Confederates Don't Wear Couture (16 page)

“Be nice,” I hissed. “But, yes, if you want to stay on the battlefield, you have to wear period dress.”

“If I have to.” He sighed heavily. “Which way to the
Union
troops?” he asked pointedly, emphasizing “Union.”

“Um, that way.” I pointed across the field. It was small enough that you could see them easily. “Are you just going to waltz over there and ask a unit of total strangers to take you in? Dressed like that?”

“I've got a press pass. I'll be fine. One of these units will be more than willing to cooperate for the press and let me stay with them and toss me something to wear, in exchange for a positive mention in the paper. Some people just love seeing their name in print.”

“How dreadfully shallow,” Dev murmured, batting his eyelashes.

“There'll be a unit from Maine. I saw
Gettysburg.
There was that guy who went to Bowdoin, right? We studied him in school, as one of Maine's heroes. They'll be more than willing to, uh, take in a son of the native soil, I bet,” Garrett said, and hitched up the messenger bag that was flopping behind him. “I'll see you tomorrow, then, Libby.”

He walked off into the night, just as the bugle sounded for All-Quiet. Dev grabbed my hand, and I squeezed his tightly. Wordlessly, we walked off into the dark, toward Sutlers' Row, leaving Beau standing alone in the lane.

“So . . . you wanna talk about it?” Dev asked the minute he'd swished our tent flaps closed.

“Not particularly.” I gritted my teeth as I contorted my arms around my back to try to undo the buttons. “Help me out of this, will you?”

“Of course. You
sure
you don't wanna talk about this?” he asked skeptically.

“Pretty sure.” Once I was in my shift, I flopped onto my cot, staring up at the dark muslin top of the tent. This just felt like an impending disaster. And it should have been perfect! Spending the summer in hoop skirts with my best friend, my boyfriend, and a new friend who was an even bigger history nerd than I was? It should have been great . . . but it felt like everything was about to go wrong.

“If you're sure . . .” Dev flopped onto his own cot.

After a few minutes of silence, I exploded. “I just don't get it!”

“Don't get what?!” Dev propped himself up.

“I've been, like, perfectly faithful, haven't I?”

“Perfectly,” Dev grumbled. “Annoyingly so. Boringly so.”

“Like a model girlfriend, right?”

“If you were a model girlfriend, you would have been doing coke and screwing pro athletes. Which would have been a
lot
more interesting. So, no. Not a model girlfriend.”

“You know what I mean.” I reached over to try to smack him, but my arms were a hair too short to reach across the tent from my cot.

“Yes, I know what you mean, and, yes, you've been a very good girl.” He sighed heavily.

“Then why was Garrett being so weird?” I asked plaintively.

“Are you kidding?” Dev asked. “Please. It's so obvious. It's like textbook trust issues. This is the kind of ‘Dear Cosmo' that writes itself. You said his ex-girlfriend cheated on him, right?”

“Yeah,” I said warily. Dev clearly had a better memory for gossip than I did, even when I was more involved in it than he was.

“So he's obviously afraid you're going to do the same thing and cheat on him, too. He has trouble trusting women now. Especially in the company of handsome manly-man, good old Southern soldier-boy history buffs.”

“Well, okay, maybe, but that's not fair,” I argued. “I would never cheat on Garrett. I'm not his ex-girlfriend. I'm not Hannah Ho-Bag. He has absolutely no reason to be suspicious of Beau.”

“I didn't say it was fair; I said that's what it was.” I heard a rustling sound that I assumed was Dev shrugging. “Did you really hang up on him because Beau was there?”

“It wasn't like that,” I said with a grimace. “I just didn't want any of the reenactors to see me with a cell phone.” I rolled over, away from Dev, to face the wall.

“Okay,” Dev said quietly. I was already pretending to be asleep.

After a restless night, we woke to the sound of yelling.

“I'm knockin' on your tent!” It sounded like Cody. “I'm carefully and respectfully announcin' my presence, so I suggest you cover yourself, Libby.”

“What the what,” Dev mumbled, staggering toward the tent flaps in his union suit. “Why do we only get awoken in the most unpleasant of manners? They might as well just start throwing buckets of water in our faces.” He pulled open the tent flap. “Yes, tiny gremlin?”

