Confederates Don't Wear Couture

by Stephanie Kate Strohm

  A familiar bark interrupted my thoughts. A hundred pounds of dog was joyously romping behind me. He must have been wandering around outside the ball trying to find someone to cuddle.

  “Oh, Willie, stop!” I yelled back at him as he kept barking. “Stay! I mean shoo! I mean, go back to the porch!” Willie kept following me, tongue lolling gaily out of his mouth. “Oh, for Pete’s sake,” I muttered, and picked up speed, wheezing in my corset. Willie kept pace.

  The formal gardens ended, and I was through the garden gate and into the slave quarters. The crumbling little cabins looked even creepier at night. All I had to do was make it through the slave quarters, and then I was pretty sure the Union tents would appear.

  Until an eerie white figure that most definitely did not belong back there appeared several hundred feet in front of us.

  “Oh, no,” I whispered, as I skidded to a halt, kicking up dirt with my satin dress slippers as the ghostly white psycho stood in front of me. “Oh, no, no, no.”

  Willie, unfortunately, had the opposite response. He barked joyously, did a little hop, then leaped forward, full steam ahead, racing toward another playmate.

  “No, Willie!” I shouted. “No! No! Bad dog! Come here!”

  My calls unheeded, I started chasing Willie. I mean, who knew what this woman would do to a poor defenseless dog? I was pretty sure she’d killed those chickens. Maybe she would do something terrible with dog blood! And it was Beau’s dog. Who knew what sort of terrible vengeance she’d wreak on his poor innocent puppy?

  Unless … unless she didn’t actually come up with any of this stuff. Maybe she was just following someone else’s orders. Someone who would have done anything to start getting soldiers off the battlefield so he could start building his precious housing development… . Realization hit me like a thunderclap. Was it possible the ghost was the Mrs. America Southern belle from Dixie Acres?

  Willie, not wearing a corset, was much faster than I was and leaped right on top of the ghost before I had a chance to stop him. I heard a loud, high-pitched scream, then realized that I had been the one who screamed.

  The ghost fell to the ground like a sack of potatoes, with Willie standing on top of her, licking her face.

  “Willie!” I cried, and sped toward him.

  “Aw, hell, get off!” shouted a voice that was definitely not female. Now I was confused. “I can’t move! Get this stupid thing offa me! How the hell much does this damn dog weigh?”

  By the time I’d gotten close enough to lean in and see who it was, Willie had licked off all of his makeup.

  “Cody?!” I asked incredulously, leaning in to peer closer. “Is that you?”

  “Aw, hell, Libby?” Cody sat up slightly as Willie started licking the white makeup off his arms. “Of all the people I didn’t want to see me like this.” He pulled off his wig and stared glumly at it.

  I heard a sound behind us. I looked up, and people had started to pour out of the mansion. I thought I recognized Luke, Dev, and Captain Cauldwell at the front of the crowd.

  “You are in very big trouble, young man,” I said imperiously, hands on my hips.

  “Don’t I know it,” he muttered.

  “Libby!” I looked to my left, and my heart skipped a beat as a tall, uncoordinated someone thrashed his way awkwardly out of the woods. Garrett burst through the trees into the alley of slave quarters, panting. “Are you all right? What happened? I heard you scream! You really do have impressive projection. Must be the singing, right? I …” He trailed off, as he looked down and caught sight of Willie and Cody on the ground. “Oh. Um. My. Well. Look at that. You caught the ghost.”

  “Actually, Willie caught the ghost.” I shrugged.

  “Is that …” Garrett swooped down to peer into Cody’s face. “The Boy Scout? The pervy one?”

  “Aw, shut it,” Cody said, swatting him away. Willie jumped back on top of him, knocking him flat on the ground. “Ouch!” Cody shrieked.

  By this time, the crowd had caught up with us. It looked like every single person who had been at the ball had spilled out of the house and was now clustered around Cody.

  “You all right?” Beau reached me first. “Was that you who screamed?” I could feel Beau and Garrett sizing each other up behind me. “He try to hurt you?”

  “What? What, no, of course not!” I turned to Beau. “It’s—”

  “Ghost!” Dev shrieked. “Oh, no, wait a minute … Oh, no, it can’t be … O … M … G …” Dev leaned closer and closer, until he lifted up one of Willie’s floppy ears to peer underneath. “It’s the tiny gremlin!”

