Leigh Ann's Civil War (13 page)

"It's all right," Anne Smith said. "I'm hoping, too."

Primus knew how to get salt, for now. I watched him pour hot water over the smooth oak planks inside the little house where the beef and pork were salted. Out in the sun a white foam bubbled on their surface; then the water disappeared and a white sand dried into salt.

For medicines, also in short supply, we depended on Cannice. She showed me and Careen her secrets.

I learned how to gather the berries of the dogwood tree. They had the properties to make quinine for pain. The bark of the tree was used for chills and agues. We dug up blackberry roots to make a soothing cordial for dysentery. The leaves and roots of the mullein plant, globe flower, and wild cherry tree bark, smashed and cooked and mixed together, made a syrup for coughs.

Jon came upon me one day while I was out gathering roots. After Louis gave him that beating, Teddy gave him a choice. He could leave, or stay and behave himself. He stayed. Simply because he had no place else to go. But he was ever so sullen.

"It was because of you I got that beating," he said.

We were alone. Careen had gone into the house with her mother to cook supper.

"It is a Southern gentleman's duty to protect his sister's honor," I said.

"I'm watching you. Always. First thing you do against your brothers' wishes, I'm going to inform them."

I said nothing.

"You'll be sorry you ever informed on me."

I went on digging up blackberry roots. He left.

***

Viola and Cannice left for Richmond on the seventh of April to visit Johnnie in the hospital there.

"Best go now," Teddy advised, "before the Yankees close in on it."

The Yankees were in Yorktown, Virginia, where James had been. And on the Tennessee River. And in Laurel Valley, North Carolina. Not to mention St. Andrew's Bay, Florida, and Medicine Creek, Missouri. And, it seemed, everywhere.

So Cannice and Viola left. And Careen, my friend who used to light torches and help me smoke snakes out of a pile of rocks down by the stream, did the cooking. And oh, she did a fine job of it. Her mother had taught her well.

Teddy and Louis were well pleased. Pa did not even know the difference. And fussy, uppity Carol approved, heartily, though she had never approved of Careen herself.

In the middle of all this change going on, Louis found time to educate me about "how to behave with boys."

I had already received four letters from James. Unlike Viola, I had kept them all to myself. They were in my room, tied with a pink ribbon, the way all the heroines in French novels kept letters from their lovers.

We sat in the library, Louis and I. It was after supper. He tried to appear placid. He sipped some rum.

"You've received letters from James, I hear," he said.

"How do you know?"

"Jon picks up the mail. He said one of the letters fell open one day and he read it. He said maybe Teddy or I should read it."

"Oh,
damn
Jon! He opened my letter!"

"Eh, eh, language.
Watch the language!
"

But I was fuming. "You're going to let him open our mail?"

"That matter has been taken care of. May I see the letters?" And when I didn't answer: "Go and get me the letters, please."

I went upstairs and brought them down to him and sat there blushing inside while he read them with no expression on his face. He would, of course, read what James wrote in closing.
All my love
—not
fondly,
or
until we meet again,
but
all my love.

Then he smiled. "This is pretty good," he said. "Our Major General Magruder using logs painted black to resemble cannon to create the impression of more strength. We call them Quaker guns." He looked up at me to see if I was enjoying the humor of it.

I did not enjoy the humor of it. There were tears in my eyes.

He set the letters aside. "Look, sweetie, I know it hurts, but I have to do this."

"Why?"

"We can't let Teddy do it. He'd forbid you ever to write to James again. Now this is just what I'm concerned with. He shouldn't be writing
all my love
to you. You are only twelve years old. He should know better. But it isn't all his fault. You led him on."

I stared at him angrily.

"Go on, you can hate me. I can take it. But you have to know. You don't kiss a boy,
not even on his cheek,
not the first time you meet him, not the sixth or seventh, or eighth time you're together. A girl never initiates intimacy. It gives a young man ideas. You gave him ideas the day you kissed him."

"What kind of ideas?"

