The Last Full Measure (9 page)

He said not a word, just ate and listened. He chewed and drank and looked up every so often, and when he was finished, he contemplated a bit. He was scowling.

"Come here," he said solemnly.

I got up from my chair and went to stand beside him, not knowing what to expect.

"You did good," he said. He reached up, put a hand on the back of my neck, pulled me down, and kissed my forehead.

"Were you afraid?" he asked me when I sat back down.

I wanted to say no. I wanted to lie. But he would know if I was lying—he always did. "Yes," I allowed.

He picked up the coffeepot and poured himself another cup. "Good. It's good to be afraid sometimes. Did they make any unseemly advances to you? Or Marvelous? Because if they did, I'm either going to have to report them to the provost marshal's office or kill them."

"No."

He sipped coffee. "What aren't you telling me, then?"

"I've told you everything, David."

He looked at Marvelous. "No sense in asking you, is there, sweetie? You wouldn't tell tales out of school if I threatened to hang you up by your thumbs, would you?"

Marvelous lowered her eyes. "Nosir. 'Ceptin, I don't know what it is, if it's anythin'."

He bit his lower lip. "Come on, Tacy. Or I'm going to think you're protecting them for something."

He was right. So I sighed and told him. "I liked Lieutenant Marshall," I said.

He closed his eyes for a second. "What do you mean, you
liked
him?"

"Well, because he let Marvelous stay. Because of that, of course. But not only because of that."

"Because of
what
, then? The color of his eyes?"

"If you go on like this I'm going to cry."

"If you don't go on, I'm going to give you a reason to cry."

"I think you're a crude toad! An ungrateful beast!"

He leaned back in his chair and looked at Marvelous. "We always end up like this," he told her, mildly. "We can't discuss anything but it turns into a fight."

Marvelous won't say anything
, I told myself.
She knows better
. But I was wrong.

"Tacy loves you, Mr. David," she told him. And right there I wished the Rebels had taken her.

Well, that turned David around, all right. That shut his mouth for half a second at least. Now he sighed and looked at me. "All right," he said. "Let's start again. Likely I am a crude toad and an ungrateful beast. Most women seem to think so, anyway."

"Josie doesn't." I don't know what made me say that just then. I never will know what made me say that. Certainly I had the brains to know that in the mood he was in, it wasn't the right time.

"
What?
" He sat up straight in his chair.

I pushed mine back a little from the table, too. "I shouldn't have said that."

"Well, you said it, so explain it."

I shrugged, like it made no never mind. "I just said that Josie doesn't think you're a crude toad or an ungrateful beast. Josie likes you. And that word doesn't even cover it. I thought you knew."

He glared at me. And the word
glare
doesn't even cover how he looked at me. "Keep your nose out of my private life," he said in a grating tone. "You hear me?"

"Yes, David."

"What I do, or don't do, with any woman is not your affair. Do you hear that?"

"I hear."

"Now, to get back to your problem. Why do you like Lieutenant Marshall?"

"Because he was human. Because"—and I did not care if David would at this point understand—"he told me he lost two friends already in the war. And that he was just an insignificant lieutenant, but that if he could. he would end the war right at that moment. And because, when he left he held out his hand to me. And so I gave him mine because I thought he wanted to shake hands. But he bowed instead, and kissed my hand. And then he thanked me for the breakfast and said he hoped I would not think all Southerners were savages and he did not want me to think of them all that way. And when he told Marvelous she was free, he said she would stay here and be free forever."

David said nothing for a terrible, lonely moment.

"It just came to me, David, that I liked him. And that he was the enemy. And when it came to me that I liked him, I didn't know if it was wrong or not. And I promised myself I would ask you about it when you came home."

The kitchen was silent. We could hear the grandfather clock ticking in the hall.

"I didn't like him because he had blue eyes," I added. "It wasn't anything like that."

My brother shook his head. He put one elbow on the table and rested his head in his hand. "Why Pa ever left me in charge of you," he said, "I don't know."

