“Solomon,” I whispered, “that’s my rifle. That’s my yagger I left hidden back home in the trunk of a hollow tree. One of those crackers found it.”
The long arm I had taken off the snake-bit Reb deserter lay unattended, even prettier than I remembered her. That was my rifle all right for I had not seen another like her amidst the vast assemblage of weapons I’d noted over the past months. A pang cinched me up tight and I was so overtaken with longing for Mama and the times we’d had with that selfsame rifle that no power on earth could of stopped me from reclaiming it.
The instant I moved toward it, though, Solomon clamped a grip on me could of halted a buffalo and whisper-hissed, “What on God’s green earth you doing?”
“Getting my rifle.”
“Getting kilt more like it.”
“Can’t kill what you never hear or see. Solomon, I can do this. I have to do this.”
“You push it, Queenie,” Solomon said in a despairing way. “Always push it. World’s gonna push back. See if it don’t.”
But he set me loose and I advanced. No snake slithering across a plate of glass could of been quieter. When I came close enough, the sludgy, ignorant twang of the most miserable specimens of Southern manhood assailed my ears.
The fellow who had stolen my yagger was a bony specimen wearing greasy buckskins and a coonskin cap appeared the coon been eaten by a bear and vomited up directly onto the man’s head. He was squabbling with a squat, beady-eyed individual, had a round face shining with grease, most likely from salt pork handed out by the conquering Yanks.
The fatty said something I didn’t catch and Coonskin Cap barked out in a nasal whine, “Whud you jist call me, Loudermilk?”
Loudermilk raised his voice and answered in a mocking la-di-da way, “Why, Dupree, my good man, I am surprised you failed to catch my drift. ’Specially as I was speakin’ in your native tongue. Allow me to repeat myself, Dupree.”
With that, Loudermilk tilted his chunky butt to one side, lifted a meaty haunch, and let loose with a rump ripper fueled by four years of beans and bad water.
The rifle-thieving Dupree was on his feet and plunging into the withering brown cloud Loudermilk had released quick as could be. They were all spoiling for a fight and would of preferred to thump a few Yankee or ungrateful black gourds, but they took this one and every one of them pitched in. It must of seemed to most of those rednecks that they’d gone to war for less than a fart, so why not bust some knuckles over a real one?
Once the thrashing started and they were occupied grinding their knuckles into each other’s eye sockets, booting one another’s groins, yanking out handfuls of hair, and trying to bite an ear or two off, my yagger was easy pickings. I snatched it and vanished.
Oh, how I gloried in having that fine firearm cradled in my arms once again. I ran to Solomon, expecting him to be as happy as I was. But he had sulled up on account of my pushing it and going against him and he wasn’t speaking to me.
His mood brightened, though, when we emerged into the open field and found folks having all kinds of times out there. Everyone was jubilating. Bluecoats from every Yankee state in the Union along with swarms of freedmen camp followers, vendors selling tonsil oil, turncoat Rebs, drifters, bunco men, and cutpurses.
Clumps of drummer boys, unused to the strong spirits being passed about so freely, lay dead to the world like so many rag dolls left outside. I searched for the young fellow who brought me water and hardtack when I was barreled up, but didn’t find him and said a prayer that he had survived the Rebellion and was making his way home safe to his abolitionist ma and pa.
Fiddlers, drummers, and fifers who hadn’t lit out for home or the nearest city with gaslights and loose women for them to waste their separation pay on played lively tunes. Grizzled veterans capered about the bonfires grabbing any soldier, officer or enlisted, who passed their way by the arm and swung him around like they were do-si-doing at a barn dance. Long lines snaked into the tents where the hardtack girls had set up. They were charging two dollar a head and still couldn’t keep up with business. At those exorbitant rates, even a fair portion of the washerwomen had temporarily shifted from the cleaning to the dirtying business.
Most of the suds ladies, though, confined themselves to selling dances as soldiers were happy to pay two bits just to whirl around with a woman in their arms and laugh and stick a Rebel cap on her head. It was quite a hoedown, with soldiers from every unit in the Union army represented. I’d learned to pick them out by their speech and I heard Irish Yankee, Boston Yankee, New York Yankee, German Yankee, and Swede Yankee all wove into the soft brown velvet of my people’s way of speaking. Which, to my ears, was how the Lord had intended his creatures to speak.
