A Soldier's Secret

by Marissa Moss

  I nod, licking my dry lips, pulling my hand free from his knuckly grasp. I hope we don’t get to know each other too well, but how much distance does a narrow tent allow? I swallow the lump in my throat. I’ll figure out a way to pass. I have to.

  For the first few months as a soldier, I work as hard figuring out how to stay clear of prying eyes as I do practicing drills. Since we all wash clothes only every few weeks, I can keep my bandaged breasts hidden under the shirt I always wear, changing only in the darkness of night when Damon is at the latrine. Myself, I huddle behind trees and shrubs to do my business instead of joining the line of soldiers pissing into the designated ditch. Each day that passes bolsters my confidence that I can do this. Damon treats me like his new best friend. No one else glances at me twice. I’m just another young, wiry recruit, one of thousands.

  Washington has been transformed into an enormous garrison. One hundred thousand soldiers are camped in the city. Stacks of rifles crowd the rotunda of the Capitol Building and the lobby of the White House. Tents surround the unfinished Washington Monument and line the grounds of the White House. Soldiers march in drills, bugling and drumming past once-sleepy neighborhoods. Senators push their way through ranks of soldiers to get into the Capitol. Once they shoulder their way in, they find recruits napping on their cushioned seats. The business of government grinds to a halt while the business of war takes over the city.

  Grand review of the Union Army, Washington, D.C.

  I’ve seen a fair number of towns in my travels, but nothing as big and elegant as this city, even bloated as it is now by endless rows of tents. The broad boulevards are as wide as rivers, lined by dignified trees set at regular intervals like sentries. The expansive distances and the cold marble buildings are intimidating, grander than anything in Flint. But it’s the sight of the army that fills me with the most pride. I’m part of a grand adventure, no question about it.

  And I want to play as big a part as possible. To my relief, no one questions my abilities as a soldier. I’m a better shot and horseman than the city boys, as good as the country ones. The only thing that sets me apart is my eagerness for hard work. Well, it’s partly a need to work, partly a need to avoid the constant company of my fellow recruits. I like doing drills or eating meals in large groups. I even like cleaning rifles or patching clothes with other soldiers. But I hate the gambling and drinking. I hate the loud, rough talk, the fights over nothing, the lewd stories and jokes.

  Which is how it seems to me most of the men spend their evenings. Even Damon, sweet as he is, can’t resist a card game, and he has an impressive collection of bawdy stories he loves to share.

  “Come on, Frank,” he begs me. “You should see the special stereopticon this one soldier has. If you pay him a penny, you’ll see scenes like you ain’t never laid eyes on—I mean, curves, real curves! Bared for all to see!”

  I feel my checks go hot and pink. “I’m really not interested, Damon. Besides, I have work to do. I’m helping out in the hospital tents.” I hurry off to my refuge, going from bed to bed in the tents that house the many sick recruits. It isn’t a quiet or restful retreat, but there’s an order to the patients, to their care, that makes me feel I belong there. And there’s no drinking, no salacious stories, no gambling, nothing to make me blush or cringe unless you count diarrhea and hairy bottoms that need wiping.

  Not a single battle has been fought and there aren’t any war wounds yet, but every bed is occupied. Men suffering from typhoid, cholera, dehydration, and sunstroke fill the wards. The army has no general hospitals, and most nurses are recovering patients themselves. I figure all I need is a strong stomach, like the recruiter said when he signed me on. If I can stand the stench and the gore, I’ll do fine.

  Anyway, I doubt I’ll get the chance to become an experienced nurse. Like everyone else, I’m sure the war will be over quickly—after one battle, two at the most. Damon brags that he’ll be home before the corn ripens on his farm.

  “Tell me about your home,” I ask him one afternoon after drills. It’s a clear summer day, and some of the fellows have decided to go down to the Potomac River for a swim. I beg off, saying I don’t know how, but it’s pleasant sitting on the bank, watching the men splash around. I admire their lean, muscular bodies. Damon’s lying on his stomach next to me, his white buttocks facing up like poached eggs. He’s sleepy from exertion and sun, but he turns his face on his arm to answer me.