“Sorry to disturb you, Gramps,” Cody said. “But you're gonna wanna see this.”

Carefully pulling my quilt up to cover any see-through parts, I followed Cody's pointing arm. There was a large cluster of men standing around one spot in the Confederate camp. Sutlers' Row was right in between the Confederate and Union camps, and because the field was so small, we had a pretty good view of both.

“What are they all doing?” I asked. I mean, random clumps of men were de rigueur here, but not that many, and not all in one place.

“Y'all're gonna wanna see for yourselves,” Cody advised. “Put on some clothes and scoot.”

“Don't tell me to scoot,” Dev said imperiously. “I'll come when I'm good and ready.” He swished the tent flaps closed. “All right, let's go hurry and see what this is.”

Dev helped me into a plaid day dress with a white Peter Pan collar before pulling on his own pants, shirt, suspenders, and plaid neckerchief. He hauled me out of the tent and dragged me into the field until we stood, breathless, on the outskirts of a cluster surrounding one Confederate tent.

Using skills honed by years of elbowing people in the face to get to the front row of Lady Gaga concerts, Dev effortlessly pushed us to the front of the crowd. Beau and Captain Cauldwell were standing there, regarding the tent with dismayed looks on their faces. Painted smack in the middle of the tent, in what looked like more chicken blood, was an upside-down star inside a circle. An inverted pentagram. I shuddered.

“This is your tent, I take it,” I said, patting Beau's arm.

He nodded grimly.

“Excuse me, excuse me.” From somewhere back in the crowd, Garrett pushed his way toward the front. “Hey,” he muttered breathlessly, moving in to stand next to me as Dev wandered over to examine the tent more closely. “Dammit, I can't believe I missed this,” he added in an undertone, running his hands through his hair. He'd made the minimum concession possible to period costume, wearing navy wool pants and a button-down plaid shirt. It wouldn't have looked totally bizarre on a modern street corner, but he was technically historically accurate. “Ghost strikes again. I should've been over here.”

“An upside-down star? What is this, like, the stupidest ghost ever?” Dev asked, peering at the bloody pentagram. “Doesn't it know what a star looks like? Only one point points up.”

“It's an inverted pentagram,” Garrett explained. “It's meant to call upon evil spirits and draw them to us.”

“Primarily popularized by Aleister Crowley, the Satan-worshiping occultist, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,” Beau chimed in.

“The inverted pentagram had been an invocation of evil long before Crowley,” Garrett challenged.

“Wasn't sayin' it wasn't,” Beau shot back.

Sheesh. What was this, a nerd-off? If it had been a joust or something, it might have been flattering or romantic, but this was just lame.

“All right, everyone,” Captain Cauldwell yelled. “Let's give the boy some space. We've got a raid to get under way. Move it. Let's move it.”

Gradually, muttering, the crowd dispersed, until only Beau, Garrett, Dev, and I remained in front of the satanic tent.

“So, do you have any idea who's doing this?” Garrett asked stiffly after a few minutes.

“If I did, I'd've caught him by now, wouldn't I?” Beau replied testily.

“I mean, it could really be anyone,” Dev said, jumping in. “No one would ever notice, because you guys go to sleep mad early.” I shot Dev a look. “What?! They do! All-Quiet lights out is like ten p.m. at the
latest.
That's just insane.”

“He has a point,” I agreed.

“Thank you.” Dev sighed. “Wanna help me make a ‘Later Bedtime' petition?”

“No, not that.” I shook my head. “The camp is very quiet at night, and All-Quiet hours are strictly enforced. People take them very seriously. No one leaves their tent. Anyone could be running around and doing this.”

“Hmm.” Garrett pulled out a pen and used it to scratch his head meditatively. “Anyone here who doesn't like you? Got a problem with you? Issues? A grudge?”

“Not until yesterday when you showed up,” Beau muttered. “Naw, the men seem to like me fine,” Beau said at a normal volume. “Well, Randall's got some problems with me, maybe, what with the rank issue, but he'd never do anythin' like this. That kid would take a real bullet for this unit.”

“Randall?” Garrett extracted a notebook from somewhere and started feverishly scribbling. “Who's that? And rank issues? What's that?”

