to make a silent escape, if necessary. We knew that, sooner or later, a foraging party would find the farm and raid it to feed the starving Rebel soldiers. And it was also likely that they were searching for us, if Cadet Lee had got through the valley alive. Aaron was now wanted by both sides—the Yankees would love to string up the Black Devil for all to see, and the Rebels would arrest him as a deserter. And if Lee had been telling them tales, they would all want to kill us because we were queer.
But, for all the danger, I was reluctant to leave. There at the farm we were warm and dry and well fed. Aaron could rest and allow his wounds to heal; for all his courage in the face of pain, he was a very sick man, and the infections had left him weak. I knew that if we went out on the road again too soon, sleeping rough and eating only rarely, he would catch the first fever going, and I would lose him. As long as there was no immediate danger, I insisted that we stay in the barn, buried in hay, wrapped in blankets, our stomachs full and our bodies warm.
We slept together, of course, our limbs entwined, kissing and talking and dreaming—and perhaps it was that, more than anything, that made me unwilling to leave our little home. I knew it was a fool’s paradise, and that to linger longer was inviting danger, but to sleep beside the man I loved, to feel his heart beating and his strength returning, was hard to give up.
As we lay together one evening, savoring the silence all around us, Aaron instructed me to dig into our few possessions and pull out a filthy oilcloth bag. I had seen it when we were in the cave and assumed it contained money; Aaron guarded it as if it was precious.
“Open it, and read it. I’m going to sleep.”
He nestled into my side as I drew out a wad of dirty paper, tied with a piece of string. As Aaron’s breathing slowed and steadied, I read of his journey from Vermont, his career in Richmond, and his transformation into the Black Devil. This last phase of the narrative disturbed me particularly—I had not allowed myself to think of the sufferings he had undergone—but it was illuminated at the end by a declaration that took my breath away.
“Marched south for four days,” began the first of a series of scrappy, sporadic notes.
The boys are footsore, hungry, and scared. Some of them are sick. Charlie has deserted; they say he ran off with the governor’s wife but who knows if we’ll ever see him alive again? I hope to God he is safe. Billy and Chester are together as man and wife, although Billy has been obliged to abandon his preferred wardrobe for a while. I stay close to Howard, and we are a great comfort to each other. When he is too tired to go on, I carry him. At night, when we rest for a few hours before dawn, too tired to sleep, certainly too tired to fuck, I hold him and caress him and try to allay his fears. He rewards me with the warmth of his young body and the most complete trust and gratitude that I have ever known.
The next few pages detailed the horrors of military life, with which I was only too familiar. The fatigue, the fear, the hunger, and above all the stalking specter of disease. The men of Company K started falling prey to strange fevers, and there was no one to nurse them. Many were left to die where they fell by the roadside or were found stiff and cold in the gray light of dawn.
We were ambushed at 3am just outside Yellow Tavern. Surrounded by 100, maybe more, Yankee soldiers, with guns trained on us as we rested. Taken captive without a chance to fight. Now in prison camp, I do not know where. Howard took a bullet.
The next entry was barely legible.
Nursed Howard through four days of fever, unable to secure medicine or clean water or food. Could only hold him and watch him fade away. He died in my arms this morning, and the body was taken from me.
This was the last entry in that particular bundle; I could only imagine how Aaron felt, to have lost a friend so dear.
One final sheet of paper remaine
d, covered on both sides in a script so tiny that I could barely make it out.
The prison chaplain visited me two days after Howard’s death. A Boston man, he told me, smooth faced and broad shouldered, one of those ‘muscular Christians’ that used to go about trying to convert the dark races when I was a kid. But he seemed friendly and genuinely concerned that I had lost my friend. “You did your best to look after him,” he said, smiling. I replied that there was not much I could do, as the boy had been denied proper medical attention and left to die like a dog. Then he asked me, “What are you fighting for, brother?” This, I thought, was where he would try to convert me to the Yankee cause—and in truth I might as well be fighting for them as for anyone else. I told him that I was fighting for my own survival, nothing more.
“And you see where that has brought you?” I wanted to take a swing at him for implying that somehow I was to blame for my current sorry condition—but then I realized that he was right. Why was I fighting for the Rebels—those Southern gentlemen who hated me and denied me my rights? Why was I fighting at all? This was not my struggle. I joined Company K because I had no choice, because of loyalty to a band of rogues and thieves and vagabonds. I was not ashamed of that loyalty, but was it worth all this death?
“What is really important to you, Aaron Johnson?” asked the chaplain. “Liberty,” I replied, for want of anything better to say. “Liberty,” he repeated, looking straight into my eyes. “That’s a lovely word, but what does it mean? The freedom to buy and sell, the freedom to live and die, the freedom to love and hate?” “The freedom to love and live as I please,” I said. “And is this how you please?”
He left me, and I fell into a troubled doze, thinking about what he had said. Liberty? What had I meant when I said that? To love and live as I please? Well, to love as I please, yes, that was important, but have I ever really loved, or been loved? Howard, for instance, taken from me by a greedy death… We were lovers, in one sense of the word, but only because the war had thrown us together and he needed someone stronger than him to take his fears away. In gratitude, and perhaps for the pleasure of the moment, he had given himself to me, but I was not what he wanted. And all those others, those who had bought my love in Richmond, those who had fought with me or betrayed me along the way—that was not love. I scoured my memory for one man that I could honestly say I had loved, and who had loved me in return, and I found nothing.