by Holly Bush
“Ready to shave you now,” she said and pointed at his lap. “Go on out in the yard and shake off first.”
He stepped off the porch and shook out the blanket he held around him. “Is it time for me to get to wear my pants?”
“I suppose so. Your clothes and bedroll are clean and in the side room. Sit down on this stool, now,” she said. “We’ll be losing the light behind the trees soon.”
He watched as she sharpened his blade on a worn leather strop and ran a brush around a tin cup, making lather with the soap on the bottom. She walked up to him, close enough that he could feel her body heat up and down his right side, and he smelled hay and horse, and some faint note of wintergreen or peppermint. Her shirt gapped when she leaned around him to scrape his other cheek and he was pleased to note that he was interested in seeing the top of her breast, as at some point in the last few days he’d convinced himself that there were parts of him that might never recover.
“Almost done,” she said. “Tilt your head back and let me get your neck.”
He did as he was told and let the sun beat down on his face. Her fingers were strong, moving his chin one way or another or dabbing soap from around his ears and wiping his face clean with a piece of towel she’d dunked in a pan of water. The warm towel wiping his face felt better than anything he’d felt for a long while, and he relaxed his shoulders and let her wipe away two weeks’ worth of sweat and grit. His eyes closed and he let run her comb through his long, filthy hair.
“I need to bathe. I can smell my own stink.”
“I’m going to cut your hair while we’re out here. The weather’s temperate, so we could wash it without heating water.”
“I don’t care if the water’s cold. I’m tired of pulling it back with a string. Cut it. Cut it all off.”
She looked at him, hands on her hips, tilting her head from one side to the other. He was suddenly angry and not sure with whom or why. He was safe, finally on the mend, and had survived a close brush with the end of his days. Shouldn’t he be grateful, he thought, as he looked up at the woman, standing close enough to comb his hair. Long strands dropped off his head into his lap and onto the ground. Should this be a new beginning? Could he begin to forgive himself and his father? No, he didn’t think so.
She walked in the cabin, and he ran a hand over his head. His hair was cropped close on the sides and back, a bit longer on the top, but not much. It felt strange. He jumped when she spoke to him.
“Bend your head down. I’m going to wet your hair.”
The cool water made him shiver, and it wasn’t long before she was rubbing something in his hair that smelled like mint.
“That smells good.” It smells like you, he said to himself, wondering where that random thought had come from.
“I pick peppermint and dry it and grind it up to make my soap in the fall. My mother did it that way—at least that’s what my father told me.”
“He gone?”
“Yep. They’re all gone. You?”
“My daddy died a few weeks ago.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. I wish I could tell you it gets better, but it doesn’t.”
Matt shivered again as she poured clear water over his head, rinsing her peppermint soap and making him start to feel normal again. She toweled his hair and helped him stand and walk back to the rocker near Ben and the fire. She tucked a blanket around him.
“Your hair will be dry in a bit. If you’re up to it, you can come to the table, and I’ll dip you some soup.”
Matt rested and talked to Ben and rubbed his hand and arm like she’d shown him. She’d told him she was worried about bedsores and whether Ben was just set to wither away. He closed his eyes for a few minutes but he wasn’t tired, which he took as a good sign that one day he’d get his full strength back.
“Soup’s hot. Are you hungry?”
Still wrapped in the blanket, he made his way to the small, rough table and pulled a chair out and held it.
“Go on. Go ahead and sit,” she said.
“You’ve been up and working since sunrise, and men hold chairs and help women be seated.”
She looked up at him. “I can take care of myself.”
He shrugged and seated himself at the other chair, pulling the blanket over his shoulders. “And I can still try to be a gentleman, even seated here at a stranger’s table, in my underdrawers and wrapped in a blanket. Thank you for shaving me and cutting my hair today.”
He was suddenly furious, making his stomach roll and his hands clench, as he tried to maintain some level of civility with the woman who had most likely saved his life. He lifted the spoon beside his bowl and was happy to see that his hand only shook a small amount. She handed him a thick piece of dark bread and uncovered a crock of butter. She seated herself across from him and bowed her head.
Thin chicken soup with few vegetables and little sign of meat tasted like the fanciest, most delicious meal that Matt had ever eaten, including the sausage pie his mother made for him because she knew it was his favorite. He ate slowly, just a few sips at a time, hoping his stomach didn’t revolt. He slathered his bread with the fresh butter and took his time enjoying the yeasty scent and small bites of the hard crust.
“A meal fit for king, which I am not. I didn’t realize how hungry I was until I ate. I would eat more, but I think I should be careful as I’ve not eaten for two weeks it seems.”
“Probably wise,” she said and stood. “I’m going to feed your friend here and then go settle the animals for the night.”
“You go ahead and take care of your pigs and Chester. I’ll feed Ben.”
She shrugged and pulled on her boots. “Suit yourself. Glad for the help.”
