by Ann Rinaldi
"Baby sister."
"I know, David."
"Means a lot to me. Always did. Just couldn't seem to"—more coughing—"keep you in line when Pa left. You forgive me?"
"Yes, David." I leaned down and kissed the side of his face. It was feverish.
He nodded his head and gestured with it to the west. "Light over there," he said. "Somebody coming. See? Told you."
I looked. There was no light. "I see, David." I said. There were tears in my voice now.
"You tell, you tell Josie that I love her, you hear?"
"I'll tell her," I promised.
"You tell Ma the same. But tell Josie I love her."
"Yes, David." Tears were coming down my face now and I did not try to stop them. I did not wipe them away.
"Be careful lighting that lantern again when it goes out."
I nodded my head. I could not manage, anymore, to answer.
He lay back. I released my hand from behind his neck. He breathed with difficulty for a minute or two while he grasped my hand and smiled at me.
He said, softly, "You be good. No mouth."
And stopped breathing. Then, he was gone.
I felt him go. A wind came up of a sudden from nowhere, where there had been no hint of a wind before. It blew through the wounded trees around me and they lifted their leaves as if in respect. It whirled around for about five minutes, like a serious storm was coming, but there were no clouds in the sky.
I knew it was lifting David's spirit to heaven. I felt him going.
I sat there while the currents of air did what they must do, while they vibrated in circles, making me giddy, then quieted down and let the night close in.
The lantern had gone out and I felt around for the matches, found them, and, as my brother had told me, was careful lighting the lantern again. How had he known the lantern would go out?
I will not pretend that I was not afraid for the next hour or so, alone there by the graves of those we had buried, with the other dead lying all around me on Culp's Hill, and my brother David, dead right next to me. Oh, how I wished I had asked to bring Cassie along! Would someone never come?
I drew my knees up under my skirt and rested my head on them, drew my arms around my head, and shivered. I waited. I don't know how long. It was not cold, except in my heart.
And inside me my emotions were warring for dominance, both terror and sorrow.
I do not know which won that night. By the time I saw the lantern light come up the hill in the distance and the two riders on horseback, I think that it was a draw. But I no longer cared.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
TWO MEN approached on horseback, and at first I was scared. Then I saw they were Brandon and Joel, both in uniform.
"Tacy!"
They were near on top of me before I knew it, scrambling down from their mounts.
I struggled to get to my feet, then realized I had David's head in my lap. When had I taken his head in my lap? I raised my arms to them.
Brandon stood over me, Joel just behind him. Both their faces showed horror, no less.
"My God," Brandon said. He knelt on one knee and put his hand on the side of my face. "You all right, honey?"
I could not speak, but my tears, quiet tears, started down my face again.
"How long has he been dead?" Joel asked. He came to kneel on the other side of me and set the lantern down beside him. Gently, he took David's head from my lap and set it on the ground.
I looked at his dear face and spoke, "I don't know how long it's been. Since dark came."
Joel was going to be a doctor, like Pa. He'd just started medical school when the war came. Now he opened David's shirt in the lantern light and looked at him. "Shot right near the heart," he said.
He took his gloves off, put his arms around me, and hugged me strong. Then he drew back, looked me in the face, taking my measure. He felt my forehead. "Your eyes are all swollen from crying," he said. "Otherwise you look all right. Likely all you need is a powder. We'll let Pa decide. Are you all right? Hurt anywhere?"
I said I was all right.
"You tell us what all happened here later, sweetheart," he said. "We have to get you home now. Right, Brandon?"
"Right," Brandon said. "You take David. I'll bring Tacy."
With few words but lots of understanding, they worked together. You could tell they were accustomed to working together. Brandon fetched his blanket roll and Joel's and tossed them to his brother, who wrapped David in them expertly. Then Joel carried him on his shoulder over to his horse, where he secured him.
It was as if he'd done this all before.
