by James Lear
And then I remembered Jack Edgerton. All those thousands of years ago in Vermont, in the cold bright clean air of Vermont, the woods and the streams, and his laughing face, his self-important airs, his foolish belief that we could have whatever we wanted, his arrogance and innocence and joy of life; yes, Jack had loved me, not wisely but really, truly. And I had pushed him away. Yes, my reasons were sound, my reasons for everything were always sound, but perhaps reason was not what I wanted anymore but liberty, as I had told the chaplain. Jack was like me, a lover of men. If we could find each other again, and find liberty, far away from the war and the people who knew us, then perhaps I might live again…
Tears ran down my cheeks. Aaron believed that I had loved him, way back in Vermont when all we seemed to do was fight. Perhaps he was right. Perhaps I had loved him from the first moment. Desired him, certainly, as I did now; my cock was as stiff as an iron bar inside my pants. And yes, I loved him now, more than I had loved anyone. Had he guessed back then what it took me so long to realize? Could he be so certain, that a love like mine could sustain him in his most desperate hour? I felt ashamed, unworthy, but above all exhilarated.
They started executing prisoners yesterday. I saw the chaplain saying prayers as some of the boys were marched out to the woods to be shot. I stole a knife from the cookhouse, cut the throat of one of the guards, stole his gun, and ran from the camp. It was so easy. Regained Rebel lines within five hours. Gave news of the fate of Company K. As I have no papers, they did not believe that I was a soldier. They would have taken me into custody again. Having just escaped from a Federal prison camp, I have no desire to walk straight into a Confederate one. I ran again, stole a horse, joined a gang of foragers who were only too happy to add my strength and courage to theirs. We camped out in the woods. There is one young man in the group, blond like Jack, who sucks my cock when the rest of the gang is asleep and the woods are dark.
I looked down at Aaron, sleeping peacefully beside me, and I envied that young blond man who had done to him the things that I had never done. I wanted so badly to make love to him, in the fullest way possible, but I was still frightened that the violence of my passion might kill him.
The notes went on.
We reached a farmhouse where a woman and a teenage boy met us on the porch with guns. The men fanned out and aimed their weapons, ready to slaughter the mother and her son for the price of a hot meal and a bed for the night. “We’re on your side!” said the mother, waving her gun wildly in the air; I doubted if she could hit a cow at five paces. The boy was visibly shaking; neither of them stood a chance.
“Shut the fuck up,”’ snapped Tilbury, our ringleader, a mean son of a bitch with a scarred face and a sick delight in violence. He cocked his rifle and leveled it at the boy’s head.
“You see your little baby die first, bitch, then you follow him to heaven.”
Tilbury never knew what hit him; I was standing behind him, and simply swung my rifle around and blew his head off. It exploded like a watermelon.
“Anyone else?” I cocked again, ready to fire. The rest of the gang slipped away into the trees. The blond boy, my cocksucker of a few nights, ran with them.
“You need to leave here. Take water and blankets and get away,” I said to the woman. “They will be back. Hurry.”
“But this is our home.”
“Not anymore, it’s not.”
I turned my back and walked away fast, unable to bear the look of sorrow on her face. I had saved her life, perhaps for a day, or a week. And my life? How long a purchase did I have on that?
There followed a pitiful account of Aaron’s life as a fugitive from both sides, trapped like a wolf in a cage as the battle closed in around him in the Shenandoah Valley, struggling to survive from day to day, using his strength, courage, and cunning to win out in every confrontation he had with the soldiers of either side. This was when he earned the name Black Devil, that semimythical creature who inspired dread in the Union forces and who seemed, to them, like the embodiment of a crazy vengeance for all the wrongs they were inflicting on the innocent civilians of Virginia. But Aaron fought for neither side, only for his own survival. The final entry showed the state to which he had fallen before I found him.
I know I will die soon, either in my cave like an old black bear, or out in the burning desolation. My time has come and I will find liberty in heaven. Now I want only peace and death. If I could live my life again I would ride as fast as I can to Jack’s side and tell him that I love him, but that I know will never be. Even if he is alive I can never find him. I pray that he is safe from harm.
That was all. Aaron slept quietly beside me; I lay and wept as quietly as I could, so as not to wake him. I wept for all his pain and suffering, and for the sheer joy of loving him.
We stayed at the farm for four nights, after which I was satisfied that Aaron’s wounds were healing properly and that there was no longer any danger of infection. We packed up in the morning, and I handed him back the cloth bag containing his papers.
“You read them, then.”
“I did.”
There was an awkward moment of silence, as if we both knew too much and could not find the words in which to say how we felt.
“Aaron…”
“Jack…”
“No, you first.”
“No, I insist.”
“Did you really love me back in Vermont? When I was such a stupid little bastard?”
“I did.”
“And do you still believe that we have the chance of a life together?”
“It’s the only thing that kept me alive in these last few weeks.”
“I see.”
“And you, Jack.” He looked sad. “You’re young. You have a family, a future in Vermont. You must get back there, I understand. You don’t want to be shackled to a man like me.”