  I’m asking partly out of curiosity and partly because I’ve learned that the best way to avoid questions is to ask them. Besides, I like to imagine what my life could have been if I’d been born someone else. And I like Damon. He’s sweet and simple, with a broad, earnest face and a stubborn blond cowlick that make him look younger than his twenty-one years. He’s docile and hardworking and honest. Of all the soldiers I could have shared a tent with, I’m lucky to have him for a partner despite his fondness for ribald jokes. Even those are quaint compared to the kinds of stories I hear other soldiers tell. Being around Damon makes me feel older and wiser, not boyish at all compared to his country innocence. And he’s not the type to get suspicious, to notice things. He accepts me. More than that, he likes me.

  “It’s just a regular farm,” says Damon, squinting up at me. “I’ll tell you what’s special about home—the girl I got waiting for me. As soon as I’m back, we’re getting hitched. I can’t hardly wait.”

  I try to smile. I know I should say something crude, tease Damon about his wedding night or something, but marriage isn’t a joke to me. So I change the subject. “When do you think we’ll head out? We’ve been sitting here for months. If you’ve got an army, aren’t you going to use it?”

  Damon nods. “Don’t worry, we’ll see battle soon enough. After all, you can’t take a group of yahoos and turn them into disciplined soldiers overnight! But I think we’re close to ready. And I’ve heard rumors …”

  I prick up my ears. “What rumors?”

  He lowers his voice, though there’s no one around for miles but fellow soldiers. “I hear we’re heading for Centreville, someplace between Washington and Manassas Junction, nearby in Virginia. The Confederate army is camped near there, just waiting for us.” Damon chews on a piece of grass thoughtfully. “It’ll be the first battle in this war. I’m guessing it’ll be the last. I just hope I get a chance to see some action. I don’t want all this training to be for nothing!”

  I lie back on the grassy slope, my hands tucked behind my head. I try to imagine what a battle would be like, but I can’t. I’ve seen bucks fight, their antlers clashing with heavy thuds, and dogs tear apart a raccoon in a chorus of growls and snarls. Once I even saw a mountain lion bring down a sheep. But those aren’t anything like thousands of men facing each other with cannon and rifles.

  “Frank, are you awake? Did you hear what I said?” Damon’s voice cuts through my thoughts.

  “Yeah, yeah,” I murmur. “I heard you. I’m just thinking, wondering what it’ll be like.”

  “No point in that,” Damon says. “We’ll find out soon enough.”

  For once the rumor turns out to be true. The next day we’re told we’ll be heading out for Centreville, just as Damon predicted. That night I’m as excited as everyone else, eager to get moving, to do something, anything but sit around in camp and drill, drill, drill.

  Tuesday, July 16, 1861, dawns bright and hot as regiment after regiment marches westward. Only, the yahoos haven’t been turned into soldiers after all. At least, they don’t act like a disciplined force. Men break ranks to pick blackberries or rest under trees. Some of them decide their ammunition is too heavy to lug, so they dump it by the side of the road. Others toss their canteens. I’m as green as everyone else, but I know better than to throw away anything that might come in handy. I might have soft skin like a city slicker, but growing up in the country taught me plenty. When I see the cartridges and canteens by the roadside, I’m plumb disgusted by the stupidity of those recruits and scoop them up, adding them to my own
pack. Damon laughs at me for shouldering the extra weight, but I can’t help it—Ma raised me not to waste a crumb.

  Senators and townsfolk ride by in buggies with picnic lunches as if the battle will be an amusing spectacle. I don’t know what the fighting will be like, but I doubt it’s going to make for good entertainment. I don’t understand why nobody seems to be taking the coming clash seriously. This isn’t a berry-picking expedition, a stroll in the country, or a Fourth of July picnic. So why is everybody acting like it is?

  A tall, skinny soldier from Flint walks alongside me. His name is Miles Tyler, and I’ve seen him at the post office in town, collecting his mail.

  “I ain’t got a good feeling about this, I sure ain’t,” Miles says. “What’s everyone so blamed happy for?”

  I’m relieved that at least one other person shares my fears. “I know we’ll crush the Rebels. I know that. But can it really be so easy? Months and months of drilling and only a day of actual fighting?”

