The two girls waited in the crowd, craning for a view, while those around them jumped up and down, calling to their men. As they worked their way closer to the station, Georgia finally spotted Lou and yelled his name. In an instant, they were in each other’s arms. Ginnie, only half noticing their embrace, searched the mass of faces in blue forage caps. Suddenly, Jack was behind her, his voice in her ear, “Hi, Ginnie.” The look of excitement on his face erased any doubt about proper conduct, and she gave herself to him as he swept her in his arms and hugged her close, rocking back and forth in pleasure at being home, at being with her.
Both men went to their homes to change, and in the afternoon met again at the Wade house. After a polite half hour in which they shared their stories with Mary Wade, they escaped with Ginnie and Georgia, each one to spend the afternoon seeking some corner of town where they might find a little privacy. The problem was that two or three dozen other men had the same idea. As a result, the next several hours were spent walking around town with their girls, greeting members of the company who were doing the same thing and joking about how odd their civilian clothing looked.
That evening, Jack returned to take Ginnie for a walk, telling her that he had something important to discuss. They walked south on Baltimore Street, eventually finding themselves on a ridge just east of the cemetery from which they could see in every direction. It was a warm July evening, but on the hill a light breeze brushed their cheeks. As they reached the crest of the hill, Jack turned to Ginnie, reaching for her hands.
“I thought about you all the time I was gone,” he said suddenly. She flushed at this bold confession. “I was glad I had your picture,” he went on. “You don’t know how lonely it got in camp, doing nothing but drilling all day, marching somewhere and then marching back again, setting up camp, tearing down camp. All I could think of was getting home.” He grinned nervously, then added, “and seeing you.”
Ginnie could not think of anything to say. Her face felt hot and she was aware of his hands holding hers. She tried to look into his eyes, but was disconcerted by their boldness and looked quickly away, nervous but flattered.
“Well?” he said after a moment’s pause, waiting for her to say something. “Did you think of me all the time, too?”
Retreating into coyness, she teased, “What? With two boys to take care of, a house to run and all that sewing to do? I had lots of things to think of.”
Taken aback, he scowled. “Come on, admit it,” he demanded. “You thought about me a lot.”
“I thought about you every time I got a letter,” she said, throwing him a playful smile. “Exactly twice in three months.”
“We were busy all the time,” he said defensively. “We....”
“If you were so bored and lonely,” she countered, “and were thinking about me all the time, like you say, you might have written me more than twice.”
He turned away, irritated, and started to walk farther out the Baltimore Pike. She followed a step behind, delighted to have gained the offensive. Trying to sound indignant he said, “I only got three letters from you. So you didn’t do much better.”
Catching up with him she said deliberately, “I wrote you first, and I answered both of your letters. I was waiting for another letter. If I’d gotten a third one, I would’ve answered that one, too.”
Feeling that he was losing this verbal battle, he stopped and turned to her. “You don’t know what soldiering is like,” he snapped. “It’s hard and tiring. I was so exhausted when the day was done, I just fell on my bedroll and I was gone.”
Ginnie nodded her head sympathetically. “I know how you feel,” she responded, then added innocently, “I’m tired when my work is done, too.”
He was no match for her repartee, and he knew it. He said harshly, “Women are supposed to keep up the morale of their soldiers. They have to write their men, whether they write back or not. It’s part of their job.”
Ginnie gritted her teeth. “I didn’t ask for the job, Jack. You drafted me. Remember?” She turned her back to him and began walking away. He stopped her after a few steps.
“Wait...wait. I’m sorry. It’s just that I thought....” His words trailed off.
She glared at him again. “Well, you should stop thinking so much. I gave you a picture. That’s all, Jack.”
He was silent for a while, but she could see that he was hurt and that his hurt was making him angry. “Most of the men had pictures of their girls,” he retorted. “If you didn’t have a picture, they thought you weren’t a real man, that you couldn’t get a woman back home. And if you did have a girl’s picture, she was supposed to write regularly.”
She looked at him questioningly. “So that’s why you wanted my picture?”
The statement stung him. “No,” he said, “of course not. I like you.” He fumbled for words. “I showed the picture to lots of the men,” he said more quietly, his tone indicating that she should feel honored. “I even told some of them that you were my… fiancée.”
“You what?” she said in astonishment. “You told them what?” He was surprised at how perturbed she sounded. She asked sarcastically, “Don’t you think I should have something to say about that?”
Trying to soothe her, he shrugged. “You know, it’s something you say around the men. They didn’t know the difference.”
Her eyes opened wide as her indignation bubbled over. “Oh, so this is all just another one of your jokes. To make you look good in front of the men.”
Realizing that he was making a fool of himself, he stopped and looked at her, completely lost for words. His mouth worked silently as his face reddened. Finally, recovering lamely, he said, “I didn’t mean that. It’s coming out all wrong.”
She looked at him for a moment, trying to decide what she felt toward him, anger or pity. When she couldn’t make up her mind, she changed the subject. “What did you bring me out here to talk about?”
