“Yup,” Caudell said smugly, almost as pleased as she was. “You stumbled a couple of times on the harder words, but that can happen to anybody. It doesn’t matter anyhow. What matters is that you read it and you understood. You did, didn’t you?”
“I surely did,” she answered. “I surely did.” Caudell had been reading since he was a little boy; he took literacy for granted. Not for the first time since he’d joined the army, he saw how much it meant to someone who came to it late.
Once started now, Mollie did not want to stop, not even when the campfire died into red embers and Caudell yawned until he thought his jaw would break. Almost everyone else was asleep by then, some men wrapped in blankets, more simply lying on the grass under the stars. That was no hardship, not on a fair, warm night. Caudell thanked heaven the war had not lasted into another winter. The men would have been without blankets then, too.
Finally, he could hold his eyes open no more. “Melvin,” he said, “why don’t you just keep that little Testament? That way, you’ll always have something to read.”
“A book of my own? A Testament of my own? To keep?” In the faint firelight, Mollie’s eyes were enormous. She glanced this way and that. When she saw no one close by was paying any attention, she leaned over and gave Caudell a quick kiss. Her voice sank to a throaty whisper: “We weren’t right out here in the open, Nate, I’d do better’n that.”
Instead of rising to the occasion, he yawned again, even more gigantically than before. “Right about now, I think I’m too worn to do any woman any good, or myself either,” he said, whispering too.
Mollie laughed. “Not one man in ten’d admit as much, no matter how true it was. Most’d sooner try, and then blame you when it turned out they couldn’t.” She shook her head, as if at a bad memory, then kissed him again. “Might could be we’ll find us another chance before too long, Nate. I hope so. You sleep good now, you hear?”
“I will, Me—Mollie.” He risked her real name. “Thanks.” As he rolled himself in his blanket, he wondered if they would find another chance. They wouldn’t be thrown together anymore, not with the 47th North Carolina mustering out. He would go back to teaching, and she—he didn’t know what she’d do. He hoped it would be better than what she’d come from and that the letters he’d taught her would help make it so.
He wriggled to get comfortable. The grass was soft against his cheek, but his long-lost hat would have made a better pillow. He twisted again, turned his head back toward the fire. There sat Mollie Bean, stubbornly reading the Bible.
Just as troops had filled Broad Street in the grand review the day before, so now they filled Franklin Street. Then, marching out of Richmond, they had moved briskly. Now, coming back into the city, they advanced at a snail’s pace.
Nate Caudell’s stomach growled. The promised morning rations had never arrived at Camp Lee. Somehow that seemed fitting. The Army of Northern Virginia had always been able to fight. Staying fed was another matter altogether. Well, no matter, he thought. When his point on this long, slow line reached Mechanic’s Hall at last, some War Department clerk would officially sever his connection with the Confederate army.
“Maybe,” he said dreamily, “they’ll even pay us off as they let us out.”
Allison High snorted. “This here’s just getting-out day, Nate, not the Judgment Day. They ain’t paid us in so long, reckon they forgot they’re supposed to.”
“Besides, way prices are, what they owe us ain’t worth worryin’ over, anyhow,” Dempsey Eure added.
“They owe us more than money,” Caudell said.
“They won’t remember that either, not longer’n a few months,” High answered. Caudell wanted to contradict the cynical sergeant, but found he couldn’t. The guess seemed only too likely.
Slowly, slowly they inched toward Capitol Square. Some people came out to look at them, but only a handful compared to the day before. A teamster driving an immense wagon from the back of the near wheeler of his six-mule team had to pull to a stop when the soldiers blocked his path down Fifth Street. He swore loudly at them.
Allison High let out a grim chuckle. “Some of them bastards won’t remember longer’n a few minutes, let alone months.”
Rufus Daniel dealt with the foul-mouthed teamster more directly. He unslung his AK-47 and pointed it at the man. “You just want to be a little more careful who you’re cussin’ around, don’t you, friend?” he asked in a pleasant voice.
The teamster suddenly seemed to realize Daniel was far from the only man there with a rifle. He opened his mouth, closed it again. “S-s-sorry,” he managed at last. When the soldiers finally cleared the way, he snapped his whip over the mules’ backs, jerked the reins with unnecessary ferocity. The wagon rattled through. The Castalia Invincibles bayed laughter after it.
They crawled past Sixth Street, past Seventh. The sun climbed ever higher into the sky. Sweat poured down Caudell’s face. When he wiped his forehead with his sleeve, the wool turned a darker shade of gray. “I might not shoot a wagon-driver;” he said, “but I do believe I’d kill a man for a tall glass of beer.”
As if in answer to that irregular prayer, four ladies came out of one of the fine houses between Seventh and Eighth. A black woman pushed the oldest lady in a wheeled chair. That lady had on her lap, and the other white women carried, trays filled with glasses of water. They all came up to the cast-iron fence in front of their house. “You must be hot and thirsty, young men,” the woman in the wheeled chair said. “Come help yourselves.”
Soldiers crowded against the fence in the blink of an eye. Caudell was close enough and quick enough to get a glass. He downed it in three blissful swallows. “Thank you very kindly, ma’am,” he said to the woman from whose tray he’d taken it. She was not far from his own age, attractive if rather stern-featured, and wore a maroon satin dress that, like the house from which she’d come, said she was a person of consequence. Emboldened because he was sure he’d never see her again, Caudell plunged: “Do you mind if I ask whose kindness I’m thanking?”
The woman hesitated, then said, “My name is Mary Lee, First Sergeant.”
Caudell’s first thought was mild surprise that she’d read his chevrons. His second, when he really heard her name, was hardly a thought at alclass="underline" he automatically stiffened to attention. Nor was he the only one; every man whose ears caught the name Lee straightened up at the mere sound of it. “Ma’am, thank you, ma’am,” he stammered.
“There, now you’ve gone and frightened them,” said the youngest Lee daughter—actually, she was hardly more than a girl.
“Oh, hush, Mildred,” Mary Lee said, sounding like every elder sister in the world. She turned back to Caudell. “After you brave men have done so much for your country, helping you now is our privilege, and the least return we can make.”
The woman in the wheeled chair nodded vigorously. “My husband never fails to marvel at the spirit the soldiers under his command showed an through the war, even when things looked blackest.” She turned her head so she could look up at me servant behind her. “Julia, fetch the tray of cakes now, if you please.”
“Yes, mist’iss,” the black woman said. She walked back to the house, vanished inside.
By then, the soldiers ahead of the Castalia Invincibles had advanced several yards. The men shouted for them to move up too. Where before Caudell had cursed the line for moving too slowly, now he cursed it for moving too fast. He had to go on. Company E enjoyed the Lee ladies’ cakes. Caudell tried to stay philosophical. He hadn’t expected to meet Marse Robert’s daughters, and did his best to be satisfied with that.