Matt stood close to Ben’s bed and propped the old man up with a pillow. He weighed nothing even to Matt’s weakened arms. He dribbled small amounts of water and broth over Ben’s tongue and dried his mouth with a rag. Tears welled in the back of Matt’s eyes. He wanted to cry. Cry and shout and hit something or someone. How would he ever get home, and get Ben home? How far away was he from a rail line? Could he even move the man? He continued feeding him with blurry eyes, wiping his own nose on the blanket around him and taking deep, gulping breaths to avoid sobbing.
“You rest. Let me move him around and clean up his bed,” she said.
Matt hadn’t heard her come in and stepped away, nearly knocking over the rocker as he backed up. He rubbed a hand over his eyes and cleared his throat.
“Get the animals settled?”
“I did. Getting dark now. I’ll light the lamp.”
Annie dropped her sewing when she heard the knock. She grabbed the shotgun that was leaning against the wall and aimed it at the door.
“Who’s there?” she shouted.
“It’s Gilly.”
She hurried to open the door, pulled the young woman inside, and dropped the bar back in place. “What are you doing here? You’re going to get yourself killed.”
The black woman shook her head. “I waited until the Thurmans were on the other side of town. I wasn’t followed. How is he?” She pointed to Ben’s bed.
“The same. I give him broth and water just like you told me and move his arms and legs around three times a day.”
Gilly went to the bed and put her fingers on his neck and pulled the blanket away. She undid the wraps around the straight pieces of wood she’d used to splint his broken leg. “His heart is pumping fine, and his leg is healing well. Has he moved at all?”
“Not that I’ve seen. Did you see him move at all today, Mr. Gentry?”
Gilly turned quickly. “Ah, the head wound is awake.”
“Are you a nurse?” Gentry asked.
“No, I am not.”
“Then what are you doing here, poking and prodding my friend?”
“Gilly,” Annie said and led the woman toward the side room and privacy, “I’m out of that powder you gave me to put in his soup. Do you have any with you?”
“He is not overl
y friendly, I take it,” Gilly said as she poured some white powder from a pouch onto a piece of paper that Annie held.
“He should be thanking you, not questioning you. His friend would be long dead if you hadn’t risked your life coming here.”
“He is an angry man. That is clear.”
Annie handed her a coin. “Here. If you can see your way clear to get me a chicken or two to roast, some dried beans and potatoes, even if you can only get it over to the Cartwrights’, Tom or Madeline will bring it to me. I’m near out of supplies and don’t want to leave them yet and go to town, not that I like to go anyway. Keep whatever is left over for yourself.”
Gilly stared at the coin and then up at her. “Best you not go into town. There’ll be questions.”
“Have you heard anything?”
“Just the usual rumors. Mr. Cartwright went to fetch the doctor when it first happened.”
“I’m sure he told them something. He had to.”
Gilly nodded. “I’ll be going.”
Annie came back in the cabin and dropped the bar over the door after walking Gilly to the edge of the woods. She walked up to Gentry, now standing beside Littleship’s bed, and fixed her hands on her hips.
“What is the matter with you?” she asked.
“I thought you had a doctor look at Ben.”
“The doctor wouldn’t come. Probably didn’t think I could pay, even though my neighbor told him I had coin. I would have paid him with the money I found in your gun belt when I pulled off your pants that first day.”
“Why wouldn’t he come?”
“Doctor Rawlings doesn’t care much for the Campbells, Mr. Gentry. Not too many folks do.”
“Who’s this colored girl?”
“Gilly? She’s a woman, not a girl, and you owe me and her an apology.”
“I don’t owe anybody an apology! Here she is, acting like she’s some kind of doctor, saying his blood is flowing and his leg is healing!” he shouted.
“Why are you yelling at me? Gilly saved your friend’s life and probably yours, too!”
“She’s no doctor, and I don’t want her near me or Ben. Do you hear me?”
“I hear you! I hear you all too well. And you hear this! You get yourself and your friend out of here. I don’t need your hatred and your shouting!”
Gentry looked at her, his chest heaving and his face red. “I can’t get him out of here and you know that. I can’t even get out of here myself! And I’d be happy to leave this godforsaken cabin!”
“That’s your problem, not mine,” Annie said.
Her hands were shaking and her jaw clenched tight by the time she got to the side room. She undressed in the darkness between the shelves that held her supplies and pulled on her nightgown. She checked the shotgun propped up near her pillow and wedged between some old blankets and a crate of her father’s books. She lay down on the blankets she’d spread out after shoving the heavy cask of lard against the door.
She was breathing hard and near tears as she thought about what she’d done and what she’d sacrificed to save Matt Gentry and Ben Littleship.
“Can I speak to you?” she heard from the other side of the door.
“No,” she said and rolled to her side, waiting to hear his footsteps as he went back to his fireplace pallet. But she didn’t hear them. “Why are you still standing there?”
“I’d like to apologize, and I don’t want to do it through a door.”
Annie sat up and pushed her hair out of her face. She reached for her shotgun and shoved away the barrel of lard. The door drifted open by an inch or two. Gentry peeked through.
“May I come in?” he asked.
