Leah dabbed the edge of her handkerchief in the cup of water that Tom brought her and ineffectively wiped Esther’s face. The passenger car swayed from side to side, almost violently. She had to hold tightly to the child to keep her from falling off her lap.
“There,” she said finally, “that’s the best I can do.”
“Here,” Tom said, “let me hold her a while, Leah.” He took Esther and seated himself on the hard, horsehide seat next to Leah. Studying the child, he grinned, saying, “I believe she’s a better traveler than either one of us. She even seems to like it.”
As they had suspected, the railway systems were so disrupted by the war that they had to change trains innumerable times. However, Esther had made the trip well all the way from Kentucky. She had even flourished on the journey. Right now she struggled to get down to the floor, but Tom held her tightly.
“No, you can’t get down,” he said. “Here, stand up beside me and look out the window.” He turned her toward the glass.
This seemed to please Esther well. As the landscape flashed by, she chattered almost constantly.
“It’s been a long trip,” Tom said. “I know you’re worn out, Leah.”
“I’ll be glad to lie down on a bed again.” Leah groaned, straightening her back painfully. “It’s hard to sleep sitting up in one of these seats.”
“Sure is!” Tom looked out the window and said abruptly, “Looks like we’re pulling into Richmond. There’s the siding right over there.”
“Won’t be too soon for me!” Leah brightened and brushed away some cinders that had come in through the open window. Her face was smeared with smut. “We look like we’ve come from a sideshow!”
“I guess it beats walking.” Tom held onto Esther tightly. “Pa will sure be glad to see Esther again.”
“He’ll be glad to see you too, Tom.”
Tom did not answer for a while, and when he did he changed the subject. Turning to Leah, he said, “I guess you’ll be glad to see Jeff.”
“I guess so.”
“You guess so!” Tom jeered. “You two are thick as thieves. Always have been!”
They talked about the time Leah and Jeff had gotten lost in the woods and Tom had to go find them. “You two always were close,” he said, holding tightly to Esther as the train clanked and rattled over the rails, swaying from side to side. “Must be nice to have a built-in sweetheart. You don’t have to make any decisions.”
“Oh, don’t be foolish, Tom!”
“Nothing foolish about that!” He watched the tall buildings as the train rolled into the outskirts of Richmond. “Most girls have an awful time courting, have all kinds of fellows, and can’t make up their minds.”
He’d always liked to tease Leah, and now, she thought, he seemed to be light of spirit for a change.
“But you and Jeff—why, you just grew up together.”
Leah was watching the buildings of Richmond also. Finally she said quietly, “That’s just the trouble, Tom.”
“What trouble?”
“Jeff never thinks about me as a woman. He thinks about me as a little girl.” She touched her hair and, feeling the grittiness of it, made a face. “I guess he’ll always think of me as just the little girl he went hunting birds’ eggs with.”
Tom studied her. “Well, you look a lot better than you did when you were eleven or twelve. You were all legs and arms then and gawky as a crane.” He laughed. “I think you used to cry about that every day!”
“I did!” Leah admitted. “I thought I was too tall, and I still think so!”
“You’re not too tall for Jeff. He’s going to be taller than either Pa or me. Why, he might be six one or two by the time he stops growing.”
“It won’t make any difference,” she said. She sat quietly for so long that Tom must have noticed she was worried.
“What’s wrong, Leah? I thought you’d be glad to get back to see Jeff and Uncle Silas.”
Leah thought, then said, “It’s hard to grow up, Tom. I sometimes don’t know whether I’m a girl or a woman. I’m just halfway in between.”
Tom reached over and patted her on the shoulder. “Well, believe it or not, it’s hard for boys to grow up too. Hard to know when to act like a man and when to act like a baby.” He smiled. “I heard a funny story about Lincoln. Somebody asked him how he took a loss, and he said, ‘Well, when I was a boy, things would happen and I would cry.’ He said, ‘Now I’m too old to cry, and it hurts too much to laugh.’”
Leah could not help smiling too. “I guess that’s about the way I am. It hurts too much sometimes, but—”
“One thing’s for sure. You’re going to grow up, and Jeff’s going to see one day what a fine-looking young lady you are. You already are, as far as I’m concerned.”
“I’ll never be as pretty as Sarah.”
