I’ve got nothing to offer him.
‘I’ll send you letters,’ I say. ‘And you come visit when this war is done.’ A gentle smile moves slow across his face, but my words ain’t enough, nothing is ever enough, and then he is jumping down to the ground.
He knocks on the wagon bed for the driver, who clucks at the mules. We lurch forward, the wagon creaking, leaving Will standing there in the darkness, his hand lifted to wave as we rumble off into the mist.
I lean against the back of that wagon, the soft sounds of leaves blowing in the wind rising and falling, Sully’s breath coming long and slow from the laudanum.
‘Jeremiah said I might have to force you,’ he mutters as he sinks into sleep, and then Jeremiah’s tree rises up over the valley. I watch it one last time, all my love going to whatever is left of him until that tree disappears into the dawn before me. I close my eyes against the tears and there is Jeremiah rising early, kissing my forehead, whistling under his breath. Mama and Papa stir in the dim morning light, Mama feeding the stove and boiling water, their voices coming through the walls. There is the warbling trill of a bird, so close I could see it winging off to the trees, but there ain’t no birds left here; they have all flown and my eyes ain’t opening, they want to stay closed. And then it is me winging across the land, the battlefield stretched out below. I see where the cornfield stood before the war harvested it too soon, the soil soaked with blood, the farms scattered with the dead in rows, an orchard full of rotten fruit. Somehow I am in a cellar, all that dead fruit plucked and canned and forgotten on the shelves. I take up a jar, holding it up to the light, breaking it open, the berries spilling over me, covering my hands, and I will always be stained, the land will always be scarred by what we’ve done, its harvest will always bring the taste of blood to our mouths.
I look up then, and it is the nicest blue I ever saw spreading against the whole sky and it is Jeremiah looking down on me. I want to lift myself up to him, to feel him again. A smile spreads across my face and I think on asters opening with the sun.
‘You came,’ I say.
‘You knew I would,’ he answers.
I close my eyes.
And then I am dreaming again, dreaming of our farm, the farm we might have had. I stand at the stoop, chickens squawking away from me. Cows grazing on a gentle hill. A stand of woods off in the distance. I watch those trees, waiting for someone to come out of them, always waiting. I see all these things, standing there alone, but then I feel a small hand in mine.
Something like peace settles into my bones. There ain’t no place for this baby but to be back home, with our people, in the one place where I can still find Jeremiah, where I can make him come alive for this baby I’m carrying. One place where every room has something of his love in it, where I can talk about what Jeremiah was to me, what he was to his family, where every person left alive who ever really knew him will be. One place where I can swim in the creek and feel the water rush past me like it is him swimming fast, where I can walk across the fields he worked with his own hands and he will be near to me again, living in my memories.
That does it then. I see how Jeremiah has worked it so I ain’t going back the same as I left, so there won’t be no shame for me over what I’ve done, not carrying the only gift he has left to give. There is no one now who can say I should not have gone.
Going home don’t mean I’ve got to go back to how things have always been. Even wearing this dress, I can still do as I please, like Miss Barton or even Jennie Chalmers. Eli don’t hold any sway over me, or Jeremiah’s Ma neither. I have seen something bigger than that old neighborhood and I have done something of real service and I ain’t keeping it secret. Anyone who tries to say different will see I’m independent as a hog on ice.
And then my mouth is working.
‘Home,’ I say, and it echoes. ‘Home.’
OFFICIAL LIST OF KILLED, WOUNDED, OR MISSING SINCE SEPTEMBER 17
The Late Battle at Antietam
97th New York State Volunteers
Company H
KILLED
Blalock, Levi
Price, Josiah
Stone, Ross
Wakefield, Jeremiah
WOUNDED
Cameron, Sullivan
Winship, Silas
MISSING
Bile, Andrew
Holeyhen, Ephraim
Keller, Milo
August 21, 1862