Louis groaned. "Oh, God. Don't you know about boys at all? I thought you said you knew all about how and why women gave men babies?"

"What has that got to do with me kissing James on the cheek?"

So he told me. About boys and how they become aroused. I got embarrassed, but he didn't care. "That kiss was a sign," he said. "It is not fair to give such encouragement to a boy unless you are willing to carry through with it. Do you know what I mean by 'carry through with it'?"

Oh, sweet God in heaven, will he never stop?

He sighed. "It means to let him go further," he said. "Much further. And touch you in other ways."

Please don't let him tell me the ways!

"Now, a young man of honor cannot act upon his impulses, but once aroused must suffer instead. And when a girl acts like that she is known as a 'tease' and there is nothing worse to be known as among boys than a tease.

"Word gets around. Fast. And young men will stay away from you. And if it ever gets back to me that my sister is a tease, well..." He paused. "Don't ever do that to me, Leigh Ann," he said with great sadness. "Just don't ever do that to me. Please, sweetie."

I said that no, I wouldn't.

There was silence from him for a moment while he contemplated the whole of it.

It was all he could do and he knew it. The talk was over, thank God and His angels. He picked up my letters and asked my permission to burn them in the fireplace. Tears came into my eyes again.

"If Teddy ever sees these..." he said, shaking his head sadly.

Tears came down my face.

"I hate conspiring against Teddy," he said. "But in this case I'm helping him. And you. Don't think I'm ever going to do it again." He handed the letters to me. "Next time you take your punishment from Teddy. In full."

Could it be any worse than this?

I stepped forward and put the letters in the fire. They made a pretty blue flame.

Then he told me he was going to write to James and say how proud he was of him and ask him, kindly, not to call his sister "my love" in his letters. To remember that she was only twelve years old. And the friendship between them was just that, friendship.

I left him there in the library, writing the letter. Just as I got to the door he called after me. "It could be worse, you know. I could ask to see the letters you write to him before they are mailed off."

I stopped dead in my tracks and looked back at him. He was smiling innocently, his eyes twinkling. He winked at me. I ran off.

Viola and Cannice came home on the twenty-third of April.

The moment I saw Viola I knew something was wrong with her.

Or, at the least, something different.

Her face had a faint flush, like a fever was coming on. Didn't Teddy see it? He always saw such signs.

Her eyes had a distant look in them, as if she'd left part of herself back there in Richmond.
But of course she has, fool,
I told myself.

But no, it was more than that.

I stood back as Teddy took her face in his two hands and kissed her. Then watched Louis hug and kiss her, then Camille and Carol. I kissed her and grinned.

"How's my daughter's cookin' been?" Cannice asked.

There were murmurs of approval—no, of praise. We moved to the carriage. I walked close to Viola. "You look different," I whispered.

She tossed her head and held her chin high. "Do I? Well, you haven't seen me happy in a long time."

All through the welcome-home supper I watched her. She scarce ate. She played with her food. Now Teddy took notice.

"You're thinner, Viola," he said. "No food in Richmond? Or does love not need food?"

He was teasing her. She blushed painfully. He drew back, noticing that, too. "You look tired," he said. "We'll leave you alone tonight, but tomorrow you must tell us all about conditions in Richmond."

When she said she was retiring early, Teddy told me to leave her be, not to be a pest to her. But before she went upstairs I saw my sister in a confab with Cannice in the hall just outside the kitchen.

"You gots to tell Teddy," Cannice was saying in a loud whisper.

"Why?"

" 'Cause he be head o' the family, thas why. He be responsible for you. Jus' like he be for Leigh Ann."

"I'm seventeen, Cannice."

"You still be under his authority. Your pa make it that way. An' Teddy, he made me responsible for you when we were gone. So I duty-bound to tell him if'n you don't."

"You're going to tell on me? Is that what you're saying, Cannice? There will be hell to pay if you tell on me. Because I did it without Teddy's permission."

Silence for a minute.
What has she done? What has my sister done?