  Miles wipes the sweat off his forehead. “It’s hotter ’n hell here. You’d think that’d be enough to take the cheer out of folks, but no, they’re frolicking in the fields like lambs. I don’t get it. They take some kind of happy tonic or summat?”

  Maybe it’s the excitement of being on the move at last, the optimism of a quick defeat of the enemy, but spirits stay high—except for Miles’s and mine. We worry and grumble together. “There’s nothing to fret about!” Damon insists after the day’s march has ended and we’re hunkering around the fire for supper. “Unless you’re worried we won’t find the Rebs, hiding as they are. They’re not eager to fight us—the closer we get, the farther back they scramble. Can’t blame the sorry cowards!”

  Damon turns out to be right again. After two days' marching and camping out, we close in on Centreville, only to learn that the Confederate troops have fallen back to the southwest of a high-banked stream called Bull Run. That means another night camping in preparation for battle the following day. But this time we’ll finally face them. The Rebs aren’t retreating anymore. They’re waiting for us.

  Stone church at Centreville, Va., used as a hospital for Union troops.

  There’s a different feeling in camp that night. This time we know we’ll engage the enemy in the morning. No more berry picking, no more picnics. The air is charged with nervous excitement. I’m edgy but relieved. At least everyone’s taking the coming fight seriously now, so seriously that three different soldiers ask me if they can have their canteens and shot back. Even Damon’s not so brash anymore. He looks miserable as he writes in his diary.

  I help set up the stone church at Centreville as a hospital to handle the wounded, unfolding row after row of cots, piling up cloth for bandages, fetching water to clean wounds with. It’s mindless work and I want to exhaust myself so I’ll be able to sleep. Coming back into camp, I pass soldiers cleaning their rifles or writing letters home. I join a young boy with barely any beard leading a group huddled together in prayer. I mouth the words, sing the hymns, but I don’t feel any safer, any closer to God. We’re all trying to keep busy, to fend off our fear. A thick blanket of somberness lies over the camp. Maybe the yahoos are soldiers after all.

  TRY TO SLEEP, but my thoughts won’t let me. Am I a soldier? Can I do this? Can I kill other men? Here I am, crammed into a camp with tens of thousands of men, about to fight tens of thousands of other men. The war seemed distant when we were training in Washington, but suddenly it’s all too close. I’m terrified I won’t measure up. I don’t think I’m a coward, but you never really know that kind of thing about yourself until you’re forced to face the truth.

  I’ve been pretending for so long, maybe I’m lying to myself now, imagining that I have guts, that I’m like everyone else. The truth is, I don’t know anybody like me. It’s hard even now to admit what I’ve done.

  Growing up on a farm in New Brunswick, Canada, I learned to handle a gun and a horse, working hard to please Pa. Edward, my sickly, weak brother, disappointed him, so I tried to do everything Edward couldn’t. My two older sisters were married, living away from home with their angry, brutish husbands, which left just me and Edward to help out Pa. Of course, Ma was there too, but her chores were women’s work—milking the cows, tending the vegetables, cleaning, and cooking. When Edward was feeling poorly, he’d stay with Ma, hoeing the weeds from between the peas, churning butter, fetching water from the well. I’d be out hunting or plowing or breaking in the new colt while he was planting potatoes.

  I thought that would make Pa respect me, and maybe it did, but not enough to show it. He wasn’t much for praise, so I didn’t expect that, just a grudging acknowledgment that I did my work well, that I contributed to the homestead. Now that I think back on it, I can see that he relied on me, enough so that he didn’t hit me the way he did Ma and Edward. All Ma had to do was put a slightly burned biscuit on his plate to get a slap across the face. And poor Edward, he could be sitting at the table, innocent as you please, and if Pa had banged the plow on a rock or if a horse had thrown a shoe, that was enough to earn my brother a clout on the ears.

  “You useless son of a bitch,” Pa growled in a typical outburst that came out of nowhere. “Eating my food! Wearing my clothes! Doing nothing but piddling women’s work! What kind of a son are you?”

  I watched, horrified, as silent tears ran down Edward’s cheeks, and I swore to myself that I would never be as weak as him, that I would never let anyone treat me that way.

