The Soldier's Wife

by Cheryl Reavis

  “Come sit down,” she said. “I’ll get the bacon biscuits and the cherry pies.”

  “Thank you, but no. I need to be outside,” he said.

  “But you have to eat—”

  “I have...things I need to see about. I’ll take them with me.”

  Sayer was about to try again to coax him into sitting down at the table, but then she understood the implication of what he was saying. She wasn’t the only one who didn’t feel as if this trouble was over. They still weren’t safe, and they shouldn’t behave as if they were. She got the biscuits and pies from the warming oven in the woodstove and wrapped them in a tea cloth.

  “Thank you,” he said when she placed them carefully into his hands. When he turned to go back outside, Sayer went with him.

  “No,” she heard Rorie say to the girls, when they would have followed them. In a moment, the back door closed.

  Sayer saw one of the revolvers resting on top of the barrel he’d been sitting on earlier. He picked it up and held it with the wrapped-up bacon biscuits and fried cherry pies. She had no doubt that the other one was likely tucked into his belt.

  “Rorie says there aren’t many cartridges left,” she said quietly.

  He nodded. “It may be we won’t need them.”

  She understood that he meant the words to be both truthful and of some comfort, but what would have helped her most would have been his allowing her to look into his eyes.

  “Will you put all that down for just a minute and sit?” she asked when he finally did look at her.

  He seemed slightly surprised to find that his hands were full. “No. I need to go.”

  “I would like to say something first. It would be easier if you weren’t towering over me and I wasn’t worrying about you dropping everything.”

  He didn’t say anything to that, but he did sit down on the bench. “I’ll...eat something now,” he said, putting the revolver aside and taking a bacon biscuit out of the tea towel and holding it up for her to see. “I already know you saved me twice today. This may be the third.”

  “Did I? How?”

  “When you brought me the revolver,” he said. “And when you didn’t let Amity run loose with a pair of scissors. And now you’re determined to keep body and soul together with your biscuits and pies.”

  She couldn’t keep from smiling. He wasn’t smiling, however.

  “What you did—bringing the gun out to me. It was dangerous. They could have killed you.”

  “I know.”

  “Then why did you do it!”

  She realized that, even though it was over and done with and no one had been hurt, he was actually angry with her.

  “I could see you from the cabin—I could see you were unarmed,” she said. “And I could see them coming after you. I wasn’t being impulsive or reckless. I was doing the only thing I could do.”

  He looked at her for a moment, apparently thinking about what she’d said. Then he sighed and began to eat.

  “Still good,” he said after a bite or two, and she smiled again. The compliment pleased her, but she had something she wanted to say to him, something she’d been thinking about ever since Benton had left.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “Sorry?”

  “That you got dragged into so much more than Thomas Henry asked of you. You could have been killed today as well—when none of this is your problem. You’re only here—”

  “It is my problem,” he said.

  “No, Thomas Henry didn’t mean for you to risk your life.”

  “It’s my problem and it doesn’t have anything to do with Thomas Henry. I have to go,” he said abruptly. He stood up and rolled the tea towel into a ball.

  “Jeremiah—” She caught his arm as he walked by her.

  “You should go inside,” he said. “Bar the doors. Don’t leave the lamps burning and stay away from the windows.”

  “I’m...afraid for you.”

  “No more than I am for you. It’s worse now that I know you’re apt to take matters into your own hands.”

  There was nothing she could say to that. She let go of his arm.

  “Wait. I need to get your letter. I forgot to tell you earlier.”

  “What letter?”

  “Benton brought it. That’s why he came up here.”

  “It’s your letter, then,” he said. “Not mine.”

  “I don’t understand. Who would be sending you a letter for me?”

  “I went to Jefferson to see about Thomas Henry’s will. Benton thought it needed to be done before Halbert found out you were widowed and got himself appointed executor for Thomas Henry’s estate.”

  She frowned. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “There was nothing to tell. I went, and I gave my sworn word that I was with Thomas Henry when he died. That had to be verified somehow, and the law clerk said it would probably take a long time—weeks or months—before the lawyer could do anything about it. I wasn’t thinking there would be a letter from him this soon. When I got back from Jefferson, you were having the memorial service. I...thought you had enough on your plate without having to worry about something so undecided. I couldn’t even find out for sure if he had a will.”

  “He did,” she said. “He told me so.” She kept looking at him, but he was avoiding her gaze again.

  “I have to go. I’m going to be close by,” he said. “Just not where I usually am. I’ll know if you need me.”

  He put the tea towel with the food and the revolver into his saddlebag and mounted the horse, clearly trying not to let the pain in his knee make him wince.

  “Sayer,” he said, working to keep control of a horse that was becoming more and more agitated in anticipation of yet another battle. There was something in his voice, something she recognized. It had been there when he’d told her about his dead comrade’s love of apple pie and about his one memory of his mother.

  “What is it?” she asked, looking up at him, afraid for him all over again.

  But he shook his head. “Nothing. Just...take care.”