  “Cody?!” Beau asked incredulously.

  “Son, what in the hell do you think you’re doin’?!” Captain Cauldwell thundered.

  “The tiny gremlin’s a tranny!” Dev cackled. “Oooh, oooh, I have a front-page headline! Garrett, Garrett, listen to this!” He hopped over to Garrett. “‘Transvestite Tot Terrorizes Tiny Towns!’ No! Wait! ‘Drag Queen Teen in Spooky Scene!’ Eh? Eh? I’m the one who should be writing for the paper!”

  “I’ll think about it, Dev,” Garrett said equitably as he whipped out his cell phone and started snapping pictures of Cody.

  “Cody, why did you do it?” Beau asked, somewhat bewildered. “Did I—Did I do somethin’ wrong?”

  “Naw, not really. Sort of.” Cody struggled to a sitting position, as Beau helped pull Willie off. “It’s not just you. It’s all of this.” He gestured vaguely to the house, the grounds, all the people clustered about. “It’s a waste of a summer, marchin’ around like a dumbass in the heat, when I coulda been hangin’ out with my friends, instead of stuck here with you rejects.”

  “So what was the plan?” Garrett swooped in, voice recorder in hand, gearing into reporter mode. “Scare a few kids, hope the whole thing’d get shut down, and you’d be sent home to Montgomery?”

  “Pretty much,” Cody grumbled. “I jes’ wanted to get the hell out of here. An’ I figured if enough Boy Scouts went home, they’d shut down the whole program altogether. An’ I could go home without gettin’ in any kind of trouble.”

  “Unluckily for you,” Randall said, pushing his pale, pointed face to the front of the crowd, “we Boy Scouts are made of stronger mettle. Except for you, that is,” he sniffed.

  “Why Corporal Anderson?” Garrett pressed on. “Personal grudge?”

  “He’s a pain in the ass,” Cody grumbled. “Ol’ Stick-Up-His-Butt Anderson. Too much damn enthusiasm for this whole mess. Then he starts movin’ in on my woman—”

  Both Beau and Garrett shifted uncomfortably.

  “Weren’t there ghost rumors even before I got here?” I jumped in quickly, trying to break the tension.

  “Sure, sure.” Cody shrugged. “I Googled ghost stories, and, shit, wouldn’t you know, that whole Anderson business popped right up. It was damn easy. Gave me a built-in motivation for hauntin’ this stupid regiment.”

  “And the dress was just an added bonus?” Dev quipped.

  “No way!” Cody shrieked. “I had to! It was the only thing that made sense! And the best way to mess with stupid Corporal Anderson! And—and—”

  “And you would have gotten away with it, if it weren’t for us meddling kids?” Dev cut him off, a twinkle in his eyes.

  “What the hell you talking about, Gramps?” Cody snarled.

  “And, of course, a pup named Scooby-Doo!” Dev cheered. Willie whined. “Er, I mean Willie,” Dev corrected himself.

  “Son, you’re comin’ with me,” Captain Cauldwell ordered. Clamping a firm hand on Cody’s shoulder, Captain Cauldwell picked him up and led him back to the house. Willie followed, still trying to lick the makeup off his legs. Dev, giggling gleefully, stayed as close to Cody as possible, dragging Luke behind him.

  Cody. Huh. I had been so sure it was Cheyenne! The Dixie Acres guy had such a good motivation for getting rid of us. I wondered where they were tonight. Well, commotion or not, they didn’t ever seem to be permitted onto the historical property.
<
br />   Gradually, the rest of the crowd dispersed, until only Beau, Garrett, and I remained.

  “You found him, then?” Beau asked, awkwardly shuffling at the ground. “And you’re okay?” I nodded. He nodded in return. “All right, then, I’ll, uh, leave you to it.” He turned to go. “Holler if you need me,” he said, before slowly walking back toward the mansion.

  “You were looking for me?” Garrett furrowed his brow. “At the ball? Or, uh, outside of the ball? Is that why you came out here? Alone? In the dark?” He was talking faster and faster. “Libby, who knows what was out here? Is out here? What if that hadn’t been Cody? What if—”

  “I’m fine, Garrett.” I shushed him. “But are we fine?”

  “Oh.” He reddened and scuffed his foot in the dirt. “Oh, I don’t—I don’t know. Do you want us to be fine?” He looked up at me.