He didn’t say anything at first. Finally, he asked, “Can we walk together?” He took her hand and pulled it through his arm. They walked silently for a while, and she was surprised to feel the tension in his arm. His discomfort softened her.
He stopped, looked at her, took a deep breath, and said, “Maybe we can get married.” He sighed in relief now that the words were out, echoing in the silence between them. He was too embarrassed to press for an answer, afraid it might be negative; she was too entranced by the moment to spoil it with words. Regardless of what she felt for him, a man had just proposed marriage to her – a very eligible young man.
When the silence was no longer tolerable for either of them, she said quietly, “I feel very honored that you asked me.” They relapsed into silence, continuing to walk as an excuse not to look at each other. “When do you think we might do it?”
He looked at her out of the corner of his eye. “Gin, there’s something else I have to tell you.” She was surprised at the sudden apologetic note in his voice. “I’m going to join up again. Most of the boys are. They need us now more than ever and, anyway, it won’t last much longer.”
“You’re going to re-enlist?” She said it quietly, but the shock hit her like a physical force. “For how long?” she managed.
He grimaced, knowing she would not like the answer. “Three years.”
“Three years!” She broke away from him, too upset to speak or cry. What was he trying to do to her? Asking her to marry him, then casually announcing that he would be gone for the next three years. She turned for home, desperately wanting to be away from him.
“Please, Ginnie,” he begged, starting to follow her. “There’s no way it will last that long. It will probably be over before the end of this year. And then we can settle down here and be happy. Anyway, all of the fellows are joining up again. Even my father is talking about joining.”
Although she was still too hurt and confused to speak, she stopped trying to escape. Jack kept trying to say the right things. “We could even be married when I come home on leave,�
�� he said eagerly.
“Jack...stop.” When she finally spoke, her voice was firm. He took a step backward, startled by the change in her voice. Struggling to make him understand, she said, “I just don’t know. It’s not what I wanted. When I get married, I want to be with the person. I don’t want them running off all over the place. It seems that everyone is always doing the same thing to me. Running away.”
His eyes were angry now. “How can you be so selfish? This country is tearing itself apart and all you’re thinking about is what you want. I don’t want to be in the army, but I know that it’s my duty.” Ginnie listened to his self-righteous lecture as though he were speaking to someone else. She thought about her father who had run off to Virginia with stolen money when she was just a child. She thought about Wes who had gone away to Virginia, too, and who had gotten so involved in his own dream that he forgot about hers. And now here was another man who claimed to love her but who was preparing to leave her alone again.
She stopped and he caught up with her. “I want to marry you,” he said earnestly, “and I don’t want to wait three years.”
“Why do you have to go back into the army?” she asked, her voice full of disappointment.
“You heard about Bull Run last month. We lost about three thousand men. Three thousand. They have to pay for that, Ginnie. I knew some of those men. I have to fight, for them.”
“And what about me?” she asked quietly, staring out at the lowering sun through the gates of Greenwood Cemetery.
“I’ll be back, Ginnie.”
“What happens if you get added to that list of three thousand?” He was quiet for a long time. She didn’t move, but continued to stare at the sun until her eyes burned.
“There are never any guarantees. I could come back here after the war and fall off some building I was working on. You have to take your chances with life.”
Ginnie turned around to look at the woods and streets and open places where she had played as a child. It had all been so simple back then. She looked out toward Culp’s Hill. “Do you remember,” she asked, pointing to the hill, “how we used to swim in Rock Creek in the summer, and then run through the woods looking for berries?”
He followed her eyes and his jaw clenched as he saw her looking at the hill, as he imagined her thinking of the man whose name it bore. “Yeah,” he said, “and I remember that time we threw Wes into the creek with all his clothes on. You tried to start a fight with me over that.”
“So I did, Jack. You always were a bit of a bully.” She nodded slowly, wondering how things could change so quickly. That day seemed like yesterday and like a thousand years ago.
Jack made a disgusted face. “He made people want to beat on him. He was just a little coward.”
“Wes was a dreamer. And I liked him.” She stared at him defiantly. “He wanted to make a new life for himself. You boys drove him away. He wanted to find some place where he could make a new beginning.”
Jack laughed scornfully. “Oh, so it’s my fault he turned traitor.” Ginnie shook her head in frustration. He pushed on thoughtlessly. “I’m trying to save you from him. If he came back for you, even after the war, you’d be disgraced. You’d never be able to live in this town again.” She looked away, aware that it was useless to try to make him understand. Jack peered into her face. “I’m trying to save your reputation,” he said, his voice full of concern. “Too many people already think you have rebel sympathies. If we get married, it will stop all that talk.”
“Oh,” she said, as if a new light had dawned. “You’re doing me a favor by marrying me?”
He raised his hands in helplessness. “Why are you so damned difficult to reason with? You know that’s not what I mean. We both belong in Gettysburg. We can make a nice life here, together. This is our home.”
She nodded. “It’s Wes’ home too.”
“Not any more it’s not,” he said emphatically. “Wes is a traitor. He probably killed some of our own boys at Bull Run.”