“Hell, I don't have time for this.” Beau gestured toward the field. “I can't stand around and answer these dumb questions that have nothin' to do with anythin'.”

“I can explain,” I offered quickly.

“Good,” Beau said, nodding. “The men are formin' a line for the raid.”

“Oh, of course. By all means. Go ahead. I understand. If you don't hurry, the South might . . . lose,” Garrett said drily. “Oh, wait . . .”

The two of them glared at each other for a moment before Beau ran off. Dev cackled audibly.

“Can you
please
try to be nice?” I asked quietly, touching Garrett's arm.

“I'm being perfectly nice,” he said stubbornly. “It was a joke. I can't help it if no one has a sense of humor down here. Or understands sarcasm. God, it's worse than I thought. I don't know how you've survived.”

“It's not so bad.” I shrugged. “But it's better now that you're here,” I said, taking his hand.

“Vomit.” Dev rolled his eyes. “I'll see you guys later.” He sashayed up toward the battle.

“So you found a unit?” I asked once Dev had gone.

“Yep.” We strolled up the lane toward the battle together, holding hands. “I joined the Twentieth Maine Volunteer Infantry. I remembered them from that
Gettysburg
movie our AP U.S. history teacher showed us after we took the exam. They're pretty cool, actually.”

“Yeah?” I smiled. Garrett had never really taken much of an interest in history before. But maybe now that he was actually living it, he'd understand just how cool it really was. Maybe I'd converted him!

“Yeah.” We arrived at the top of the hill, where the skirmish had already begun. “See, at Gettysburg, the Twentieth Maine was in charge of holding down this hill called Little Round Top. They were all the way at the end of the line, alone. No one could help them out. And then Little Round Top came under heavy attack from the Fifteenth Alabama.”

I shot Garrett a quick look. He was looking stonily down at the battlefield, at Beau's unit, which was, of course, the Fifteenth Alabama. “They—they did, huh?” I asked nervously. I mean, what are the odds?

“Yep.” Garrett clenched his jaw. “Outnumbered at Little Round Top, the Twentieth Maine ran out of ammunition after four hours of fighting. But you know what happened when Alabama came to attack?”

“Um . . . no?” I had sort of a feeling we weren't exactly talking about Little Round Top. And if we weren't talking about this in a completely literal sense, I was kind of offended that I was a hill called Little Round Top in this metaphor.

“They charged down the hill and killed all the Alabamans with their bare hands.”

I stared.

“Um . . . cool.”

“They won the battle,” Garrett concluded.

“Um . . . g-good for Maine,” I stuttered. While I wanted Garrett to get more interested in history, this was so not what I had in mind.

Below us, the skirmish concluded, and the troops circled back around to line up for the main battle.

“Ouch!” I yelped as something burning hot flicked against my arm.

“Whoops, sorry, darlin'!”

I turned. It was the Mrs. America Southern belle from the Dixie Acres tent! Smoking in the woods.

“Did you just flick your cigarette ash at me?” I asked in disbelief.

“Real sorry, darlin', didn't see you there.” She shrugged.

“Understandable. She's awfully short and easy to miss,” Garrett joked. “I keep telling her to grow, but she just won't listen.” He shook his head sadly.

I made a noise of mock outrage and contemplated tickling him with a vengeance, until I realized the implication of Mrs. Dixie Acres' reappearance in our lives.

“Are you guys just going to random battlefields, trying to drum up business?” I asked her.

She nodded and blew a stream of smoke out one side of her mouth.

“Where's your tent?” I asked sharply.

“On the other side of the bushes, right off the Historical Society property.”

“I've got to take care of something,” I said to Garrett as I marched past the bushes.

“Wait, I'll come with you.” He jogged to join me as Mrs. America Southern belle stamped on her cigarette with a pair of stilettos that resembled nothing from the nineteenth century. “Are you sure your arm's okay?” he asked with concern.

“It's fine,” I replied, as I stormed up to the Dixie Acres tent. Same glittery peach writing. Same white shiny material. I pushed my way in, startled again by the blast of AC, as the man with the suit rose to greet us.

“Why looky here!” he said warmly. “I remember you! Bring your boyfriend along? Maybe in a coupla years, you kids can afford a little piece of Dixie Acres for yourselves.”