  “I do. I want us to be fine,” I said tentatively.

  “I do too,” he blurted out in a rush. “But Beau … and you—I’m just not sure—”

  “Garrett.” I sighed heavily, taking his hands. “I want to be with you. But I need to be with someone who trusts me. And I want you to be that someone. But I don’t know if you can.”

  “I want to be,” he said, nodding earnestly. “I really, really want to be that someone.”

  “I know.” I shook my head sadly and wrapped my arms around him. “You can trust me,” I whispered. “Always.” He remained stiff in my arms, but I could feel him reach one hand up to stroke my hair. I pulled away gently. “Think about it. If you can be that someone”—I leaned up to kiss him on the cheek—“let me know.”

  My head held high, I made my way out of the slave quarters, through the garden, and over to my tent on Sutlers’ Row. I wanted to be with him, more than I wanted almost anything, but if he couldn’t trust me, then I knew it wouldn’t work.

  The tent was empty, as Luke and Dev were still presumably watching the Cody drama unfold or dancing the night away. I fell into a dreamless sleep, and before I knew it, another morning was dawning, bringing another battle, and a sight that had never before been seen inside the Colonial Couture tent.

  “This is a cruel and unusual punishment,” Cody moaned.

  “You wanted to wear a dress so bad, you got it!” Dev cackled. “If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime. Ever heard the phrase ‘the crime fits the punishment,’ tiny gremlin? You perpetrated a cruel and unusual crime.”

  As part of the first phase of his punishment, Dev had requisitioned Cody as a human mannequin. He was currently standing on a box in front of the Colonial Couture tent, dressed in the frilliest dress and bonnet Dev could find.

  “Can I at least get some water? This is inhumane.”

  Calmly, Dev picked up a dipper full of water from the bucket outside our tent and flung it full in Cody’s face. Dripping, Cody screeched and spluttered.

  “Careful, dear.” Dev returned the dipper to the bucket. “Mannequins should be seen and not heard.”

  I laughed, for what felt like the first time in a long while. I still hadn’t heard from Garrett. I mean, it’s not like I expected him to burst into my tent with a bouquet of roses belting out “Endless Love” or something.

  “I can’t believe this is the last battle of the summer,” I mused.

  “I know, weirdsies, right?” Dev rummaged around in the boxes behind the racks in the tent, extracting his telescope. “Hence the extra-special outfits.” He used the telescope to point at me.

  “Um, yeah, about that,” I said, looking down at my dress, which was an exact replica of Scarlett O’Hara’s Twelve Oaks barbecue dress. But in pink. “I’m not sure this is accurate …”

  “Accurate, schmaccurate. If you’re not going to bust out the pink suit on the last day, when can you?” He was, in fact, wearing a pink suit.

  “YOU!”

  A male voice boomed out as Dev and I swiveled to see who it was. A livid man dressed in khakis and a pink polo shirt was barreling toward us, a stack of newspapers under his arm, trailed by a tall blonde in a zebra-print halter dress tripping over the uneven ground in sky-high heels.

  “You owe me several million dollars, you uppity Yankee bitch!” he snarled.

  “Watch it,” Dev warned him. “Or I’ll teach you the meaning of the word ‘bitch.’” He flexed his slender muscles in a menacing manner. Or a manner intended to be menacing, at least.

  “What are you talking about?” I asked nervously. I finally recognized him as the Dixie Acres guy—he just wasn’t wearing a suit. And that must have been Cheyenne, liberated from her peach Southern belle get-up.

  “You killed my development!” he bellowed. “I don’t know how you did it, but I know it was you! Anything you care to tell me about this?” He threw the stack of newspapers onto the table that held our cash box. Curious, Dev and I started rifling through them. Tuscaloosa News. Mobile Press-Register. Huntsville Times. Birmingham News. Atlanta Journal-Constitution. And at the very bottom of the stack, a well-traveled-looking Boston Globe. Dev flicked through the Tuscaloosa News until he found an article entitled “A Second Civil War: The Fight for History.”

  “Every damn newspaper, the same damn appeal. For help. To save some stupid piece of chicken-shit cow pasture I was gonna save through economic redevelopment!”

  “People gave money?” I asked. I skimmed the article. It was exactly that: an appeal for money to save the battlefields that Dixie Acres planned to build on, and a denunciation of Dixie Acres in general.