Tom looked at her quickly. His mouth tightened into a straight line, and he said no more.
Leah knew that she had said too much, for Tom was sensitive about speaking of Sarah. “Look,” she said, “there’s the church tower right over there! See it?”
“Yep, we’ll be at the station in five minutes.”
His prediction was accurate. The train huffed and chuffed as it slowed down. When they pulled into the station, it expelled a great gust of steam.
“Guess we better get our stuff together,” Tom said. He stood up, balancing for a moment.
Leah saw that it pained him to stand. But she said nothing, for she knew he was sensitive about the leg too. As the train came to a clanking stop, she picked up Esther. “If you’ll get the suitcases, I can handle her.”
“All right.”
They stepped off the train, and at once Tom was gripped by his father, who suddenly appeared right beside him.
“Tom!” he said. “By Harry, it’s good to see you again! You’re looking fine!”
Tom swallowed hard and hugged his father, then stepped back. His father was in military dress, and Tom was wearing the uniform he had worn at Gettysburg—which had been patched together by Sarah. “I guess it must look funny—a colonel hugging a sergeant!”
“Who cares!” his father said. “Now, let me look at this girl of mine.” He took the child from Leah and held her carefully in his arms. “Hello, Esther,” he said quietly, his eyes going over her face. “Aren’t you the pretty one?”
Leah watched, afraid that Esther would cry. She was not used to strangers and was somewhat shy. However, something in her father’s voice must have calmed her, for she suddenly smiled and reached out to touch his mustache.
“She looks just like your mother, Tom,” Colonel Majors said, stroking the golden hair with his free hand. “She’s going to be as pretty as she was.”
Leah felt like crying over the sadness of the situation, but she knew that would not do. She stood quietly until the colonel said, “Well, suppose we get you three settled. You’re going out to Silas’s place. You’ll have it all to yourself. He’s gone to visit a friend of his.”
“He must be doing better then,” Leah said with some surprise. Uncle Silas had not been in good health when she had left Richmond, and she had worried about him.
“He seems to get stronger all the time. I’m real proud of him,” Nelson Majors said. “Come on. I’ve commandeered an army ambulance. What’s the use of being a colonel if you can’t break the rules once in a while?”
They got in, and he said, “I’ve got to go by the camp before we leave. There’s something I have to take care of. Besides, I want to show off my daughter to the general.”
Leah and Tom sat quietly in the back of the ambulance as a corporal drove them to the army camp. On the way, Tom’s eyes ran over the rows of men drilling in an open field. If he thought about never being able to march again, if he felt useless and helpless, he said nothing.
At headquarters they were greeted by Gen. A. P. Hill himself. The general was delighted with Esther. “She’s the finest young’un I’ve ever seen, Colonel!” he said when Esther allowed him to pick her up.
“Thank you, General,” Colonel Majors said. “I believe you know my son, Tom.”
“Why, indeed I do. You’ve spoken enough of him,” Hill said. He took Tom’s salute, then stuck his hand out. “Glad you’re back, Sergeant. Will you be coming back on active duty?”
“No, sir, unless you can find a place for a one-legged man.”
“Why, I expect we can do that! General Hood lost an arm and a leg, and he’s still commanding like he always was.” He nodded at Tom’s father. “See if you can’t find a place for him. I know you’d like that, Colonel.”
After the general left, Tom said, “Where’s Jeff, Pa—I mean, Colonel?”
“He would have been here himself, but we didn’t know exactly when you were getting in,” his father said. “There’s some kind of a traveling show in town.” He grinned. “Jeff thought he had to see it.”
“What kind of a show?”
“I don’t know! Some sort of minstrel show, I suppose. He pestered me until I let him go.” He glanced at Leah, and a thought seemed to come to him. “Why don’t you go down and find him, Leah? Then he can bring you out to Silas’s place. I’ll see that he gets a wagon from the quartermaster.”
“Oh, that would be nice!”
“We’ll drop you off downtown, then. Come along!”
Leah climbed back into the wagon, and soon they were making their way through the streets of Richmond. She noticed that the city had become shabby and dilapidated. With no new supplies coming in for repairs, and no time or effort available for paint or cleanup, the city looked stark and ragged, like an old beggar who had no one to care for him.
