The elephant was war and, over the next few weeks, I came to know the beast from tail to trunk. But that morning, when I went back to the officers’ mess, those who saw me took me for an entirely different person than the reprobate they figured had perished in the barrel. Solomon had put it out that, though I was a girl, the General had me under his protection and they were to leave me be or answer direct to Little Phil. That was as good as quarantine with yellow fever for keeping the men away.
All that day we crammed Solomon’s kitchen wagon with pots, ladles, Dutch ovens, various knives and long forks, coffeepots, grinders, and what stores of sugar, salt pork, parched corn, desecrated vegetables, and flour as remained. The soldiers packed their knapsacks with field rations of hardtack, salt pork, and coffee. Then they stuffed in their Bibles, their letters from home, and tintypes of their wives and sweethearts. With tent halves and bedrolls strapped on the packs, they were ready to march.
By the next morning, the tent town was torn back down to muddy ground polka-dotted with black holes where cook fires had been, the stink of latrines now replacing the clean smell of the woods. From dawn all through the night, companies of infantrymen marched out, cavalrymen rode, and each regiment’s wagons followed carrying the field officers’ baggage, rations, telegraph equipment, blacksmith necessaries, and kitchen supplies.
Swallow-tailed guidon banners snapped in the breeze, fresh-polished tack creaked, bridles jingled, horses nickered, and sergeants hollered out, “Left! Right! Left! Right! Left!” for the hay and straw had been removed from the new boys’ shoes and they marched like soldiers. Our columns must have stretched four miles or more. I fell into rhythm, marching with them alongside the cook wagon.
We made a fine parade and, though I was tickled to be part of it, it didn’t take more than a mile before I missed my britches for I had lost the knack of accommodating a skirt. Where britches were barely more trouble than a second skin, Solomon’s infernal dress was like wearing a long broom. I marched the miles, dusty and muddy alike, sweeping up the trail with that cursed garment.
I’d swapped a few taters for a broken-down old pair of brogans from the graves detail and I had them strapped on my feet with pieces of twine. There were so many holes in the soles, though, that it was little better than going barefoot. I kept falling behind the cook wagon every time I veered off into the woods to fetch strips of smooth bark off a paperback maple to stick in the shoes and cover the holes. After my last bark hunt, I had to run to catch up with Solomon. When I did, he peered down at me, panting alongside the wagon, and grunted out, “Up here,” like each word was costing him a greenback.
I didn’t wait for a second invitation, but hopped onto the buckboard’s foretop next to him and we rode on in style, part of the Army of the Potomac’s Cavalry Corps under the command of Major General Philip Sheridan himself. Up high, I saw that the Shenandoah Valley was as pretty a stretch of country as the Maker had ever fashioned, green as a billiards table where it wasn’t covered with miles of field crops, mostly wheat that shimmied golden in the sunshine.
It was a right chill morn and there was enough of a nip to the air that I welcomed the feel of Matildy’s warm body curling about my neck. Solomon shook his head at the sight of his pet draped over my shoulders and muttered, “Just like a woman. Go to the one hates her.”
“I don’t hate her,” I protested. “Like everything else about the army, she’s tolerable once you get used to her.”
The cool weather and excitement of moving out worked a tonic on Solomon and he actually laughed as he snapped the reins on the mules. And though the contrary beasts didn’t vary their speed a whit, Solomon sat up like a dandy on race day and crowed, “Damn Rebs won’t be crawling up this valley any time soon, slipping in Mr. Lincoln’s back door. Think they can steal the election from him.” He snorted at the idea then blowed on about how bad it made Mr. Lincoln look that he couldn’t even sweep the Rebs off his own back porch, which is what he called the Shenandoah Valley.
Seems all I had to do was put on a dress, plait up my hair, and call him “sir” and Solomon became my buddy gee. He jabbered on for the next few hours like we’d been old campaigners together forever. And, though I never would of told him, Solomon Yarnell showed himself to be the second-smartest man I’d ever known, right after Daddy. He turned that clanking, creaking wagon into a classroom and his subject was the Civil War.
“We don’t get started cleaning them Seceshes outta the Shenandoah Valley before the election come November,” Solomon explained, “Yanks might take a mind to elect that chickenshit traitor Union General George McClellan.” Only person Solomon hated more than Old Jube, the fearsome Rebel General Jubal Early, who was leading the Rebs we were chasing, was Lincoln’s opponent in the election six weeks away, the chickenshit traitor McClellan who’d once commanded the whole Union Army.
“Back in ’62,” Solomon went on, “Lincoln gave that chickenshit traitor one hundred and twenty thousand men. Blast if McClellan couldn’t of squashed Lee right there and then. Drowned the whole damn Confederacy like the sack of rabid pups they are. War’d been over two years ago. But would that pusillanimous nancy boy attack? No, he would not! Kept telling Abe he had to have reinforcements. McClellan stalled. Wouldn’t attack. Gave that sick pup of a Confederacy time to grow into the rabid dog it become. Now McClellan has the gall to run against Old Abe on a peace platform. Peace platform! Know what that means?”
I thought about Mama and Clemmie and answered, “Means slavery would be legal and even if you could escape there wouldn’t be anywhere in the whole country to run to.”
“All right, baby sister, you listening.” Solomon nodded approvingly. “You learning. If the chickenshit traitor gets elected, it all goes back the way it was. Means we live in a country ruled by the wicked and all the fighting and all the dying and all the misery was for naught.” His voice was mournful and lost when he repeated, “Everything goes back way it was. Only worse.”
A cold, sick feeling came over me as I thought of what the Rebs would do if they ever got power over us again.
Thousands of feet pounding in time like a big heart beating became the music that chased off such gloomy thoughts. We were the Army of the Shenandoah and we were marching to battle to keep Old Abe in the White House, to keep the country together, and to rid it of the abomination of slavery. We’d win this war for Mr. Lincoln. All of us. Together.
When the sawed-off drummer boys and fife players went to tootling and pah-rumping, the soldiers and all us contrabands joined in singing, “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored.” Our voices joined up together and rolled on mighty as a wave and caused tears to jump out of me from a place I never knew existed before.
I swallowed them back hard and fast, but Solomon caught sight of their gleam in the hard morning light and nodded. Just one slow dip of that crumpled top hat of his, but it was enough to show that the very same tears were stinging his eyes. That he knew what was in my heart because it was in his heart, too: we, all of us marching south, were in this together.