  “Don’t play stupid. Enough money poured in to create a private trust to protect the main plots of land I was gonna buy. And worse than that, no one’ll touch any of my condos with a ten-foot pole! The whole thing is sunk. How the hell did a little idiot like you pull that off?”

  “How indeed would such a story travel all the way to Boston?” Dev asked drily, finger tapping against the article’s byline.

  And there it was, in black-and-white: Garrett McCaffrey. Garrett had single-handedly saved dozens of Southern battlefields from destruction and Dixie Acres. For someone who claimed to be not interested in history, he had accomplished one of the most impressive feats of preservation in the last decade.

  I turned to face Mr. Dixie Acres.

  “I wish I could take credit for this, but I can’t,” I said in a strong, clear voice. “But I couldn’t be happier that it happened. Now, unless you’re interested in purchasing some Confederate Couture, I suggest you leave the tent. Before our guard-mannequin forcibly evicts you.”

  Dev gave me the thumbs-up, and even Cody, miserable in his frilly bonnet, nodded approvingly. Muttering menacingly, Mr. Dixie Acres stormed away, followed by his erstwhile Southern belle. I grinned as they retreated.

  “Well, that sure beats flowers.” Dev chuckled. “Here, honey, I got you this bouquet of protected battlefields.”

  “I can’t believe it.” I shook my head. “That is the most wonderful, most amazing—I just—I just can’t believe.” I had quite literally been stunned speechless.

  “Unbelievable,” Dev agreed, raising the telescope to his eye.

  “What are you doing?” I asked absent-mindedly, privately counting down the minutes until the battle was over and I could find Garrett.

  “Looking for my man on the battlefield. And whatever hotties might catch my eye.”

  “You’re terrible.” I shook my head, grinning.

  “Let’s see … starting with the boys in blue …” Dev appraised the field, calling out rankings as he looked over different soldiers. “Fug, fug, decent, jailbait, hairy, average, average plus, ugh, no, not hot, and wearing farby glasses …”

  “Farby glasses?” I interrupted. “Someone’s wearing historically inaccurate glasses?”

  “Yeah, looks like they have plastic frames.” Dev squinted through the lens.

  “Oh my God,” I said.

  “Oh my God,” Dev said.

  “What?” we said simultaneously.

  “It has to be Garrett, right?” I asked h
opefully. “I mean, it has to. Who else would wear plastic-framed glasses into battle?”

  “‘The Second Vermont Brigade: Sponsored by Green Mountain Coffee,’” Dev read with wonderment.

  “He’s marching into battle, even though he thinks reenactments are stupid.” I clutched Dev’s arm, my heart pounding. “He saved dozens of battlefields, and he’s participating in a historical activity! This has to mean something, right? Doesn’t it have to?”

  “This is real coffee, Libby,” Dev said, putting the telescope down to face me. “One hundred percent arabica coffee.”

  We smiled at each other.

  “You go get your coffee,” I said.

  “And you go get your man,” he replied.

  Leaving Cody sweating in the sun in his frilly dress, we sprinted away. Dev ran through Sutlers’ Row, taking the quickest route to the coffee. I, however, plunged headlong into the midst of the battle. I mean, how else was I supposed to find him?

  I ran through the ranks, sidestepping horses, coughing as guns discharged around me, filling the air with thick gray smoke.

  “It appears we have a civilian on the field,” the commentator boomed over the loudspeakers. Oh. Whoops. “She appears to be a short blonde dressed head to toe in pink.” Well, at least now, Garrett probably knew I was looking for him.

  A cannon exploded behind me. I ducked, instinctually, even though I knew there weren’t real cannonballs in it.

  “You crazy, lady?” I heard a man shout behind me. “Get off the field!”

  I ignored him and kept on running, through the cloud of cannon smoke, lifting my skirts to jump over bodies in the field, weaving my way through ranks of blue and gray.

  Finally, I spotted the telltale plastic glasses glinting in the sun.

  “Garrett!” I called, completely out of breath from running in a corset, resting my hands on my knees as I tried to catch my breath. “What are you doing?”

  “Libby!” he shouted back, and pushed his way out of formation to join me. It was really Garrett, dressed in full Union uniform. “What are you doing?”

  “Oh, you know, just out for a run,” I joked, wheezing. “Seriously. What are you doing?”