Finding Hope in Texas (22 page)

After dinner, Lizzy rushed me off to change
into our ball gowns. The sun’s last few rays where gone now, so Mr.
Peet turned on a flashlight for us to get dressed by, although what
I really wanted to do is crawl into bed and never come out again.
Just one more day and my Civil War reenacting career would be
over.

Again, the few men in camp said how beautiful
we both looked, even though they could hardly see us by lantern
light. Hunter was nice enough to escort both Lizzy and myself to
the ball, and I quickly took my place as the fly on the wall as
they began to do dances that hadn’t been fashionable since my three
great-grandfathers had died. I watched Lizzy and Hunter do the
Virginia Reel, some broom dance, and others. It was Lizzy’s time to
shine, smiling and laughing and enjoying her time as the belle of
the ball, and it was very nice to see all the ladies and men
dressed in their best gowns and soldier uniforms. The war was over
for the evening as blue and gray danced side-by-side having a
wonderful time. Maybe Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis should
have just had a dance to work things out?

Little Archer made his way past the table and
chairs that had been my fortification between the dance area and
me. “Miss Hope, can I dance the next dance with you?” He extended
his hand and I could only smile.

“Of course you can.” I placed my hand in his
and moved the better-fitting yet still cumbersome hoop around the
debris. How could I say no to the cutest man in the room? We danced
a waltz, and even though he was only pushing ten, he had the steps
down better than me. My only hope was that the hoop didn’t catch on
my shoe or his, thus tumbling us both to the ground, but after a
few movements, I could tell that he had done this before and was
quite a little 1860s dancer. John Travolta, eat your heart out.

As the song finished and we all clapped
because of the apparent fun we were having, I noticed that Jason
had snuck in and was sitting close to my chair.
Jeez, why did he
have to sit there?
I thanked Archer for the dance and he gave
the cutest little bow. What a gentleman. Then, slowly, I toddled
back close to Jason and sat a few chairs away. We sat in silence as
the next song began.

We stared at the gentle sway of the people as
they followed the dance rituals of the 1860s, keeping up with the
man who called the dance orders from the center of the room. It was
an interesting procession to watch. Some looked like professionals
and others simply tried to stay on their feet. All of this I really
didn’t care about, but I was too ashamed, too shy to talk to Jason
after the way I’d acted earlier, and he hadn’t opened the floor to
conversation, either. We were just two bumps on a log, waiting for
the next toad to sit on our heads. Finally, and happily, the man in
charge announced that the last dance of the evening was coming
up.

“What are you two doing over there?”
questioned Lizzy as she and Hunter made their way over to us for a
moment. “Jason, ask this pretty girl to dance right now,” she
ordered, “I know you can waltz. You waltzed with me at Liendo. Now,
get up and dance with her.”
Oh, Lizzy, could you be making this
anymore embarrassing?
Luckily she took Hunter back out to
continue with her own fun. I took a deep breath and looked over at
him. He sat back in his seat in a way that didn’t look comfortable,
looking back at me. His gaze was intimidating, like he knew he had
a task ahead of him that would take every bit of energy to
accomplish. He rubbed his right leg a few times and gave out a
sigh.

“Do you wanna?” He nodded out to the floor as
the music began to play.

“Okay.” He stood and walked out to the floor,
leaving me in his wake to catch up. He gave me another look when I
reached him, but this one was full of doubt and uncertainty.

“I’m sorry, I’m not any good at this.” The
apology was more of a whimper and I thought for a moment that this
strong, handsome man was going to fall to pieces like I had done
with him.

“It’s okay. I’m not, either.” He released
another sigh and held up his hands, which I accepted as he gently
held one of mine and wrapped the other around my waist. We gazed
into each other’s eyes for what seemed like an eternity. People
were dancing all around us, but he couldn’t bring himself to start.
Was it his leg bothering him?
“We don’t have to do this if
you don’t want to,” I muttered.

