EVERY FEW minutes, Jenny Anderson tried to turn over in her bunk, could not for the ball and chain, and whimpered heartbreakingly. Martha stayed beside her, soothing her with words. Sue Mundy had gone into the Yankees’ room to beg forgiveness for Jenny and ask that the contraption be taken off, at least for the night.
“I’ll sign all the memo pads or pieces of paper you want,” she promised. For they all wanted her signature. But this time her magic did not work. And she came out of the Yankee headquarters disheartened. She circulated from girl to girl that night, saying a few words to each one to comfort them.
I thought it was decent of her not to try to squeeze into the bunks with the girls. After all, when all was said and done, she was still a man.
Finally she made her way over to me. “Don’t you come near me, you gypsy, you,” I told her/him. “Shame on you, here in a room full of half-dressed women who all need baths. And you prettified up as for a ball. How do you get those Yankees to wash and clean your clothing?”
“They are thrilled by me and my exploits,” Sue Mundy said. “They all can’t wait to go home and tell their relatives that they met me. My name is currency, in the North as well as the South. Many of them will have dinners bought for them at inns with the promise to tell that they met me.”
“I wouldn’t let anybody trade on my name,” I said.
“Half the soldiers fighting in this war are trading on the names of those whom they’ve met, and flashing souvenirs. It happens in all wars,” she said.
“You. You’re a spy. Else why would you be here?”
“I told you once. Yes, I spy for him.”
I shrugged. “Well, your big report tonight can be that Jenny Anderson has a ball and chain tied around her ankle. Twelve pounds it weighs. And don’t you dare say she deserves it or I’ll hit you over the head with something. Just don’t you sleep near me. Go somewhere else. You don’t know the trouble you got me into with my brother.”
Jenny Anderson whimpered pitifully. I could see the form of Martha putting a pillow under Jenny’s ankle to try to make it more comfortable.
While Martha was doing this, the ball rolled off Jenny’s bunk and slammed onto the wooden floor, making an earsplitting sound.
The Yankees must have thought Quantrill and all his raiders were attacking. They burst through the door from their private quarters in various modes of undress, some without shirts, some without boots, some in their Skivvies, but all with guns.
“What in the name of purple hell is going on here?” the head Yankee roared.
He carried a lantern. It cast shadows all over the place. I wished, like Charity McCorkle Kerr, that I had a rag doll to cling to. She, incidentally, was still in her corner, “playing the piano” for that doll.
The head Yankee looked at her and frowned. “Somebody shut that kid up or I’ll shoot her,” he threatened.
Martha went over to do so.
I slept fitfully that night, and in the morning when the gruel was handed out, I could not bring myself to eat it, though my stomach rumbled with hunger. Sue Mundy came over with a dish of eggs and bacon and sat down beside me.
“I’d give you some of this if only you’d be friends.”
She was bargaining. I was wise enough, taught by Seth, to know that. What did she want? “Always find out what the other person wants first,” Seth had taught me. “You’ll place him at a disadvantage if you know.”
“What is it you want from me?” I asked her.
She laughed softly. “Somebody’s schooled you. You’d make a good spy. Here, take a piece of bacon and I’ll tell you.”
I humiliated myself by taking a piece of bacon. A “Judas kiss,” Seth called it, though he wasn’t much on the Bible.
“All I want to know is where Seth’s house is,” she said quietly. “And not for me. Or the Yankees. But for you. I think, when all this is over, you should go there for safety. The Yankees are talking of some order being written up, sending the others out of this district. I don’t think you should go. Seth is here, and Seth is all you have.”
“I know where it is,” I said. “Seth took me there. What does it matter to you?”
“It doesn’t. I was just making conversation. Look, sweetie. I’m sorry if I hurt you and got you into trouble with Seth. You’re a darling girl, and I want to make it up to you. So I’m telling you this: Go to your brother’s farm. You can make things up to Seth there. Prove you’re no little pest of a girl.”
I was about to come back with a sassy reply when the building seemed to tremble. It shook for about three minutes. “An earthquake,” Amanda Selvey said.
“No, this place is falling down!” yelled Chloe Fletcher. She was not joking.
I opened my mouth. No words came out. My whole being shook. The walls trembled, and the floor bucked. Some girls were screaming. The door to the Yankees’ room blew open and a guard yelled in to us. “Come on. Get out! Now!”