Chapter Twenty-eight

“Take it back,” Addison was saying when Laurence rounded the corner and strode down the lane of tents. The April day was soft and fine, and now that he was back in Virginia, his health was fully restored. Returning to his regiment had felt like a homecoming, even though many things had changed in his absence, most significantly the loss of Sergeant Hamilton to chicken pox. The day after he was buried, Captain Davey had promoted Addison in his place. Since then, his friend had adopted the pained but earnest glare of a boy given jurisdiction over his schoolmates, and he policed the camp with aggravating vigor.

“I made you all promise not to forage,” Addison ordered the slump-shouldered Spider, who had a chicken slung beneath his arm. “And I aim to make you keep that promise.”

“I swear it was running wild in the woods,” Spider pleaded. “You caught a pig that way, and you can’t let me have a little bird?”

“A bird that fat and that stupid ain’t running wild.” Addison jerked his head at Laurence. “Now you take us to the place you stoled it from and we’ll help you give it back.”

“Let me keep it.” A blade of sunlight illuminated one of Spider’s green eyes. “I said I wouldn’t do it again.”

“That’s not good enough,” answered Addison. “Come on, Lindsey. Spider’s going to show us the countryside.”

He plucked a burr from his wool coat and let his thumb stray to the wooden handle of his new weapon, a government-issue revolver. Laurence sighed, wishing he hadn’t turned the corner just then. He had been studiously avoiding Addison ever since he’d returned, because he couldn’t bear to watch the new strict and moral self replace the one he remembered. Addison hadn’t even been interested in what had happened to Gilbert. He had tightened his jaw and stared at the sloping Virginia horizon as Laurence recounted the tale of the Preacher, the Theater of War, and Gilbert’s awkward homecoming. When Laurence was finished his story, Addison had grunted and said “Just as well. He’d have lost his life soon enough.”

“Is that all you have to say?” Laurence had demanded then. “You’re not the same anymore.”

“Are you?” Addison had countered furiously, then stalked off, his once-jaunty gait replaced by a new, stiff-kneed stride. Since then, they had hardly spoken to each other, except through Loomis, who conveniently retained his deaf ear to all things, particularly dissent among his friends.

“Shall we?” Addison asked with his old lazy smile, although his eyes were hard.

Laurence nodded reluctantly.

“Lead on,” the sergeant said to Spider, who hissed angrily through his teeth and started off toward the nearby pinewoods.

In Addison’s defense, Loomis had told Laurence that the conditions in camp had been terrible before their friend was promoted. The remains of men’s rations had littered the ground between the tents, the latrines had been overfull, and, because many of the contrabands had died from the epidemics of pox and typhoid, there’d been no one to shovel or haul in their place.

Loomis said that when reveille had sounded every morning, the drumbeat had been drowned out by hundreds of fellows waking and coughing as if their lungs would bust. When Addison had joined Captain Davey in running the camp, it was he who had worked hours on end while Davey grieved, unaware that Addison had suffered his own loss. Loomis said he wouldn’t even have known, but he was there the moment Addison got the news, a little yellow letter that couldn’t have had more than twenty words scrawled on it.

“My sister was alone in the house for two days after Ma died,” he had said quietly, refolding the letter. “She didn’t tell anyone for two days.” And then he’d explained that after his father the blacksmith passed on and he left for war, his mother could no longer keep the shop and had moved to a small farm outside Allenton. There, she and his sister could grow enough vegetables to get through the winter, but their nearest neighbor was two miles away, and his mother, a city dweller by birth, had never learned to make country friends.

“My sister’s only eight years old,” he’d added, and then the matter was closed, Loomis said. No matter how he tried to bring it up again, Addison had refused to listen, trotting off to search for violations of his strict rules. Lately, most of the infractions had been Spider’s and Woodard’s; they smuggled whiskey into the camp, making a tidy profit, and often drinking a large portion themselves. Addison hadn’t figured out how to catch them yet, and Laurence supposed this was why he was being so severe about the stolen poultry.

As they walked softly now on the carpet of orange needles, Laurence pulled up the rear, watching his sergeant’s straight shoulders rise and fall. The air was sweet with the smell of pitch.