  She waited until he had ridden into the woods before she went inside.

  Chapter Ten

  It was raining when Jack returned to the cabin, a steady rain that had begun after midnight and continued into the dawn. He rode the horse inside the barn and dismounted. He had kept watch all night. He hadn’t slept, even when he was satisfied that there was no one lurking around the perimeter of the farm. He was soaked to the skin—Rorie could have saved herself all the trouble she’d gone to getting him into a tub.

  “Don’t unsaddle the horse.”

  Jack turned around sharply. Sayer was standing just behind him. He hadn’t heard her come into the barn. Had she been inside waiting?

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, taking a step toward her. She immediately backed away. She was in the shadows now. He couldn’t see her face.

  “You ask me what’s wrong? I can’t—” She lifted her hand and then let it fall.

  “Sayer, what is it?”

  “You were in the Union army,” she said, and he froze. It wasn’t a question.

  “Yes,” he said after a moment.

  “It was in the letter Benton brought—your sworn testimony. Did you think I wouldn’t know which side the Army of the Ohio and the Army of the Potomac were on? You lied to me!”

  “Sayer—no, I did not.”

  “How could you let me think that you were Thomas Henry’s comrade!”

  “I never said that.”

  “No. You said there was a ‘bond’—soldiers have a ‘bond,’ that’s what you said. What else would I think? Why did you come here! Tell me!”

  “Because he asked me to.”

  “He wouldn’t have done tha
t if he’d known who—what—you were.”

  “He did know.”

  “I don’t believe you! Did you rob him on the battlefield? Is that how you got his things? Did you come here to see what else he had to steal? Did they teach you that in the orphanage? I can’t believe I—”

  “He knew he was dying. He asked me to tell his wife what had happened to him—because he was afraid you’d never know. He told me to get his letters and the things in his blanket roll to her. Sayer...”

  She was standing too far away, but she wouldn’t let him get any closer.

  “It must have been so...easy for you. I made it easy, didn’t I? If you came because he asked, then why did you stay? That’s what I don’t understand.”

  “I can’t...”

  “Can’t what? Tell me.”

  “I stayed because I wanted to,” he said, putting all the other reasons aside and telling her the one that mattered.

  “Everything you said about Thomas Henry’s death—how can I believe what you said is true? How can I believe you were even there?”

  “I was there. I talked to him. I buried him.”

  “Did you kill him, too?”

  He didn’t say anything, and she abruptly put her face into her hands.

  “Sayer, I can’t explain it—things happened and—”

  She abruptly took her hands away and took a step toward him. “I don’t want you to explain. I want you to go away from here. I want you to go now!”

  She pushed past him; he could hear her splashing footsteps as she ran back to the cabin.

  I’m still in that classroom, he thought. I’m still having to choose, only this time, I don’t know what the right thing is.

  Sayer!

  * * *

  Sayer stood with her back against the door, trying not to cry. She was wet to the skin and shivering. Everyone was still asleep, but they wouldn’t be asleep for long. The girls would wake up full of questions about whether or not they could go outside now and when Jeremiah would be back.

  The papers Benton had brought were still lying on the table where she’d left them. She moved quietly to relight the stub of candle she’d used earlier and sit down. She wanted to read Jeremiah’s sworn statement again, though why she did she couldn’t have said. She didn’t need to. The words still swirled in her mind.

  Sergeant Jeremiah Murphy... The Army of the Potomac...

  Jeremiah was a Yankee soldier. Thomas Henry hadn’t died with a comrade. He had died with his mortal enemy. At least she had sent Jeremiah away. It was the right thing to do; she knew that—and still her heart was breaking.

  She picked up the legal papers, straining to read the elaborately formal handwriting in the dim light, forcing herself to continue past the point that had caused her such pain.

  Sergeant Murphy’s account of the aforementioned Thomas Henry Garth’s death on the battlefield is consistent with that of another soldier of the Highland Guards who was also wounded, separated from his company, and lying nearby. Said soldier has given a written account of Corporal Garth’s having sustained grave injury in the fighting earlier that day and having died of his wounds, and having been subsequently buried on the field in a marked grave by an unknown Union soldier….

  Sayer stopped reading. The rain was coming harder, and the candle flickered as the wick burned low. She folded the papers and put them back into the envelope. After a moment, she got up and placed it behind Mrs. Garth’s kitchen clock on the mantel, then impulsively reached for the clock key and wound it as tightly as she dared. The world didn’t stop because Jeremiah Murphy was no longer on the premises, and the sooner she realized that, the better. Rorie could go home now; Sayer had no further need of a chaperone. Everything could go back to the way it had been for the past four years—except that Sayer would no longer be waiting and watching for a man she knew now would never return.

  She gave a wavering sigh.

  “What’s wrong?” Rorie said from the bed. Sayer looked in her direction. She meant to tell Rorie that she was fine, that there was nothing the matter, nothing at all, but she couldn’t make herself say the words. She began to cry instead and she couldn’t stop.