She backed up against the blankets and pulled her feet out of the way so the door could swing open. He stepped inside, holding the lamp and barely fitting in the small room.
“This is where you’ve been sleeping?”
She just stared at him, willing herself to be calm, even as she aimed the shotgun directly at him.
“I guess I didn’t consider what you’d been doing since Ben was in your bed.”
“I don’t imagine you consider much of another person’s point of view.”
Gentry knelt on his haunches and pushed aside the barrel of the gun. “Maybe not as often as I should.”
“Do you hate her ’cause she’s colored?”
“I hate everything about the war. And the War Between the States was about the coloreds. Not so much about whether owning them was right or whether it was wrong, although the idea of owning another person sickens me. I cannot understand why any man thinks that is right, and yet foolishly I found myself surrounded by men who didn’t care, or thought it was right and Godly, too. But it all came down to money, as it always has in wars and conflicts. The North didn’t have free labor and the South did.”
“Then why did you fight in it?”
“I didn’t know any better, I suppose. I thought I’d ride on to the battlefield like an avenging angel, that one man could lead a victory. I was an ignorant boy and didn’t understand what a small cog I would be when involved with something of this magnitude. It was incredibly simple for some to say they fought for their beliefs but in reality, it was a complicated, political juggernaut that could not be solved with diplomacy, nor by a single eighteen-year-old who didn’t even understand the argument.”
Matt leaned back against the rough wall of the room, breathing hard, opposite Annie, who sat propped up against a pile of rags with her shotgun across her lap. This was why he didn’t like to be sober. This exact reason. He was irrational about the whole subject and knew he was, but couldn’t control the immediate flare of anger and bitterness that rushed at him.
“I had a fight with my father. I left the following day. There were battles all around Winchester, where I’m from, but our farm was never the scene of one of them. It was easy to find a Confederate regiment and I enlisted in June of sixty-three, just in time for the Gettysburg Campaign.”
“Gettysburg?”
“In Pennsylvania. I was under the command of Major General George Pickett,” he said and closed his eyes. “Was meant to be the mighty South’s entrance into the Northern territories.”
He was suddenly back there. The man standing beside him, missing his head in that instant, and the feel of that man’s blood and brains drenching his face, sliding down his neck and mingling with his own filth and sweat. There weren’t words to describe the brutality—it was beyond imagining. Terrifying in a way that made his heart pound loud enough in his ears that he heard little else, including his officer’s commands. He opened his eyes to find her staring at him.
“What happened?”
“We lost. We charged the center of Meade’s troops on Cemetery Ridge. It was a Forlorn Hope. It was a slaughter,” he whispered.
“How did you get away?”
“I was maybe halfway back in the charge, running over the backs of dead men and the ones still suffering,” he said, breathing quickly. “I came up against a wall of dead and dying men, and I just stopped. The smoke was thick but I could tell the first man died and fell against a tree trunk missing its branches, probably blown away with cannon fire. And then others just fell on top of him until there was a pile. A bullet came through that pile of men and I watched the bodies jump one at a time as it did. I turned around and started running the other way. I wasn’t the only one. I heard shouts of retreat, although I didn’t hear the bugle call it. I stumbled and tripped over all those dying men I had stepped on going forward, until I was in a copse of woods and knew I was behind our lines.”
“Did your family keep coloreds?”
Her words startled him and were ridiculous at the same time. “Keep coloreds? Hell, no. My mother would never have allowed it.”
“But you fought for the Confederacy.”
He looked up at her then. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have been so short with you or with your friend.”
She was staring back at him, as if searching for someth
ing. She was lovely, he realized, the dark hair surrounding her face and those pale green eyes looking at him and evaluating. He wondered what she would see. Would she see a man worthy of love, of a home, of peace? Or one so riddled with despair and guilt and self-loathing that she would turn away in disgust. He didn’t know the answer to that question.
“Sometimes we do things, mostly little things, that seem like nothing at the time but change everything.”
“Yes,” he said. “If I could go back in time and not ride into a Confederate camp, not sign my name, if I’d just ridden to the woods and lived in a stump for a few weeks and licked my wounds, my life would be completely different now.”
“And there’s no going back. Too many things have changed.” She slid down and rolled on her side.
Gentry stood. “I’m sorry. I appreciate everything you’ve done for me and Ben.”
She nodded. “You don’t have to leave.”
“Thank you,” he said.
Chapter 5
Matt leaned on the shovel and took a deep breath. He was getting his strength back, but it was a slow and frustrating process. He’d put his clothes on yesterday morning and stayed off his pallet the whole day. When he’d finally lain down that night, he’d been dizzy and shivering, but he’d dropped off to sleep right away and woken up feeling stiff but rested. He’d taken the shovel from Annie’s hands this morning and told her to let him start to carry his weight around her cabin, and he intended to start by fixing her fencing. One hour after that announcement he was sweating and exhausted.
“Gentry!”
He looked up and saw her on the porch, waving her arms. He dropped the shovel and ran.