“I can do this,” he answered back, more
determined. Finally, with a lift of his leg and a guiding hand, he
led me into the crowd of twirling dancers. I watched him as he made
the three steps, his eyes darting around to make sure he wasn’t
about to collide with anyone, the hidden grimace on his face as he
continued with the ordeal.
Oh, I didn’t want to do this to him,
I didn’t want to see him suffer like this because of me.
But he
wouldn’t relent and continued until the Civil War band in the
corner played the last chord. He gave a soft smile and clapped
along with the crowd as the music died away. Lizzy and Hunter
walked up as everyone began to make their way out of the large
tent.

“We’re headed back to camp. I guess you are
too?” she questioned.

“Um,” I looked at Jason, “Yes, of course.” I
expected Jason to join us, but he gave a nod.

“Thanks for the dance,” he said in the driest
way possible. He clinched his leg and limped out of the tent. I
looked at Lizzy.

“He’ll be okay.”

Chapter
Nine

The wind had died down by evening and the
overcast had dissipated leaving a starry night with a half moon
over our heads. The evening seemed to be social time around the
camp. Some of the men sat under their canvas canopies and played
cards, but most everyone was gathered around the large fire and
enjoying each other’s company. Lizzy and I both changed back into
normal clothing before we joined them. Hunter was nice enough to
hold two seats for us.

“I couldn’t believe they had that many
Confederates out there today,” a man from across the fire remarked.
“We were probably outnumbered close to two to one. Did these guys
ever read their history books? How many battles did the South
actually outnumber the North, maybe two? It just doesn’t look good
if we can’t even do that right.” A few men agreed as Mr. Peet
chimed in.

“Well, Bobby, it’s the game you play out
there. Colonel Trent probably just promised too many units they
could go gray, is all.”

“Or they all just
forgot
their blues,”
piped up another.

“Either way, if it makes all these die hard
rebels happy, then so be it. I mean we got a good fight in, that’s
all I’m concerned about.”

“But Captain, when we go to a national, and
all these same men that think they can pull this kind of crap up
there that they do at a local event, what is going to happen?
You’re going to have Lee outnumber Meade at Gettysburg, for Pete’s
sake.”

“Yes, for my sake,” Mr. Peet said,
acknowledging his last name. “Well, I’ll ask about it at the
officer’s meeting tomorrow, but y’all know how I feel, that this is
just a hobby and we are out here for fun. The battle, it’s always
about the silliest thing we do over the weekend. Sometimes I think
we should just be out there with water guns. It might be more
entertaining that way.”

“Our ancestors would be rolling over in their
graves if they saw us doing half the crap we do our there. I saw a
dead Confederate up on his elbows taking pictures of the whole
thing. I mean, how stupid does that look to a spectator?”

“Speaking of ancestors,” piped in a younger
man I didn’t know. “Look what I got today.” He unraveled a battle
flag that was printed with the words
Heritage Not Hate
. I
didn’t say anything, but my mouth gapped open.
Really? Heritage?
Slavery was your heritage, but it didn’t involve hate? How stupid
was this guy?
I looked over at Lizzy, but she was more focused
on Hunter. Then, I caught Mr. Peet’s tart expression. He had to be
just as offended as me.

“Oh, put that away, boy,” someone told him.
“You don’t want to upset the captain.” A few snickers went up from
around the campfire as everyone focused on Mr. Peet, expecting him
to respond.

He did so with a shrug and a laugh. “Well,
I’m not teaching today so you can wave that thing around all you
want.”

“But really, does it offend you?”

“Mmm,” he said as he thought about it.
“Again, I don’t want to teach the subject since I’m not getting
paid, but yes. Our southern ancestors made a horrible mistake
that’s easy to see today, but was not back then. They were fighting
to keep a constant underclass, so that whites would always be
better than others. Slavery was the economic fuel of the southern
fire as well. It’s what people owned to show that they were more
prominent than others. If you were keeping up with the Jones’, you
did so by owning slaves. And I won’t even start with all the events
from the Declaration to Ft. Sumter that show that this was a war
about slavery. But, really, if you think about it, if you take
slavery out of this war, do you really have a war?”