I could think of nothing to say. Tears came to my eyes, and I tried to speak, but I was choking.
“It’s all right,” Aaron said. “You don’t have to explain. I’m just grateful for everything you’ve done for me. I’ll never forget your kindness, Jack.”
“Oh shut up, you ass,” I said, bursting into sobs like a child. “Don’t you know that I love you every bit as much as you love me? For Christ’s sake, what do I have to do to prove it?”
“Well, for starters,” he said, drawing me toward him, “you could take care of this.”
He was hard inside his pants. I touched it, felt its heat and size, but my fingers sprang away almost instantly.
“We can’t. You’re not well enough.”
“Jack, if you don’t suck my dick right now, my balls are going to explode, and then I’ll die anyway. So just do what I ask, for once, will you?”
And so he lay back in the hay, one massive arm behind his head, the other reaching down so he could caress my head, and I finally did what I had wanted to do ever since I first laid eyes on Aaron Johnson. I unbuttoned his fly, pushed his pants down to his thighs, and took him between my lips. Neither of us spoke or made much noise apart from the occasional sigh or soft moan. His cock fitted into my mouth and throat as if they had been cast from the same mold. I knew exactly how to touch him and where, and he responded exactly as I knew he would. Just as I began to think how much I wanted to taste his cum in my mouth, he started spewing load after load into me. I swallowed every drop. And then, as his cock grew soft in my mouth, he undid my pants, took my hard dick in his hand, and brought me off. I came all over his fingers, and he licked them clean.
It was not the wildest sex I had had, nor in a sense the most exciting—but this simple act in the dry shelter of an abandoned barn meant more to me than every crazy fuck of my life. I knew that I was his for life, and he mine.
When we had arrived at the barn, it seemed like fall, mild and damp. Suddenly, within a few hours of leaving the shelter, it turned to winter. A cold east wind blew up, carrying with it the promise of snow. We could not afford to go near settlements—they wer
e still under attack from Rebel foragers, desperate to feed the starving scattered troops by taking whatever they could, at whatever cost. We could see, to the south, an enclosing ring of fire as Sheridan’s troops brought their campaign of devastation further down into the valley. Even that tiny green oasis where I had first dwelled with Aaron in the cave must now be reduced to ash.
We headed for the hills, knowing that the greatest danger up there was cold and starvation; those enemies we could at least face in a fair struggle. If we were caught in the valley by either army, we would surely die. And so we followed the high ground back north, into what was now Union territory; you could tell by the smoke rising from the scorched earth.
We trekked north for a week as the weather turned colder and colder. We had blankets and frequently found a cave or an abandoned building in which to sleep, but I could tell that this rough living was taking its toll on Aaron. He was still far from well, despite his protestations to the contrary, and he was visibly losing weight. He could march doggedly for hours at a time, but at a terrible cost. We skirted Richmond and headed toward Maryland, keeping to the high ground, avoiding human contact. Where exactly we were headed, neither of us really knew. Away from the fighting, that was the only way I could frame it in my mind. Away from the burning and the death. But toward what? Canada?
One night we rested in a half-burned house that must once have been home to a family; there were scattered items of clothing, and broken children’s toys on the floor. Everything else of value had been taken or burned. It sufficed for us; the walls were standing, and there was a stretch of un-fallen roof, which would at least protect us from the wind and the frost that were now becoming a nightly feature. We made a bed from our blankets, and I lit a fire; this was our routine.
Aaron was sick and falling into a fever. I boiled water and tried to feed him cornmeal porridge, but he would not eat.
“Jack,” he said, his voice alarmingly weak. “If I die—”
“You’re not going to die.”
“If I die, you must promise me that you’ll head back home to Vermont.”
“There’s no home for me there.”
“Promise me, Jack. Your parents love you. Your sisters need you.”
“There’s no home for me without you, Aaron. You know that.”
“I love you, Jack. But I think our time came too late.” He started coughing; I had heard that cough before in hospital wards, and I didn’t like it.
“Don’t be silly,” I said, just as I had said to a hundred patients before. “You’ve just got a cold. You’ll be fine.” I bustled around, preparing some food, like a bad-tempered housewife.
“Come here and hold me,” Aaron said. He was shivering, and his face looked gray.
I held him close and felt the bones through his skin. We had never made love again after that one morning in the barn, and I feared that I would never know his body as I had seen it and imagined it so many times before. Eventually he slept, and I sat awake, listening to every sound around us. His breathing was irregular, occasionally disturbed by a soft choking sound from the back of this throat. I could tell that his lungs were filling up with fluid. If I could not get him to a hospital soon, he would die.
I drifted off to sleep and dreamed a jumbled parade of images, some painfully happy, others horrific, all of them the dreary mental refuse of war, fear, and exhaustion. I suppose I must have been a little feverish myself, because when I awoke all my senses seemed supercharged. Aaron’s breathing was as loud as cannon fire, the smell of soot and mold in the house was nauseating—and there was something else, something that should not have been there. I sat up, my mouth dry and my head aching, and listened as hard as I could. I heard beetles scuttling across the floor, I heard an owl screech in the woods—and I heard the sound of horse’s hooves. Just one horse, I thought, but it was one too many.