Brandon picked up the haversacks and put the canteens in them, and I put in Pa's Physicians Handbook.
"Anything else?" Brandon asked.
"The shovel and the lantern," I said.
"Leave them. We can come back."
"Our horses."
He looked around. "Where?"
I told him. "We can't leave them. Please."
He agreed. Then he lifted me in his arms and put me on his horse so I'd be behind him on the way down the hill. He instructed me to hold on tight. We found our horses where we'd left them and the same guard still there.
The guard looked at Brandon and then at the body of David thrown over Joel's horse. "I heard a shot," he said. "I saw the man ride away like all hell was after him." He shook his head. Then, out of his pocket he drew the two-dollar bill that David had given him.
He gave it to Brandon. "Give it to the little girl," he said. He gestured at David's body. "He gave it to me. Don't want it. Anybody needs me to testify I will. Saw his face, the one who did the shooting, when he came in here and when he went tearing out, I did. Know what he looks like."
Brandon thanked him and we went on our way.
I wanted to ride Ramrod home, but Brandon said no. "You're not strong enough," he said. "You just hold on tight to me."
So he tethered Ramrod to his own horse and David's horse to Joel's.
I gave him no mouth.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
I SHIVERED AND cried on the way home, unable to believe what all had happened. I leaned my head on Brandon's back. Joel was ahead of us, and I could hear Ramrod's hoofbeats and her snorting behind. I clung to my brother because he was the only real thing in the world right now.
"What are we going to tell Mama and Josie and Pa?" I sobbed out at one point.
"Don't worry about it," he said. "Joel and I will handle it."
"It's my fault, all my fault. I encouraged him to go up there and finish Pa's work."
"I don't want to hear that out of you ever again, Tacy."
Brandon's voice was as stern and severe as it had ever been with me. It stunned me into silence. I'd forgotten he was a captain in the cavalry and could summon forth a voice like that. But I did not know how to respond. And when I did not, he asked, more softly, "Did you hear me?"
"Yes, Brandon." I hiccupped. "I hear."
He reached a hand down and touched mine where it held his waist. He said nothing, but for a moment he covered my hand with his own, gently, and we went on in silence. I was crying more now, silently, and was glad he could not see.
In time we were home. The boys went right to the barn, as if they had discussed things ahead of time. Brandon lifted me down from the horse and told me to stand right where I was. It was soon apparent to me that they did have a plan.
Joel untied David's body from his horse and set it on the floor. Then they took off the horses' tack and put the horses in the stalls. They fed and watered them, as if we had all night. I just stood and stared. Then, the tasks done, they looked at each other.
"Pa's surgery?" Joel asked.
Brandon nodded. "That'd be best. You got keys?"
"Always have 'em."
Brandon nodded again. "Don't disturb him too much. The authorities will want to see..." His voice trailed off.
"I understand. You going to tell them?"
"No. We'll all do
it together. I'll wait for you. But we have a problem first."
"What?"
"Tacy here. Look at her. She's full of blood. All over her dress. We go in with her looking like this and Ma will faint dead away before we open our mouths."
Joel took off his hat and scratched his head. "Yeah." He mused a bit. "Only one thing to do. You two come in the surgery with me. You take her up the back stairs, while I'm laying David out, and get her changed. Then come back down, quiet-like, and we'll go in together."
It was agreed upon. I looked down at myself. I hadn't realized it, but the front of my dress was full of blood. David's blood. I started to shake all over again, seeing it.
Their plan worked fine. I supposed their plans always did. Brandon and I heard voices in the parlor—Pa's and Mama's and Josie's—as we crept up the back stairs from Pa's surgery. That was good. We wouldn't run into them upstairs.
I'd taken off my shoes and Brandon, his boots.
His cavalry boots went up over his knees. He carried them now. In my room he set them down on the floor, then went right to work.
"Take off the dress," he said.
I just stared at him.