I got up quickly from my chair. I bolted, started to run past him, away from him as far as I could get, but as I did he caught me by the wrist and held me firm.

He did not say he was sorry. David seldom said he was sorry. He just said, "No, Tacy, you are not wrong for liking Lieutenant Marshall. You are just ahead of all the rest of us. You have just figured out what all the rest of us are going to have to figure out how to do someday. To like each other again, after all this damned foolishness is over."

He held me like that for a few more seconds. I did not look at him and he did not look at me. But the feelings between us could have lighted the contents of a soldier's cartridge box.

Then he squeezed my hand and I ran from the room.

I
DON'T CARE
how you dress it up, or try not to dress it up, it happened that very afternoon of July 2, shortly after our noon meal, which Marvelous and I prepared together.

Mama rescued a young Yankee soldier and saved his life.

She had come down from her nap, feeling refreshed and looking a lot better. Marvelous and I told her in the kitchen, when my brother was out of the house, about the Confederates' morning visit and how David had brought the cow and the dog home. We introduced her to Cassie and asked her if the dog could stay.

Mama looked doubtful at first, but then Cassie, as if she knew her future lay in the balance, got to her feet and hobbled over to Mama, where she sat and raised her paw. And that was all it took.

"Another schemer in the house," David said as he stood just inside the back door, watching.

"Oh, she's adorable!" Mama was completely smitten. "Of course she can stay!"

It was right after our meal, as I said, that we heard the commotion. We were still at the table when we heard sharp shouts, what sounded like orders, then in answer, a protest. And of a sudden, a yell from Mr. Cameron downstairs.

"Out of here! All of you! How dare you enter my place!"

David leapt to his feet and grabbed his musket.

"No!" Mama grabbed his arm. "No, David, I'll have no killing in my house. Let me go down and see what's going on."

"No killing? Mama, those may be Rebs down there! They specialize in killing!"

"They've been ordered not to harm the citizens, David. Especially the women and children. If a man goes down with a gun, well, that's different, wouldn't you say?"

David was stymied on two points. Mama was right, first off. And she was his mama. And when she spoke to him like that he knew better than to go up against her.

He stepped aside and let her go. Then he stood there, musket in hand, looking rather helpless. And there was no one worse to be around than my brother David looking rather helpless.

So in order to avoid appearing such-like, he ordered Marvelous to the garret, to make herself invisible, just in case they came upstairs. She went. He glared at me because he could think of nothing better to do with me for the moment. We stood in silence, listening.

"What's going on here?" we heard Mama asking.

Then came a distinct Southern voice. "Nothing to bother your head about, ma'am. This man is our prisoner. We been followin' him for a block now, and he cut across your property and started down these cellar stairs to escape. But we're set on takin' him in. Like I said, ma'am, nothing to bother your pretty little head about."

"Well"—Mama's voice had the same tone she'd used on David only moments earlier—"my head, Sergeant, has a right to be bothered. You see, these are my cellar stairs. And this is my house. And maybe where you all come from the women don't bother their pretty little heads about such matters, but here in Gettysburg, we do. This man is wounded, sergeant. His arm is bleeding rather copiously. My husband is a doctor, away with the army. But I am familiar with such matters. And I would suggest that you leave this man with me so I can tend to his wound before he bleeds to death. And then you can come back for him later. How does that sound to you?"

There was a moment's silence. Then the sergeant spoke. "Sounds good, ma'am. We'll leave him with you. Come back for him later. Much obliged."

We heard him say, "Let's skedaddle, men," and they were gone. And David was downstairs in a wink to fetch Corporal Nelson Halpern upstairs into our kitchen.

True to her word, and with David's help, Mama cleaned, dressed, and bound his wound. She gave him some laudanum from Pa's cache of medicines and, after examining his mouth, some Aver's wild cherry pectoral for a sore throat.

Then David helped him up the stairs and into his own bedroom.