I jumped up, threw the blanket over Aaron, and tiptoed to the glassless window. It was a moonlit night, and I could clearly see the silhouette of a horse peacefully champing the grass outside the house. Had the smoke of our fire been seen?
A twig snapped, and I swung around. There was a faint scratching at the door—hardly a door anymore, just a few broken planks of wood that I had secured with a boulder. It opened a little, and a gloved hand appeared around the frame.
It was then that the cold air hit me—I was only wearing my underclothes—and I started to shiver violently, from fear and fever as well as the temperature, I suppose. A spasm shook me from shoulders to hips, and I lost my head, leaped for the door with a cry just as a booted foot kicked it open. I threw myself on the figure that stood in the door, and we rolled on the floor, scratching, biting, and kicking each other.
I was hysterical, and I fought like a demon. My opponent was strong, but not strong enough to fend off a man who is about to lose everything—not just his life, but his love as well. I fought my way on top, pinned the flailing arms down with my knees, grabbed the head by the hair, and was about to pound it into the floor—when I realized that this was a woman.
I sat up in shock, and the moonlight hit her straight in the face. Our eyes met. It was Jenny Wallace.
I greeted her with joy.
When I awoke, it was light. I was under a blanket. I could smell something like cloves or cinnamon. I looked wildly around for Aaron and saw the figure of Jenny sitting over him, administering something to him in a cup. I lay back and must have passed out again.
How long I stayed in that state I do not know. I have fragmentary memories of light and dark, of dark figures passing around me, of strange tastes in my mouth and a terrible aching in my elbows and knees. There were times when I thought I was lying in water, other times when I seemed to be suffocating. I saw faces of dying men, the horrors of the hospital, my parents, Bennett Young, Captain Healey, Aaron…
And then I awoke in a room I did not recognize, with white walls, and light streaming through a window. I panicked for a moment, but then I was swept by a feeling of joy—the fever had gone, and I was alive. And there, slumbering in a chair by my beside, wrapped in a coat, was Aaron. I tried to speak, but my voice came out as a strange little whisper. My lips were cracked, and my tongue felt shriveled. I knew the symptoms, and I realized how close I had come to death. But I was alive, so was Aaron. We had survived hell.
I let him sleep, and fed my eyes on him. He looked well. His face had filled out again. There were deep lines where once his cheeks had been smooth, and some gray among the black of his hair, but that only made him more beautiful to me.
The door opened, and in came Jenny Wallace, dressed as I remembered her, in a blue dress with a white pinafore. She came to the bed, took my hand, and smiled.
“Well, look who’s back.”
“Hi, Jenny.”
“We nearly lost you.”
“I know. I’ve been ill, haven’t I?”
“Oh honey,” she chuckled, “you have no idea. Without him you’d have died a week ago.”
“What do you mean? Where am I?”
“You’re in Richmond, in the hospital.”
“Richmond?” I must have looked and sounded very stupid. Jenny laughed a deep, throaty laugh.
“It’s in Virginia, sweetheart, or were you playing hooky when they taught geography at school?”
“I know where it is, but how the hell did we get here?”
“He carried you most of the way. No wonder he’s tired.”
“But he was sick…”
And so Jenny told me the whole story: how she’d found me and Aaron in the burned-out house, nursed us through four days of desperate fever, from which Aaron had recovered first. I had worsened, however, and could no longer survive the rigors of the outdoor life. They braved the last skirmishes of the war to get to Richmond, now in Union hands, where Jenny knew there was a hospital that had survived the burning and was now tending the sick and wounded of both sides.
“This war will come to an end soon enough, honey,” she said, “although we s
till have battles to fight.”
“What do you mean?”
“The likes of you and Aaron, and me for that matter, won’t be welcome in these re-united States for a long time.”
“And how did you find us? Why were you there?”
“You were walking straight into a Yankee trap. They were patrolling through the woods and hills, looking for Rebel stragglers. There was a medical corps sent out but they didn’t want us there, they lost us as quickly as they could, and most of them rode back north as soon as it was safe to do so. I couldn’t do that, Jack. You know me. I always like to stick around if there’s trouble.”
“You were up there on your own?”
“Yep.”
“Weren’t you frightened?”
“Come on, honey, no soldier is going to come running when he sees this face, is he? I ain’t exactly one of those pretty little Southern girls.”
“How did you get out of the hospital?”
“Don’t ask me that, Jack.”
“Why not?”
“I’m ashamed. I ran away.”
“So did I.”
I took her hand, and we held each other in silence for a few minutes. Aaron shifted, snorted, and woke up. When he saw that I was conscious, he jumped from his chair and nearly fell over backward.
“Jack!”
“Yes, he’s alive and he’s awake. And I think I’d better leave you two lovebirds together.”
She withdrew from the room, and Aaron threw himself on me.
“Hey, careful! I’m still…oof!…weak!”
“Jack, oh God, Jack. You’re alive. Oh, thank God.”
Aaron broke down and cried his heart out. I rested my hands on his head and let him weep. It did us both good.