  Rorie got out of bed and limped over to her. “What’s happened?” she asked, putting her arms around Sayer’s shoulders. “Jeremiah ain’t hurt, is he?”

  “He’s gone,” Sayer managed to say.

  “Gone?”

  “I sent him away.”

  “What in the world for?”

  “He’s been lying to us—to me. All this time, he’s been lying.”

  “About what?” Rorie asked.

  “He was a Union soldier, Rorie. He’s Thomas Henry’s enemy—our enemy—”

  Rorie didn’t say anything.

  “Did you hear what I said! He’s a Yankee!”

  “I heard you. I reckon they might have heard you all the way down yonder at the crossroads, too. Good thing them girls sleep so sound.”

  Rorie let go of her and would have stepped away if Sayer hadn’t caught her by the arm. “Did you know about this?”

  “Not...exactly,” Rorie said. She pulled free and hobbled over to the washstand and poured some water into the bowl. She began washing her face, Sayer thought, more to put her off than to begin her morning ritual.

  “Rorie, what does that mean?”

  “It means I asked him if he soldiered with Thomas Henry—the day he come up on my cabin looking for you. He didn’t answer me. So then I asked him if he’s the one what killed him.” Rorie went back to washing her face.

  “What did he say!”

  “He said what I reckoned to be the truth. He said, ‘I don’t know.’ Just like that. I still take it for the truth. I ain’t never been in no battle, but I reckon I can guess what it’s like—a lot going on and all of it having to do with cannonballs and bullets and bayonets and things like that what will kill you if you don’t do the killing first. I reckoned whether he did or didn’t come across Thomas Henry in the heat of the fighting, he was trying to do something for you and the girls now. I figured he was one of them things God does sometimes. You know, when He don’t put our chances right out in the open where we can recognize them. Ain’t you ever got to thinking one thing or another was the end of the world—and it weren’t that at all?”

  Sayer didn’t answer. Until she’d read Jeremiah’s sworn statement, she might have applied Rorie’s concept to his being the one to come here to tell her about Thomas Henry, but not now.

  “Well, maybe you ain’t old enough yet to have seen that kind of thing. Most times it’s a way to something we need, only we don’t even know we need it. And that’s how it was when Jeremiah showed up. I was all worried and wanting to get over here to see why you never hollered that morning, nor answered mine. He come as close to being shot as he ever was in that there war, and that’s the truth. But then I knowed what he was really doing here. I knowed he was a opportunity—I told you I made him bring me over here.”

  “This is nothing like that,” Sayer said. “Nothing—!”

  There was a knock on the back door.

  “Sayer,” Jeremiah said quietly on the other side of it. “I want to talk to you.”

  “No,” she said. “I want you to go.”

  “Then you’ll have to let me say what I want to say. Afterward, I’ll leave. Come outside.”

  Sayer hesitated, glancing at Rorie, who clearly wanted to make some comment.

  “What is it?” Sayer asked her, more to delay than to know.

  “Nothing much. Just...I’d listen to him if I was you,” Rorie said. “He can’t sway you if you’ve made up your mind about this. All he can do is leave you wondering if there wasn’t something he would have told you that you’re going to regret not knowing about. I say go out there and make sure your mind is s
ettled. Once and for all.”

  Rorie reached for Sayer’s shawl and held it out to her.

  “Sayer,” Jeremiah said again.

  Sayer took the shawl and put it around her wet shoulders. She bowed her head for a moment and opened the door.

  “It won’t take long,” he said when she didn’t immediately come outside.

  His horse was tied to the lean-to post.

  Poor old thing, she thought, not knowing if she meant the rain-drenched animal or herself. She stepped outside. She didn’t say anything, and she didn’t avoid looking directly into his eyes. She was immediately struck by how weary he looked, just as he had been the day of Thomas Henry’s memorial service when he’d returned from Jefferson—only then she hadn’t known where he’d been or what he’d been doing. He was an enigma then, and he was an enigma now.

  “What is it?” she asked abruptly, because she didn’t want to think about how he had come to be so weary. If she did, she would only be adding to the burden of her obligation to him when it was already more than she could bear. “What is it you want to say?”

  “I want to tell you the truth. All of it. I don’t want there to be anything about me that you don’t know.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I need to. And because you need to know what kind of trouble I’ve brought you.”

  She frowned. “Trouble...you brought,” she said, trying to understand.

  “The men who came here yesterday. They weren’t bushwhackers. They were bounty hunters.”

  “Bounty hunters? After deserters, you mean?”

  “They were after me. There’s a man who...wants me dead. I was on the run when I came here. I...still am.”

  “You came here to hide?” she asked.

  “Not...” He stopped and drew a quiet breath. “Yes, I guess I did. But I didn’t come thinking I’d stay. I came this way because I thought they’d be looking for me in the opposite direction. I still had the things Thomas Henry had given me and I decided to try to find you. He told me where his farm was—Ashe County on the North Carolina side. I meant to give them to you and leave, but you were hurt and the girls were sick—and then Halbert showed up. I thought you needed my help.”