I wasn’t sure if anyone was listening to the
lecture by its end. Most adults’ attention spans were shorter than
teenagers. Finally, someone spoke up.

“Man, Robert, you and your liberal agenda
nearly want me to apologize to every African American I know.” The
remark was followed by some more laughter, and Mr. Peet could only
sit back in his chair and stare at the fire. There was no use
getting through to these people. They had been taught the wrong way
a very long time ago and weren’t about to change now, especially by
some know-it-all history teacher with a master’s degree. The only
thing worse would have been a full-fledged doctor from some Ivy
League institution trying to teach them about what they already
knew.

Steadily, the conversation moved away from
1860s politics into people’s lives. I learned that Daniel was an
architect and Robin stayed at home with Archer and Julie. Mike was
a sales representative, a job that kept him on the road a lot, thus
he tried to make as many reenactments with Hunter as possible for
some father-son time. They all, of course, asked me about how I
enjoyed it so far, said that they were glad to see me again from
the parade, and asked what I was learning in school. All of them
seemed just like ordinary people who just happened to dress like
they did one-hundred-fifty years ago on the weekends. Was there
anything different from them than the storm-troopers or Luke
Skywalkers that did the same thing?

It was pushing midnight before everyone
toddled off to bed, turning off the lanterns and doing their best
to keep warm on another cold night. I did my best to sleep since
the day had been long and I had run around with Lizzy far more than
I had expected to. But my mind was racing through my encounters
with Jason, my distant relationship with my aunt that was on the
brink of total collapse, Jody and her terrorization of me, and of
course, my family. Finally, I sat up in my bed unable to even fake
sleep any longer. Wrapping myself with a large blanket, I made my
way out of the tent and was shocked to see Jason sitting alone by
the fire.

“What are you doing out here?” I whispered as
I approached.

“I guess I should ask you the same thing.
Couldn’t sleep?”

“No. What about you?”

“I never can.” I sat down a couple of chairs
away from him, silenced by his remark. We sat there staring into
the fire for a while until I continued the conversation.

“I didn’t mean to hurt your leg while we were
dancing. If Lizzy wouldn’t have pushed it, I wouldn’t even have
asked to dance.”

“It’s not your fault. I over did it at the
battle today. I was just exhausted.”

But I knew it was more than that; there was
pain in his face that far exceeded fatigue. I decided to delve
deeper.

“I know you really didn’t get shot at Shiloh,
so may I ask what really happened to your leg?” He gave me an all
too familiar smirk, but didn’t say anything. I was about to drop
the subject when he began.

“Ever heard of Iraq?”

“Of course.”

“Let’s just say I got into a bad situation
over there and this is the price I paid for it.”

“How bad?”

“The situation?”

I nodded.

“You don’t want to know.”

“Actually,” I answered quite timidly, “I do.”
He glared at me as if trying to justify whether he wanted to tell
me or not, so I continued. “You just look like it hurts you a lot
and I want to know what happened. I mean, you have your leg,
right?” He nodded. “Then were you shot?” He didn’t say anything,
but gave a sigh. “I’m sorry. I’ve overstepped my bounds.”
Stupid!
I began to gather the blanket around me to head back
into the tent.

“We were coming in from a patrol and had
about two miles to go through the middle of Baghdad to get to base.
Traffic got heavy so we were ordered to take a different route
because you didn’t want to be sitting in the middle of traffic in
case you were attacked by an RPG or something of that nature. It
was a stupid decision, though.” His eyes focused deep into the
burning embers. “They hit us from everywhere it seemed, just eating
our Humvees up something terrible. We were sitting ducks when that
first roadside bomb went off and they just cut us to shreds. We
returned fire, but couldn’t see a thing. Then it was silent, the
screams, the shots, all of it just went blank.” He said all this
without looking away from the fire, as if he could see it all
replaying within the flames. “Anyway, I got out with shrapnel
embedded in my leg, so it gives me trouble from time to time.”

“But that’s not all.”

“No, that’s not all. Four of my best friends
died in the attack.”