I heard the heavy breathing of Cannice, saw her put her hand on Viola's arm. "No, honey, I ain't gonna tell on you. I don't do that. I keep all kinds of secrets in this here bosom for all of you chillens in this family. But I'm countin' on you tellin' him before long. Now go along to bed. Go on."

I hid in a corner so Viola couldn't see me as she went through the hall and up the stairs to her room. Soon afterward I followed.

She was lying in bed in her silk wrapper, on her side, propped up on pillows and reading a book by the light of candles. I opened the door a crack.

"Come on in," she invited.

"Teddy said I'm not to bother you."

"Oh"—she waved a hand disdainfully—"posh Teddy."

All right, posh Teddy. I went in and climbed up on the bed next to her. She smiled at me and I saw a secret in her eyes, a secret she was bursting to tell me. We had shared so many secrets in the past.

"What have you done?" I asked.

She smoothed my hair back off my face. Teddy and Louis often did this, but nobody could do it like Viola. "If you tell anybody, if it gets out to Teddy, I'm going to be disowned, nothing less," she told me.

I shook my head no, vigorously. I crossed my heart. "I would never betray you, Viola."

"You're so loyal to Teddy. He sweet-talks you. So does Louis."

"Never," I promised. "Hope to die. Teddy can put me in that chair for two days and I won't tell."

She smiled. "I'm married," she said, "to Johnnie Cummack."

I sat up straight. Did she say
married?
The word flew around me like a white dove beating its wings until I accepted it, and then it settled down in some small corner of my brain.

"How did that happen?" I asked.

"It's wartime," she told me. "In Richmond it isn't like here. You know it's wartime in Richmond. Trains do not run on time, and when they do they are full of wounded and dying soldiers. There are so many hospitals full of wounded and dying soldiers. Death is everywhere. And so are women nurses, working themselves to death and getting no credit for it. All the dying men want are two things. Whiskey and that last letter written for them. While Johnnie was sleeping, I wrote many letters and fetched lots of cups of whiskey and saw a lot of men die.

"Meanwhile, around the edges of all this, the regular people are partying like their lives depend on it. Like their world will end tomorrow. One lady approached me and wanted me to hire out Cannice to work at her party. I said no.

"I tell you, Leigh Ann, when you come from an atmosphere like that, the petty rules around here mean nothing. Most of life means nothing. And all that meant anything to me was my time with Johnnie and that it would soon end. I knew I must do something about it. Johnnie knew, too. I knew he would soon be going back to the field."

She stopped. Then, "People are getting married all over the place."

"But who married you? And where? And what did Cannice say?"

"We were married by a minister in a special part of Chimborazo Hospital, where Johnnie was being treated. The surgeon-in-chief, who was a very kindhearted man, asked the matron to give us the loan of her parlor for one night. She lived in a long, low whitewashed building, and she didn't come in until first light, anyway. They set up a hospital bed for us there." She stopped.

I stared. "So you are really married."

"Yes."

"What about Cannice?"

"She saw the world as I did in Richmond, too. Everything stood out stark, like in a Dutch painting. So she went along with what I wanted to do."

"And you're not going to tell Teddy?"

"No. I can't take any scoldings now. I'm still basking in my happiness. I'm a woman. I'm a wife. I can't be banished back into the world of a naughty little girl."

I kissed her good night. I left, thinking what courage she had. Then I thought,
What if she finds she's with child? She'll tell Teddy then,
I told myself.
He'll have kittens, but she will.

Teddy had given somebody fifty percent interest in the mill.

I wasn't supposed to know this. Teddy and Louis tried to keep all mill business private.

The way I found out was, I was at the other end of the long dining room table one Sunday night when my brothers lingered over their coffee at supper. We were saving on kerosene so we used candlelight. It flickered romantically. It also conveniently hid things.

Like me.

I was also hidden by the bouquet of roses that Viola had put in the middle of the table this sweet night in May.

"He relieved me of any liability to him in case the property is destroyed," Teddy was saying.

"What is the date of the certificate of interest?" Louis asked.