“Place looks pretty run-down, sir,” Tom said as they rumbled along.
“I guess it does, but it’s still here. The Union’s done everything they could to take it.”
Tom smiled at this. “I heard another story about Lincoln. Somebody came in and wanted a pass for Richmond, and he said, ‘Well, I gave passes to Richmond to General McClellan, and he hasn’t been able to get there with a hundred thousand men, but maybe you can do it by yourself.’”
Colonel Majors laughed. “I wish our president had a sense of humor like Lincoln’s.” He pointed. “There’s the theater, Leah, and the show’s probably already started. Maybe you just want to wait until it lets out, and then you can see Jeff.”
“I think I’ll do that.” Leah got to the ground and waved good-bye, then took up a waiting place beside the theater. She asked once how long the show would be, and the ticket taker said, “Won’t be more than ten minutes more. Another show will be starting right away.”
“Thank you.”
Soon people began coming out. Anxiously she searched the crowd, for it occurred to her that if she missed Jeff she would be stranded alone in Richmond with no way to get to Uncle Silas’s but by walking.
And then she spotted his black hair above the gray uniform as he emerged. He seemed to have grown since she had seen him last! She started forward and opened her lips to cry, “Jeff, here I am!” But then she stopped.
By Jeff’s side was Lucy Driscoll, dressed in a peach-colored gown and her hair done up in the latest style. She looked as pretty as any girl Leah had ever seen, and she was hanging onto Jeff’s arm. Lucy was small, as Leah had always wanted to be. Now, as she looked up and laughed into Jeff’s eyes, there was a flirtatious manner about her that Leah knew she herself could never achieve.
The pair drew closer, and once again Leah started to speak. But before she could, Lucy reached up, pulled Jeff’s head down, and gave him a kiss on the cheek.
Jeff flushed but seemed pleased by it all, and at that moment he saw Leah. He swallowed hard and stopped abruptly. “Why, look, Lucy. There’s Leah!” He came up to her at once but looked somewhat discomfited. “I didn’t expect you today!” he said awkwardly. Lucy was still hanging onto his right arm, so he disengaged it and held out his hand. “Good to see you, Leah.”
Leah took his hand but shook it only briefly. “I didn’t mean to interrupt,” she said rather coldly. “Your father has taken Esther and Tom out to Uncle Silas’s.”
“Why didn’t you go along with them?” Lucy said. “I’d think you’d want to.”
Leah wanted to say, “I wanted to be with Jeff,” but she did not want to admit that.
“Well, I’ll take you out there, Leah. Lucy and I will, won’t we?”
“Of course, we’ll be glad to. My father will have a carriage take us.”
“Your father said for you to come in one of the army wagons, Jeff,” Leah said. She looked at Lucy. “But he doesn’t have to go if he doesn’t want to.”
Jeff said quickly, “Well, of course I want to!” He turned back to Lucy. “Look, there’s Samson over there. You don’t mind if he takes you home, do you, Lucy?”
As a matter of fact, Lucy probably did mind. But it was obvious she saw there was no other way out. “Of course not, and, Leah, you must come over to see us. Jeff comes to our house quite often, don’t you, Jeff?”
Jeff looked rather foolish and said, “Why, I guess I do.”
“Thank you.” Leah waited until the two had said their good-byes.
Jeff turned to her then, saying, “I guess we’ll have to walk out to the camp and pick up a wagon.”
“I guess so.”
On the walk to the army camp, Jeff asked about Esther, then about all of Leah’s people back in Kentucky. He noticed quickly that she was unusually silent, and he asked, “Is something wrong? Did you get sick on the train?”
“Well, you just look sort of pale.” Then he added, “But you look good. You’ve grown up even in the little time you’ve been gone.” He almost said, “I’m glad you’re back,” but Leah was acting so strangely that he could not think of a way to put it.
At last, when they had obtained the wagon and were on their way out of town toward Uncle Silas’s farm, he said, “You’re not upset with me because I went to the play with Lucy, are you?”
“You can go to a play with anybody you want to,” she said. “I’m not your keeper!”
Instantly Jeff knew she was upset, but there was nothing he could do about it now. He spoke to the horses and drove off at a fast clip. He was thinking, Girls sure are funny. I wish they’d be nice and steady like boys.