Mama prepared a tray of soup, bread and butter, and hot tea. I took it upstairs. David had Corporal Halpern sitting on the edge of his bed. David had taken off his shoes and was unbuttoning his uniform shirt.

"When do you think the Rebs will come back for me?" Halpern was asking.

"Likely they won't," David told him. "They've got bigger game to hunt out there."

"But if they do?" the young man insisted.

"They have to get past my mother first," David reminded him. "I don't envy them that. And if they do, then they have to get past me."

I set the tray on the dresser next to a basin of water and soap and washcloth David had already secured. He was about to wash Halpern, but then he saw me.

"Mama sent me up with food," I said.

He nodded and stopped unbuttoning Halpern's shirt.

The corporal looked at me. He was no older than twenty, if that. His dark hair curled around his ears. He needed a shave. His eyelashes were thick, and there was an earnest, anxious look about him that tore at one's heart.

He was nothing if not handsome.

"Take the bedspread off the bed," David directed, "then go back downstairs."

I did as he said, but I did not leave right off. At the door of the room I stopped and took one more look at Corporal Halpern. His eyes were following my every move, as though he were hypnotized.

They were blue eyes, very blue.

"What did I say, Tacy?" David asked. His voice was acid dry. He looked sternly at me.

I stuck my tongue out at him and ran from the room.

***

T
HE REBS
never did come back for Corporal Halpern that day. As David had said, they had bigger game to hunt out there. Because, though things had been silent most of the morning, at around four in the afternoon the war took up again, with gunshots sounding in the near distance and shells screeching in the streets.

It was after four that Josie came home. She was supposed to be home at two. She'd promised David that, and from two o'clock on he was pacing the house like a cat under a tree full of sparrows, talking about riding out to get her. The only reason he didn't was because his horse, Robin, was the last horse we owned and the Rebs would shoot David off her just to get Robin.

I was smirking to myself as I helped Mama get the makings of supper ready, not because Josie might be in danger but because David was openly showing concern for her, not bothering in the least to hide it.

Then the back door opened and she came in.

From the front hall David near ran to the kitchen. "Where have you
been?
" he demanded of her. You would think she were me, the way he demanded it. "We've been worried about you."

Josie smiled and took her bonnet off. "Well, hello to you, too, Mr. David. I'm sorry if I worried you, but I got detained because of this white band on my arm."

David scowled. "That band means you have a connection to the medical profession. Have you? Is that why you're wearing it? And carrying a basket full of bandages?"

"No." Josie set the basket down. "Dr. Dimon, my mother's friend, stopped by to ask Mama if she could put up two of his nurses for a few hours' sleep. His hospital at the hotel was hit by artillery fire yesterday, you know, and the place is filthy and disorderly. He was the one who suggested I wear the arm band and carry the bandages. Then on the way home I met so many wounded, I just
had
to stop and help them. I even went to find water to help them. That's what made me late. So don't scold me, Mr. David."

She commenced to cry then and ran from the room and upstairs.

I followed her up. As I went by my brother, I said, "Just stand there, you crude toad, you."

I found Josie in the small room she used when she sometimes stayed over. She was sitting on the bed, tears still coming down her face. I sat down next to her. "Don't cry," I soothed. "You ought to know my brother by now. He likes to hear himself yell. It gives him a sense of power. He really doesn't mean it."

She stopped crying and sniffed. "You think that's true?"

"Sure."

"Then why do you cry when he scolds you all the time?"

"I have to do something, don't I?"

She put her arm around my shoulder then. "You don't," she said. "It breaks your heart when he scolds. I know it does. I know how much you love him. And I've told him that, too."

I scowled. "You shouldn't have."

"I have a right. I'm practically family."

"Well then, I had a right to tell him what I told him about you."

Now it was her turn to scowl. "What did you tell him about me?"

"I told him that you're in love with him."

Her eyes widened. Her face flushed, then went white. "You told him
that?
"

"Uh-huh. I figured he's just too dumb to know and he ought to be told. And you'd never do it. Well, don't look so shocked.
Somebody
had to do it."