“This path looks worn,” commented Addison.

“Maybe it’s an old Indian route,” said Spider.

“Or an old smuggler’s route.” Addison scuffed the needles with his boot.

“Or a rebel spy route,” offered Laurence. “They could be spying on us.” He wondered why he came to the defense of Spider, whom he generally despised.

“Or a counterspy,” Addison said mildly. “You been telling the rebs some secrets, Lindsey?”

“Everything I know,” said Laurence. “Which isn’t much. Although I heard a rumor that we were going to march soon.”

“From who?” Addison’s voice rang out in the hushed woods.

“Loomis. Is it true?”

“Davey says Lee’s moving north,” admitted Addison. “How far is this house, anyway?” He jabbed Spider in the back. The older man stumbled forward, nearly losing his hold on the brown bird.

“A short piece,” said Spider indignantly. “If you’ll let me get there.” After a few more minutes, the thick woods ended abruptly in a clearing. A rail fence bordered a rocky slope that tumbled toward the run-down farmhouse. The odor of a wood smoke rose to meet them. It had been a long time since Laurence had seen a house like this, weather-beaten, the roof in need of repair, a tilted woodpile flanking one side. A droop-waisted woman with bony, jutting elbows was sitting on the porch, sewing. They climbed over the fence and loped down the pasture, the incline lengthening their strides. At their approach, the woman disappeared into the house with her stitching and came out again with a rifle, shouldering it with an awkward shrug.

“Ma’am,” said Addison, holding up his hands with fingers spread. “We surrender. You done caught three soldiers in the Union army.”

The woman did not smile or let the gun waver.

“Ma’am.” Addison halted. “This sorry soldier on my right wants to return something that is yours and apologize.”

Laurence looked over the dilapidated house. The glass panes in the two front windows were spotless, but the shutters sagged at odd angles. In one of the windows, a girl sucked on a blond braid, gazing sorrowfully at Laurence.

“I see you have a daughter,” Addison said uneasily. “How old is she?”

The woman’s shallow, dish-shaped face furrowed around the mouth and eyes. She would have been pretty as a young girl, delicate about the waist and hands, but an exhausting life had thickened her features and worn them slowly downward, like a candle under the persistent heat of flame.

“Give it back, Private,” Addison ordered, slapping Spider hard on the shoulder, for the older soldier was half-deaf. Spider staggered toward the leaning porch.

“Four years old,” said the woman, lowering her gun and pointing it at the thief.

“She’ll be a pretty choice of it one day.” Addison nodded, but the compliment caused no further reaction except a quivering of the gun.

“Apologize,” the sergeant roared as Spider dropped the bird on the soft earth. The chicken’s feet stuck up in the air, the claws the texture of onion skin.

“I’m sorry,” Spider mumbled in the direction of his lost prize.

“That was Minnie’s fav’rite.” The woman spoke to the blue sky above the clearing. “That was her pet.”

“We do apologize,” said Addison. He was slowly backing away now, his eyes glistening.

“I told her a fox took it.” She continued to address the clouds and let the gun slump into her neck. “Now she knows it weren’t no fox.”

As they climbed back up the slope to the rail fence, Laurence heard a loud but almost immediately muffled wail. He stopped and turned. The porch was empty, the chicken lying in the same position on the ground, its legs spoking up.

“Did you hear that, Addison?” he asked.

“No,” Addison said, and kept striding up the hill, his shoulders bowed. “I didn’t.”

By the misery in his denial, Laurence wondered if Addison had heard the wail but could not listen to it, if behind them was a house just like Addison’s, owned by a woman who could have been Addison’s mother, retreating back into the gloom to bend over her daughter and stifle her cries so they would not reach the men. Had the other soldier turned around at that moment, he would have seen the emptiness of his own yard, the saplings encroaching on its edges, as if the clearing no longer had the strength to hold back time and season. Had he turned around, he could not have turned back again to the cause of the Union. So he straddled the fence ahead of Laurence, swinging one leg over the rotting wood, then the other, careful not to touch a single rail, and stalked into the forest, its shadows swallowing him.