I was gawking about like the most country hayseed when a fellow with a wide mouth and teeth spaced far apart as a gator stepped up, pointed at my chest, and asked, “What you got there?”
That was when I noticed that while retrieving my yagger, my bodice had come unbuttoned, revealing a fair amount of my bosom. I quickly closed it back up and snapped, “Nothin’ that you’ll ever put your nasty hands on.”
“Calm down, sister. I got no interest in that washboard of yours. What I meant was them scars.”
That stopped me cold. “You mean these?” I asked, touching the scars. “Why you asking?”
He shrugged. “No reason. Just ain’t never seen the like except on one other gal.”
“What other gal?” I asked, slitting my eyes against this fool.
“Gal follows Grant’s camp.”
“What her name?” I demanded.
The man tapped his forehead. “Was right on the tip of my tongue.”
I felt Solomon move in close to me, lean down and whisper, “Don’t do this to yourself, Cathy. Don’t go opening hurts been healed up.”
“Solomon, that hurt will never heal.” I turned back to the man and asked again, “What her name?”
The man snapped his fingers and said, “Clemmie! That’s it, gal’s name’s Clemmie.”
“You knew Clemmie? You knew my little sister?”
“‘Knew her’? I’m still knowing her!”
“No…” I was trying to sort out the right words from the tornado whipping through my mind when he said, “Y’all wait right here where I can find you. I be back directly,” and disappeared into the crowd before I could stop him.
For one stupid second, I believed Gator Mouth would bring my little sister to me. Then I accepted that either I’d never see him again or, if I did, he’d be dragging along some warty girl just happened to have the same name as my sister. My dead sister. Though I knew I was a fool for letting even the tiniest green sprig of hope sprout up, I still felt low and let down even with all the uncorked happiness churning up around me.
The band struck up a comical version of “Dixie” made up on the spot for the occasion. Those still conscious raised an unholy ruckus howling out the new words, “In Dixie Land we’ll take their land and make them die in Dixie! Took away, took away, took away Dixie Land!”
“Forget it, Cathy,” Solomon said, and I took note of the fact that he’d called me by my name. Twice. I smiled at him, and set on putting pain aside for that night, I even joined in shout-singing, “Took away! Took away! Took away Dixie Land!” Determined not to let Gator Mouth spoil our fun, I grabbed Solomon’s arm and jostled him in a kidding, maybe even a flirty type way, until he opened his mouth and added what turned out to be a right agreeable baritone. When he sang out “… and make them die in Dixie!” the third time, he was grinning big and both the business back in the woods and Gator Mouth had been forgotten.
A whiskey vendor came our way with a jug and a tin cup. Solomon handed over a few pennies from a pocket inside his vest and bought us each a blast. The man waited impatiently for me to slug down the stiffener so that Solomon could take his turn with the man’s single cup. It was the first strong drink ever passed my lips and I liked it fine. It had a pacifying effect that calmed me the way hearing Scriptures does some folk.
Just to be ornery and aggravate the white vendor, Solomon was taking dainty sips out of the man’s cup, pretending to savor the rotgut while the vendor told him to step it up since a passel of thirsty guzzlers were waiting.
I’d never worn a corset, though I was acquainted with that instrument of torture from helping Old Miss get harnessed up. Still, I felt like I’d been laced into one my whole life and that my first cup of joy juice had caused all the stays to bust loose, letting me breathe freer than I maybe ever had. Feeling all let out, I rested the yagger in a safe, dark spot, and asked Solomon straight-out, “You plan on inviting a young lady to dance?”
Instant I issued my invitation, Solomon slugged down his jolt, tossed the cup somewhere in the vicinity of the vendor, and raised his arms into dance position perfect as a gentleman at a cotillion. I stepped right into them and, for the first time since I was pulled away from Mama and Clemmie, I felt like I had a partner.
Solomon held our hands out so that they made a prow to cut through the ocean of people. I was feeling as though we were about to launch on what I’d begun to suspect would be a long journey, one that might last the rest of our lives, when a heavy hand clamped onto my shoulder, jerked me around, and I came face-to-face with Dupree.