"Oh, come on," he said. "Dammit, I bathed you when you were a baby."
"I'm not a baby anymore."
"Yeah, I know—you're all grown up." We were whispering, and he came over and unbuttoned the back of my dress and pulled it over my head. I stood there in my petticoat, the one I hadn't had to rip up, and my chemise, which showed the tops of my new bosoms. I was always so proud of them, yet now I was embarrassed. But Brandon paid no mind.
He went to my closet and pulled out a dress, a blue one. "Put this on."
I slipped it over my head. It, too, buttoned in back. He did the buttons for me.
"All right, let's get out of here and get this over with."
We crept back downstairs to Pa's surgery, where he put on his boots and I my shoes. Then we went out of there and around the house to the back door, the three of us. And, for some strange reason, maybe because we did not want to just walk in on them and announce out of the blue, Here we are, we're back—and, oh yes, by the way, David is dead, because of that, we knocked.
***
THE NEXT DAY or so is a blur to me. I recollect that I fainted once. I do not recollect at what juncture it was. It could have been anytime between when we went in that back door and started telling Mama and Pa what had happened and the time we came back from David's funeral at the cemetery of Christ Lutheran Church.
But somehow now that it comes back to me I distinctly remember that it was before the funeral. It was when I was standing there between Brandon and Joel, telling Mama and Pa the whole story of how David had come to be shot. Josie had been put to bed with laudanum, in shock already. Pa had asked question after question of me, until we got to this. And it was then, when I was telling him what David had done to provoke the shooting, that I felt myself getting wobbly.
"Because he wouldn't dig up the body? That's why the man shot him?" Only Pa didn't say man. He said a cuss word.
I leaned against Brandon for support. It was all flashing in front of me again. "Yes, sir," I said. And I heard the shot again, echoing through the torn woods. I clutched Brandon's arm and looked up at him appealingly.
He glanced down at me, saw what he saw, and said, "Pa, I don't think she can bear any more."
Pa scowled. "Sit down," he told me.
I turned to go to the couch behind me, still holding Brandon's arm.
That's all I remember. I don't think I hit the floor, because both Joel and Brandon saw what was about to happen and caught me first.
Brandon picked me up. Somebody, likely Joel, shoved something under my nose and I came to.
"She's been in a bad way since we found her, Pa." I heard this from a distance, as if it was coming through a tunnel, from Joel. "She sat there alone with him for some hours. She was in shock when we found her. I think she still is. She needs something."
"Go in my surgery," I heard Pa say, "and get some—" And then his voice was lost in the tunnel and I was carried upstairs, likely by Brandon. My dress and shoes were taken off and I was put to bed.
I opened my eyes once to see Joel leaning over me with some kind of a powder and water, telling me to take it. I did so. I heard them agree to "take turns through the night."
I woke a lot through the night. I woke crying, sometimes screaming, "Please, David. please—give him what he wants. He's got a gun."
Or I'd say, "The wind, David, the wind is taking you away."
Or, "No more mouth, David. I won't give you any more mouth. I promise, you come back to us and I won't give you any more mouth."
Once I clutched Joel's sleeve and begged him, "I promise I'll be good if you come back. You must come back. Josie is waiting for you."
In between these outbursts I tossed and turned, but every time I woke one of them was in the big armchair beside my bed. Just the sight of a figure there comforted me.
When I opened my eyes in the morning, the sky was blue and sun shone in the windows. Joel was sleeping in the armchair. Outside birds sang.
I slipped out of bed, just a bit shaky and aware that I was still wearing only my chemise and petticoat. I reached for my summer robe and went over to him. I touched the side of his face. He opened his eyes and smiled at me.
"You all right?"
"I'm middling well."
He took me on his lap.
"How," I asked, "can God give us a blue sky and sun and singing birds, like it's an ordinary day, when David is dead?"
He shook his head as if to rid it of cobwebs. "I haven't even had my coffee yet," he told me.
