I was up before dawn next morning, setting a big slab of corned beef to boiling so as to leach some of the salt from the hunk of meat. We had us a world of provisions now pouring in from every bit of the Shenandoah Valley that our troops had captured. To say nothing of the supplies that came in after we took the Central Virginia Railroad. Jubal Early was starving and the General was eating corned beef.
I was chopping up the eighteen head of cabbage that came along with the beef when Solomon, stretching and scratching, appeared and told me, “You’re gon help serve tonight.”
“Did the General request me?” I asked. “By name?”
Solomon crunched into a pale triangle of cabbage heart, which he considered a delicacy, and snorted. “Name?” He flapped his lips like a horse, snorting at my foolishness. “Took the man three years of me cooking every bite of food he put in his mouth to learn my name. Here.” He pulled the sliver that remained of his bar of soap from the inside pocket of his jacket and handed it to me. “Go on, get you a bath. You smelling a bit blinky.”
“What? And you think you a lilac in spring?”
He ordered me to git and I slipped away on down to the source of all that water I’d been hauling up to camp, the famous Cedar Creek that marked the line General had beaten the Rebs back to. The line he swore Jubal Early and his demon hordes would never come north of while he drew breath.
I followed the creek until the noise of camp fell off, lost in the wind rustling through the tall, shaggy cedars it was named for. When that and the soft gabbling of turkeys off in the brush and a few melancholy hoots from an unseen owl were the only sounds that could be heard, I found myself walking through a quilt brighter than any stitched by the hand of woman. High up along the ridge tops, yellow chestnuts and red oaks looked to be on fire. Mid-slope, the maples were orange as a patch of pumpkins. The lowlands along the creek were roofed with clouds of yellow leaves puffing out from tall poplars. The carpet was sumac gone red as rubies with Virginia creeper hanging wine-purple in the dark shadows.
I felt like I was off in the woods with Mama again back during the winters and fallow times when we were sent out to clear the woods to make new fields for more tobacco. I started out fetching water and bundling pine knots. Time I was twelve, though, I was taller and stronger than any boy on the place. With my skirts looped up around my waist, I could swing a broadax sure and steady from can’t see to can’t see and was cutting half a cord a day like any man.
As soon as we got out of hearing of the others, Mama schooled me on what I needed to know when the three of us escaped. How to rub coal oil with snuff and cayenne pepper mixed in it on your feet to put the dogs off. Where to find mulberries, gooseberries, hickory nuts, and acorns. How to eat cattails, monkey flowers, and milk thistle. How to use sneeze weed to open up your head and cure deafness. Mostly, though, Mama showed me how to move through the woods so not a leaf rustled, twig cracked, nor bird left its nest. When I got to where I could sneak up on Mama herself, she gave me the most important lesson of all—how to follow the North Star to the free states.
Now, as I strode along beside Cedar Creek, I felt like Mama was with me, just ahead, out of sight, leading me to a safe place where no prying eyes would find us and she could tell me Iyaiya’s stories.
A distant gurgling promised that a swimming hole deep enough that I could have a proper dunking was close. I followed the sound to where vines grew thick along the creek, parted them, and peeked through. What I’d taken for gurgling was the sound of two whites, up to their posteriors in the water, naked as newts, loving on each other.
The woman had the perfect hourglass of her back to me. It shone pale as polished ivory in the dark shade. She blocked my view of the fellow who was larruping at her neck, but I caught a glimpse of his uniform on the bank and was considerably relieved to see that it was blue. He was one of our boys and had plucked himself a lovely local flower. Most of him was hidden from my view. And then the soldier kneeled down in front of the gal, gripped the pillows of her hindquarters with his long fingers, and pulled her to what had to be his mouth.
I found this queer Yankee procedure puzzling in the extreme, however the country gal appeared quite content with it and grew more so every minute it continued. She threw back her head, revealing the pale arch of her neck. It was stretched tight as she gasped, sucking in and blowing out harder and harder until a rush of moans that trailed off like a mourning dove’s call slid from between her parted lips. Then, wobbling in the fellow’s grip, she fell silent and he rose to hold her.
Yank or Reb, no white would tolerate a colored spying on him sparking in such a peculiar manner, so I commenced backing on out of there. Just as I did, though, I caught a glimpse of the soldier head-on. Beneath his hair, barbered off neat as Sheridan’s, was a face I took to be a young boy’s as it was entirely free of whiskers, stout jaw, or apple of Adam. In addition, he also had him a pair of bouncy titties with nipples big as silver dollars. As I’d never set eyes on a boy, white or colored, built like a broody hen that way, I had to conclude that what I was looking at was, not one, but two women.
After a good deal more kissing and splashing and giggling, the couple waded arm in arm to the bank where both of them proceeded to put on uniforms. I blinked several times to make sure I was seeing what I thought I was seeing as they helped each other wrap bindings tight around their breasts, button their jackets up, and get their caps set on straight.
I slipped away like Mama had taught me all those years ago. Not a twig snapped as I made my way back down the creek. Barely pausing to wash under my arms and up my skirt and rub my teeth and tongue with a bit of ball moss, I flew back to Solomon with my amazing revelation.
All Solomon did, though, when I told him about the white ladies in the blue suits was to slurp up a taste of the stew and tell me, “Too salty. You didn’t boil the beef long enough.”
“Solomon, didn’t you hear me?” I waved my arm toward all the soldiers and said, “There are women in some of those uniforms.”
“You just now figuring that out?” he asked, tossing a handful of pepper into the kettle. “Chunk in some them Irish spuds. They’ll do to soak up the salt you failed to get out.”
“You knew? About the women?”
“’Course I knew. They’s lots of them. Were more at the start when they all thought war was going to be like skipping off to a picnic. Seen ’em come in with their husbands, their sweethearts. Surprised it took you spying some lady lovers naked to take notice. Given’s how you’re near female yourself.”
“So no one cares if a woman signs up?” I asked, ignoring his jibe about me being “near” female.
“Oh Lord, here we go again. You gon tell me ’bout your warrior-lady blood and what a dead shot you are and how you’d be better at soldierin’ than Robert E. Lee and Gideon what led the Israelites combined, they only gave you the chance.”
“If no one cares, then I got the chance, right?”
“Hold up there, Dead Eye. Didn’t say that. Them two lady lovers? They already been reported to Sheridan. Heard it myself. A woman comes in with her husband, boyfriend, that’s one thing. But two women?” Solomon made a face like he was smelling spoilt milk. “Uh-uh. That won’t pick no cotton. It’s all over once they get reported. Them two gal boys be gone by retreat.”
“What about a woman come in on her own?”
Solomon snorted like the question was too stupid to answer and said, “Woman alone? She be dead by retreat. Used up in ways I will not specify. Now switch your fanny, Queenie, you burnin’ daylight. Tonight’s a big night. One of Sheridan’s favorites’s coming for supper. Brigadier General George Armstrong Custer. Boy General himself in from the Western front.”