Fire by Night (32 page)

He whirled around to face her. “How could you do this to me? I’ve been with you day and night …sleeping beside you …getting undressed …and …and everything! I didn’t know you were a—”

“Don’t say it! I don’t want anyone to know.”

He sank to the ground again, covering his face with his hands. “This can’t be true. I don’t believe it.”

“Then forget about it. Forget what you saw, and let’s just go on like we always were. Nothing’s changed.”

“Nothing’s changed? You’re not …you’re not a
man
! For crying out loud, you beat up the Bailey brothers! You shot a sniper! You do everything like a man—shooting, fighting. … How could you do all those things? Girls aren’t supposed to kill people, Ike. They—” He stopped short, groaning. “That isn’t even your real name, is it?”

“Yes, it is. My brothers always called me Ike. Ted, listen to me, please.”

But he wasn’t listening. He covered his face again, moaning. “Oh, my God. How could you do this to me?”

She knelt in front of him and grabbed his shoulders, shaking him. “Look at me, Ted. I look like a man. I’m big and I’m tall and I’m ugly. You think anybody’s gonna marry me? I got no life at all as a girl. But like you said, I can march and fight and shoot a gun. I made a darn good soldier …and a friend. We’re best friends, ain’t we, Ted? That won’t change.”

He twisted away from her and stood again. “Friends don’t play dirty tricks on each other. They don’t lie about who they really are. I told you the truth about my grandmother, and here you’ve been lying to me all along.”

She kept pace with him as he started tromping through the woods again. “Suppose I had told you the truth. What would you have done?”

“I don’t know. … Probably would’ve turned you in—like I’m going to do right now. You can’t keep pretending.”

“See? That’s why I didn’t tell—”

“You lied to me! I feel like a fool!” He clenched his teeth and his fists, walking faster. “You know, I’d like to beat the tar out of you for this, but I don’t hit girls!”

“Besides, you’d lose,” Phoebe said, hoping he’d smile. He didn’t. “Listen, I’m the same person I was yesterday, ain’t I? I’m still
me
.”

He stopped walking again, shaking his head in a baffled way as if struggling to comprehend the truth. “No, you’re not. … You’re a girl. For crying out loud, I’ve been telling all my secrets to a
girl
! You know how scared I was at Williamsburg …and I even bawled on your shoulder!”

“Oh, so what?” In her desperation, Phoebe tried making light of it, hoping Ted would get over his shock and laugh it off. “What’s the harm in being a girl and saying I was a man? It’s a lot better than being a man and making you think I was a girl, ain’t it?”

Her attempt at humor fell flat. Ted was growing angrier by the minute. “You have to tell them, Ike. You can’t keep lying like this.”

“Why not?”

“It isn’t right for a girl to fight a war. And I don’t feel right being with you anymore …sleeping beside you. … Oh, Lord! Do you have any idea what the other fellows are going to say about us when they find out you’re a girl? I’ll be humiliated!”

Tears filled Phoebe’s eyes at his words. The others wouldn’t envy him for sleeping with her all this time—they would make fun of him for being with such an ugly woman. “You don’t have to share a tent with me no more. But please don’t tell nobody, okay?”

“Somebody has to tell them. If you don’t, I will.”

“No! Please don’t do that. I got no place to go if I leave the army and nothing to go back to.”

“Go home to your family.”

“All I have left is three brothers, and they’re off fighting the war, too. Our farm’s rented out while they’re gone. I got no place to go, Ted.”

“Well, I can’t share a tent with you—and I can’t pretend that I don’t know the truth. I can’t keep quiet knowing what I do. Women don’t belong in a war.”

“Just give me some time to figure out where to go, okay? Then I promise I’ll leave. Please don’t tell nobody until then.”

“I’ll think about it.” He started walking blindly again, tree branches whipping against his face.

“Ted, stop!”

“Why should I?”

“Because you’re going the wrong way. Camp is that way,” she said, pointing. “If you don’t turn around soon the Rebel pickets are gonna shoot you.”

“Great!” he said, flapping his arms in exasperation. “Thanks for destroying the last few remnants of my pride, Ike.”

“I didn’t want you to get shot,” she said meekly.

“All this time I’ve been trying to keep up with you,” he said, walking toward her again. “To be as brave as you, to shoot as good as you do, to get around in the woods like you do. You even risked your life to save me when I was fool enough to stick my head out of the trench. I looked up to you in every way. I wanted to prove I was a
man
—like you! And now I find out I can’t even keep up with a
girl
? That a sniper would have shot me or I would have walked right into the Rebel lines if a blasted
girl
didn’t keep saving my neck? Why don’t you just shoot me in the head, Ike—or whoever you are—and put me out of my misery?”

He stomped past her, headed in the right direction this time. Phoebe didn’t follow him. Instead, she sank down in the woods, alone, and sobbed.

It didn’t take more than a day or two for the other men in Phoebe’s company to notice that she and Ted weren’t speaking to each other.

“You two have a fight?” Sergeant Anderson asked as Phoebe sat eating her dinner all alone.

“Yeah, Ted’s pretty sore at me,” she said, pushing her food around on her plate.

“You’ve been friends since way back in Harrisburg. It doesn’t seem right not seeing you together.”