I waited.
"Maybe," he said then, "it's David's job up in heaven right now to wind up the handles that start the birds singing and the sun shining and make the sky blue. You wouldn't want him to fail in his duties on his first day there, would you?"
Only Joel would come up with something like that. I buried my face in his chest and he patted my head. "That doesn't make any sense," I said.
"It doesn't? You know that for a fact?"
"No."
"Makes as much sense to me as anything else does these days. Maybe more. Now let's go downstairs. I need my coffee."
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
MY BROTHERS' cavalry unit was called back to the army on the twentieth of July. Where they were going off to we did not know. I cried and hugged them both when they left. I had baked sugar cookies and gave each a package for their haversacks as they sat their horses in front of the house.
They promised to write, then rode off to where the rest of their men were bivouacked at the southeast outskirts of town.
The only brothers I had now. I went back into the house.
Pa was going back to his doctoring tomorrow. There would be no men around. I would miss David more than ever. He was a hole inside me.
***
THE HOUSE was haunted, but the resident ghost was not David after all. It was Josie. She went about silently, scarcely there, gliding from one room to another, doing her chores, the same chores she'd always done.
At one point after the boys and Pa had left, I heard her ask Mama, "Do you want me to stay? Do I remind you too much of David?"
"Of course I want you to stay," Mama assured her. "If you want to. Do we remind you too much of David?"
"No. This is like my home here, and—"
"And what, child?"
"Nothing." But she'd been about to say something important, then stopped, changed her mind. I knew Josie enough by now to realize that she had a serious matter on her mind. I also knew that she would come out with it when the time was right. And it was not right yet.
"I can go home to my own mother if you want me to," she added.
"Nonsense." Mama was firm. "Your mama was going to sell the house here and stay with her sister, wasn't she?"
Josie lowered her eyes. "Yes, when David and I married. But now she's keeping it for me, for w
hen I want it."
"Do you want it, Josie?" Mama asked carefully.
More lowering of the eyes. "Not just yet. I'm not ready to be alone yet."
Mama hugged her. "Neither are we, are we, Tacy?"
I said no, we weren't.
***
MARY AND BASIL Biggs sent Marvelous back to live with us. They had to repair their house and had lost a lot of money in damage of possessions they'd owned, so Mary was living with one of the church women. And Basil with Sam Weaver, who'd given him the contract to carry bodies from the field to the cemetery.
So it was that Marvelous came again to be with us.
Mama gave her the room Josie had used, for Josie now had David's chamber.
The whole house was askew. Or was it my brain? I still was not sure. All I was sure of was that I would never be right again.
In early September I went back to school. Mama insisted upon it although I saw no sense in French or elocution or dancing classes, and did not care about the proper pitch in which to sing "The Star-Spangled Banner" or that sugar cain was supposed to be sugar cane, and when it is absolutely unforgivable not to curtsy.
As for geography, in times before we'd been studying the states, which were states and which were still territories. Now nobody knew what states still belonged to us. I'd forgotten, and did not care to remember, what territories were slave or free. Nobody wanted to know.
As for manners, must one curtsy when a man takes his leave after shooting one's brother?
Was it indelicate to raise your skirt in front of your brother to rip off pieces of your petticoat to stanch his blood when he was bleeding to death?
And what if your best friend is a Negro and she is living with you and you start to have doubts about the friendship because you realize of a sudden that the Negroes are the reason for the war. All along it never bothered you that she was a Negro.
But of a sudden it did. Around the tenth of August it did. When they sent the telegram that brought the news that your pa had been killed.
Your pa! Who was supposed to be around forever! A doctor! The person who fixed other people when they got hurt or sick. Which was why they'd sent him somewhere in Virginia along with the Union cavalry. The Union cavalry, which meant the Second Pennsylvania with them, Brandon and Joel's unit, to ferret out the Confederates in the area of Brandy Station for some insane army reason.