Ginnie closed her eyes, shocked by that thought. She had visualized Wes in the South, in uniform, with the Confederate army, even fighting in battles. But the others in the picture had always been faceless. She could not bring herself to believe that he would shoot people he knew. Being a rebel was one thing, but killing friends was something else. What if Wes and Jack should one day face each other over the barrels of their rifles? She shook her head as if to erase the thought. It was too terrible to consider.
Jack was going on. “You have to get Wes out of your mind. There are people in town who think you’d be happy if the South won the war.”
“Who says that?” she demanded indignantly.
“Oh, people. I’ve heard them say that your father was a crazy Virginian, and that you have the South in your blood, and that’s why you still like that rebel; you want to live in the South after the war.” He turned on her in exasperation. “How can you go on liking him when everyone else in town is ready to shoot him if he ever comes back?”
“People are terrible sometimes,” she said, choking up. “Wes grew up in this town. He’s only been down there a few years, and he’s only been in the army a couple of months. Why is everybody so quick to condemn him?”
“Because if he was a real man, he’d have come home and fought with us against those rebels. He’s still a coward,” Jack said with a sneer, “just like that time I threw him in the creek.”
“He’s not a coward. It took courage to stay there when everyone here condemned him for doing it.”
Jack looked at her, speaking deliberately. “Now, think, Ginnie. When the war’s over, all those rebels are going to hang. So he’ll either get shot in battle or he’ll hang after the war. Either way, he’s done for. I don’t see how it was so smart for him to stay in the South. I think he was crazy to do it. There’s no way he can get out of the mess he’s gotten himself into.”
Ginnie’s eyes filled with tears of pity for Wes, with regret for how things had turned out, with pain over lost friendships, and with resentment at Jack’s blind prejudice. He noticed her tears, and said with some lack of feeling, “You still love him, don’t you?
She shook her head. “It’s not that. It’s just all so sad.”
Jack had lost the mood with which he had begun the evening. He had been full of enthusiasm to make Ginnie his fiancée; now he felt outwitted by her conversation, frustrated in his desire for an exclusive relationship, rejected. He turned to her and said, “I guess I’d better take you home.”
“Don’t be mad at me,” she said, taking hold of his arm. “It’s all so confusing. I didn’t know this was what you were going to say to me. I’m honored that you think that much of me. But I have to get my mind straightened out before I can give you an answer.”
“What’s to straighten out?” he asked, close to sarcasm. “You have no future with...him. We could have a nice life here together. It’s a simple decision.”
They walked back toward Breckenridge Street, both deep in thought. After a time she said timidly, “Why me, Jack? We haven’t had anything to do with each other since school, and we hardly knew each other then.”
He grabbed her hand suddenly and led her off to the right of Baltimore Street, down the hill to where the trees started, searching for a little privacy. When they arrived at the edge of the woods, he sat in the grass and patted the ground beside him.
He looked off toward the east where the lacy clouds were flushed pink from the sunset. He studied them for a moment, then turned to her and said, “I know you, Virginia Wade. I’ve always known you.” He looked at the clouds again, as though in hopes that their beauty might somehow inspire beautiful words. “When we were in school, I used to look at you when you couldn’t see me. You were always the smartest girl in your class, the prettiest girl in school. I knew you were a hard worker because your father didn’t live at home. When the others made fun of you, I felt bad. You were more grown up than the rest of the girls.”
He looked at the gras
s, poking a stick aimlessly into the ground as if trying to pry something loose. Ginnie felt herself begin to tremble at this dramatic change in his attitude.
“I never could understand,” he went on, “why you took up with Wes Culp instead of me. I came from a better family, I had better prospects, I was better looking, the others at school liked me better.” He paused, as if contemplating the mystery of what he had just said. “He was four years older than you, and yet when I saw you together, you seemed older than him. You were as tall as he was, even though you were younger. And you were a lot smarter than he was. I always thought you could find someone better than him.” He looked straight at her for the first time. “Ginnie, I’m here and he isn’t. I can give you things he can’t. And,” he hesitated, “I love you. I’ve loved you for a long time.”
Ginnie was dizzy with emotion. A minute ago, Jack was inarticulate and almost hostile, and she was upset enough to want to go home. Now this. “I didn’t know you felt that way,” she said, almost whispering. She looked straight into his eyes, which no longer threatened her. She was drawn by their honesty, by their bare emotion. Something within her melted, something which less than five minutes before had been resisting his insensitive pronouncements. She saw a side of him which she never knew existed, a tender side.
Seated facing one another on the grass, they gazed into each other’s eyes, bathed by the rosy light of the setting sun. His smile embraced her, open, vulnerable, and it filled her with a glow that made her giddy. Slowly he rose, helped her to her feet and embraced her, holding her tightly in his arms as though he had dreamed of this moment for his whole life. Then he looked at her mouth, touching her lips with his. The kiss was infinitely light, lasting only the briefest moment, yet it sent an electric shock through both of them which changed everything, opening new doors, locking others forever.
The Calm and the Strife Page 16