Phoebe nodded, afraid she would cry if she tried to speak. It was awful having Ted look at her like he hated her guts—or worse, looking right past her. She had no one to share her canvas sheet with, to cook up a mess of beef and hardtack for, or to laugh with over a cup of bitter coffee. She missed Ted. She’d felt unloved and friendless all her life until she met him, but she had never felt lonely. Now that she’d lost her best friend, she thought she just might die of loneliness.

“You want to tell me what happened?” the sergeant asked, crouching beside her. “Maybe I can help patch things up?”

“Aw, it ain’t that serious,” she lied. “Ted’s sore at me because I wouldn’t see the doctor when I had a fever. He’ll get over it.”

“Listen, there’s going to be a fight here any day, and we have to all work together as a team. We can’t have hard feelings against each other when the real enemy’s out there.” He pointed to the woods with his thumb.

“I know. Ted’s still my best friend, sir.”

“It don’t seem right you two not bunking together.” He shook his head sadly. “You want me to talk to him?”

“Please don’t do that,” she said quickly. “He’ll cool off in another day or two.”

She was afraid that Ted would spill her secret if Sergeant Anderson talked to him. She had asked Ted to wait a few days so she could decide where to go, but she still hadn’t figured anything out. Truth was, she wanted to stay here. She kept hoping Ted would forgive her and say it didn’t matter that she had lied to him, and everything could go back to the way it was. It didn’t look like that was going to happen, though.

The sergeant stood again. “Well, you let me know if you want my help, son,” he said before moving away.

Early the next day, the battle began. Phoebe’s regiment, under General Hooker’s command, was ordered to take part in the attack. They would march across a cornfield toward a small whitewashed church without a steeple. The Confederates were waiting out there, but they had their backs to the Potomac River. They wouldn’t escape.

Union drums began to pound at dawn, stirring the men’s blood and signaling to prepare to march. As Phoebe loaded her rifle and checked her ammunition supply, Ted approached her for the first time in two days. But as he pulled her aside, she could tell by his expression that he was still angry.

“You said you were going to turn yourself in,” he said through clenched teeth.

“I got no place to go, Ted.”

“I don’t care! Tell them you’re sick again. Tell them you have to stay behind. There’s going to be an awful fight today, and you’ve got no business going out there!” He hurried away again as if she had something contagious.

Phoebe lagged behind as they fell into formation so that Ted would think she was staying put. But when the troops began to move out, she maneuvered into place right behind him, where she could keep an eye on him. If Ted Wilson got wounded in battle, Phoebe Bigelow would be right beside him to carry him to the field hospital. He would say it was humiliating to be rescued by a girl again, but she didn’t care one whit.

The morning mist was just starting to rise, the trees barely showing their fall colors as she marched out of the woods and into a field of corn as tall as her head. She didn’t get very far before the rumble of artillery began thundering all around her. She remembered Malvern Hill and how brave the Confederate soldiers had seemed, marching straight into enemy cannon fire. As the ground shook beneath her feet, Phoebe didn’t feel brave at all.

She’d been in enough artillery barrages in the past months to recognize the sound of canister shot. The shells, filled with thousands of pieces of metal, acted like a gigantic shotgun blast when they exploded, cutting a bloody path through the ranks and killing dozens of men in one blow. Shells were exploding all around her, but she kept marching forward in formation with the others, down through the rows of corn, just as she’d been trained to do.

Suddenly everyone froze as if on command. One of the shells screaming overhead sounded different. It took Phoebe only a second to realize why—it was coming straight toward them. She dove at Ted, tackling him the way she had the day the sniper had fired at him. She landed on top of him, shielding him with her body. At the same instant she heard a deafening explosion. The shock of it blasted through her body as if her insides were trying to escape through her skin and her head might explode. A powerful blow struck the back of her shoulder. She lay there, stunned.

Then debris began raining down on her, pummeling her, burying her in clods of earth and shredded cornstalks and ears of corn. For a long moment the din of battle died away, as if the war had suddenly stopped. She couldn’t hear anything, couldn’t see anything through the stinging cloud of dust and smoke. She lay on her stomach on top of Ted, her eyes burning, her ears ringing. The place on her back where she’d been punched felt warm and wet.

Phoebe tried to move, but the hand that had punched her held her down. She saw her rifle a few inches away and tried to reach for it, but her arm wouldn’t move. As the tingling shock of a million needles gradually died, the pain began—a white-hot fire that spread out from her shoulder and across her back. It was so agonizing that Phoebe thought she might faint. Someone was moving her, trying to roll her over, and she screamed for them to stop.

It was Ted, crawling out from under her. His hair was dusted with gray and his eyes were very wide, staring at her. She saw his lips moving as he mouthed “Ike! Ike!” over and over again, but his voice sounded muffled.

The sun seemed very bright, and she realized that the corn was gone, sheared away as if it had been harvested. The soldiers who had been marching alongside her a moment ago lay sprawled in the furrows in neat rows, as if they’d suddenly decided to lie down and take a nap. None of them moved. But Ted was all right. He was alive. That was all that mattered.

“I’m sorry,” she said, but she wasn’t sure if Ted could hear her above the deafening explosions that still thundered all around them. She wasn’t even certain she had spoken out loud.

He bent toward her. Tears washed two clean paths down his dusty face. He grabbed her beneath her lifeless arms and started moving her, dragging her across the uneven ground on her stomach. The unseen hand twisted a knife in her back. The pain was excruciating, unlike anything she’d ever known.

Phoebe cried out, and the world went black.