  Ma rushed to Edward’s defense. “He can’t help it,” she cried. “He does the best he can.” Which earned her a rough slap across her chapped cheeks.

  “Don’t you sass me, woman! You’re both a pair of useless ninnies!” A few more punches landed on both Ma and Edward until Pa had enough. He sat down and shoveled in his supper while Ma and Edward sniveled. Me, I tried to eat without looking at anyone, but my throat tightened up. I was suffocating in that house.

  The only time I felt free was on my horse, Trig. I’d broken him myself, and we understood each other so well, I barely used the reins when we thundered through the woods, leaping over fallen logs, clearing streams in a soaring bound. He was all taut muscle, fierce and lean and fast. When I was astride him, I felt powerful, like nothing could touch me—not Edward’s tears, not Ma’s cringing, not Pa’s bullying. I was part of a different world with Trig, a big, open place with vast skies and adventure in all directions, not the closed-in farmhouse where the air was sour with misery.

  The evening after I turned fourteen, I was rubbing down Trig after a long day in the saddle shooting pheasants and partridges. The barn was peaceful with the sounds of hooves shuffling through straw, hay being chomped, a low snort every now and then. The light through the wide-open door was raking and low, sending shadows stretching into the corners. It was the hour of day I liked best, when chores were finished, my muscles sore and tired with the pleasure of work. I was alone with my best friend. I brushed Trig’s gray dappled coat and whispered into his neck how much I loved him. He cocked his ear back listening, and I had to laugh at how attentive he was. No one on that farm knew me except him. No one trusted me the way he did. He would jump a ten-foot fence if I asked him to, sure that I knew what I was doing. And I trusted him.

  Pa sauntered into the barn, breaking the magical spell of the place, smiling with liquor. “Ah, good, you’re prettying him up, I see.”

  I hated Pa when he was in that kind of mood, one of boozy fake friendliness. He came close enough so that I could smell the whiskey on his breath as he patted Trig on the withers.

  I pulled back, mistrustful. That was something Pa never did—he never touched anyone or anything with affection. There was a reason for his gesture, and I had a feeling it meant something awful.

  “Yes, he’s a fine horse. A fine horse,” Pa announced, rocking back on his heels. “Worth a pretty penny, he is.”

  “Not that we would ever sell him of course,” I said.

  “Whyever not?” Pa chuckled, an ugly rasp
. “Of course I would sell him—for the right price.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a wad of bills. “And this is the right price. Can you believe what stupid Old Man Ludham paid for a horse?”

  “I can’t believe you sold him! He’s my horse—mine! You didn’t even ask me!” I choked back angry tears. “You’ll give the money back. You have to!”

  Pa’s eyes hardened into chips of coal. “He’s my horse! Everything on this farm is mine, you included.” He hauled back his fist. I dodged the blow, catching it on my shoulder instead of my face. “Think you’re so high and mighty, do you? Think you got any say around here!” I tried to run past him, but Pa’s a big man and I was only fourteen. He grabbed me by the neck and started to choke me. I kicked at him, flailed wildly with my arms, but I was no match for his weight and muscle. He held me down with one hand and with the other hit me so hard, I could hear my nose crack. The fight drained out of me then, and I lay there in the dirty straw, blood streaming out of my nose while I watched Pa put a halter on Trig and lead him out of the barn.

  “Say good-bye to your precious horse then,” he sneered.

  I squeezed my eyes shut tight and stayed that way until I couldn’t hear footsteps or hoofbeats anymore. I swore I’d never let him hit me again. If I couldn’t get big, at least I’d get strong and do whatever it took so that nobody ever had that kind of power over me. When I opened my eyes, the barn was filled with dark shadows. The sun had gone down and a chill crept into my bones. But I was damned if I’d set foot in Pa’s house, eat at his table, sleep in his bed. Instead, I climbed into the hayloft, curled up with the cats, and spent the night in the barn. I slept there for three months, until the snows came and it got too cold even for me. But the house was never my home after that. I was biding my time, waiting until I was old enough to escape. I didn’t say another word to Pa, either. He’d broken more than my nose that evening. He’d broken any bit of family feeling I’d had—any connection there had been between us was destroyed. I’d lost Trig, and I felt all alone in the world.