“What do you think, Nate?” Mollie asked when he finally closed the covers.
“I think—” Caudell stopped, as if saying what he thought somehow made it more real. But no help for it: “I think this may truly be a book from—from the twentieth century.”
She threw her arms around him and kissed him on the cheek. “Oh, sweet Jesus, thank you! I was thinkin’ the same thing, and thinkin’ I had to be out of my head.”
“Believe me, I feel the same way.” But when he looked down at the volume that should have been impossible, his resolve firmed.” All the other choices seem even crazier, though.”
“Seems like that to me, too. But if it’s real, Nate, it’s important. What are we going to do about it?”
That brought him up short. “You’ve had more time to think about this than I have.” Not wanting to sound as if he was accusing her, he quickly added, “But you’re dead right. If this comes out of Rivington, it ought to shed some kind of light on all the other peculiar things the Rivington men have.” Not just AK-47s went through his mind, but also desiccated meals, Benny Lang’s helmet and bullet-stopping flapjack (he still wondered if he’d heard that straight), and the marvelous lights and artificial coolness about which Mollie had written. He’d never before thought of all those things together. Now that he had, he saw what a mountain of strangeness they made, a mountain beside which the Picture History of the Civil War was by itself but a foothill.
He knew he was not a man cut out to handle mountains. He thought of bringing the book to George Lewis, shook his head the moment the idea occurred to him. Taken as a whole, the mystery of Rivington was far too big for Lewis, too. With that realization came an answer to Mollie’s question: “Robert E. Lee needs to see this book.”
Mollie stared at him. “Robert E. Lee? Marse Robert?” Her voice rose to a squeak. “The President?”
“He’s not the king,” Caudell said. “He’s not even President yet; and won’t be for more than a month. Remember how it was in Richmond? Jeff Davis had his house open every other week, just so he could meet people. Captain Lewis went there once, to shake his hand.”
“I ain’t no captain.” Mollie vehemently shook her head. “I’m just a—hell and damnation, Nate, you know what I am.” She set a hand on the book in his lap. “You go; Nate. You can tell Marse Robert what it’s all about, better’n I ever could.”
“Me?” Caudell was tempted—anyone who brought something this important to Richmond would become important himself, if only by association. But then, regretfully, he said, “No, it wouldn’t be right. For one thing, you got the book, so you should be the one who takes it. For another, you’ve lived at Rivington, so you can tell Marse Robert all about it. He’ll want to know that; the Rivington men were strong for Forrest in the election.”
“Oh, were they ever,” Mollie said. “You never heard such cussin’ and fussin’ and carryin’ oil as when Tennessee went for Lee.”
“There, you see? And besides, Mollie, you’re already traveling. Me, I have to teach school tomorrow and the next day and the day after that, or else throwaway a job I like and that I’m good at.” He took a deep breath. “I’ll do it if I have to, I guess, but you’re a better choice.”
“But I’m nothin’ but a no-’count whore,” Mollie wailed. “Marse Robert, he won’t want nothin’ to do with the likes of me.”
“I don’t know. He has an eye for pretty ladies, they say,”
Caudell said. But that made matters worse, not better. He tugged at his beard, then suddenly grinned and asked, “Do you still have your old uniform?”
“Yeah, I do,” she replied, sounding puzzled at the change of subject. “What about it?”
“If you won’t go as Mollie, go as Melvin,” he said. “You know Marse Robert would do whatever needed doing for one of his old soldiers—and you soldiered as hard as anybody.”
She had to nod. Slowly, she said, “Might could be that’d work.” Her laugh came shaky, but it was a laugh.” Always kept it in case I had to get out of somewhere quiet and sneakylike. Never reckoned I’d want to get into someplace that way.” A hand flew up to her hair. “Hate to chop this short again after it’s been growin’ since the war. But if it needs doin’, it needs doin’. I got me a little scissors right here.” She rummaged in one of the carpetbags, found what she was looking for, handed Caudell the scissors. “You cut it, Nate. You can see what you’re doin’.”
Caudell hadn’t cut hair since the war ended. A Negro barber would have laughed scornfully at the job he did, but when he was through, Mollie looked more like a man, or at least a beardless youth, than a woman. But the dress she still wore, and the feel of her thick, curly hair running through his fingers as he worked, the occasional moments when his hands brushed against the smooth, warm skin of her cheek, her ear, her neck, reminded him she was no man, even if she could put on the outer seeming of one.
Her hands checked what he had accomplished. She smiled. With her hair short, all at once it was the saucy smile of the Mollie beside whom he’d marched and fought—and lain. “That’s good, Nate. Thank you. You want to shut the door there, so as I can change?” He did as she asked; after a moment’s hesitation, he stood outside in the hallway. Through the thin wood panel, he heard her chuckle, and felt himself blush. She opened the door a couple of minutes later. “How do I look?”
Shabby was the first word that came to mind. No one could look anything but shabby in trousers, tunic, and forage cap that had gone through the war, even if those clothes were cleaned and mended, as Mollie’s were. But seeing her in uniform somehow excited him in a way her hoop skirt and petticoats had not—this was the way she’d looked when he went to her cabin.
She was used to reading men’s eyes. “You want to come back inside, Nate?” she asked softly. “Handy thing about this outfit is, it goes off a sight easier than the one I had on before.” Not trusting himself to speak, he nodded, stepped in, and closed the door again.
They lay side by side afterwards on the narrow, clothes-strewn bed. The next to last candle Nate had got from Wren Tisdale still. burned. Had the saloonkeeper known, he could have leered with impunity. Mollie stroked Caudell’s cheek, just above the line where his beard started. She said, “I always remembered you were sweet about it. You treat me like I’m somebody, not just—a place to stick it in.”
“Funny,” he said, sitting up. “I always thought the same about you—that you weren’t just going through the motions, I mean.”
“Not with you. Other times—oh, the hell with other times. I wish—” Grimacing, she broke off without saying what she wished. Caudell thought he could make a fair guess. He rather wished she had no other times to come between them, too.
Mollie got off the bed and started to dress. So did Caudell; the room was cold. As he pulled up his trousers, he said, “I have some money saved up that I can give you for train fare, if you need it.” He did not have much, but for this he was ready to use it.
“Don’t fret yourself.” Mollie finished buttoning her private’s tunic, then slid over her head a small velvet bag on a thong. She tucked it under the tunic; it clinked slightly as it settled between her breasts. “I hear tell gold’s still right scarce most places, but not in Rivington. You seen that for yourself. I got plenty.”
“All right,” Caudell said, not altogether unhappily. He thought of something else. “When you go to Richmond, don’t go back through Rivington, in case Benny Lang has noticed his book is missing after all. The Rivington men might be watching the Wilmington and Weldon Railroad. Go south to Goldsboro from Rocky Mount, then over to Raleigh or Greensboro, so you can head north on the Raleigh and Gaston or the North Carolina Railroad up to the Richmond and Danville.”