Woodrow knew it was time to be getting back to their cabin, yet he hesitated. Watching Rose sleep fascinated him. His wife, he thought as he watched her. Woodrow experienced amazement and humility by turns that this beautiful woman belonged to him.
As if feeling Woodrow’s eyes upon her, Rose opened hers and smiled.
“Did I fall asleep?" Rose asked, attempting to sit up.
“It's my fault. I’ve dragged you over half the valley." Woodrow gently prevented her by laying his hand on her stomach.
“I enjoyed it.” Rose blushed when she realized her words had a double meaning she was too shy to speak out loud.
Woodrow reached out to touch those rosy cheeks.
“I love you.” He said.
“I love you, too.”
“I hate to drag you around this valley some more, but Ennis will be expecting us for supper. I imagine Pearl will be some put out if we don’t go.”
“Oh my goodness. I forgot. What time is it?”
Woodrow studied the sun’s downward journey across the valley. “Oh, about 3 O’clock, I reckon. We have plenty of time.”
Rose brushed away Woodrow's hand and sat up. She reached for her hair self-consciously, blushing again. Woodrow had managed to undo the pins earlier, and it hung down her back in red-gold streamers. “My hair. We have to go back home first. I can’t go like this.” she stated desperately.
Woodrow laughed. A rusty sound. Already she thought of the cabin as home, Woodrow thought. It had been a while, he realized since he’d had something to laugh about. He stood up and pulled Rose to her feet and into his arms. He wanted her again already. Her nearness burned like whiskey in his blood. He dipped his head for a kiss. Rose responded by throwing her arms around his neck and returning the kiss with enthusiasm.
Hmm, Woodrow smiled to himself. Looked like he and Rose were going to be late for supper. He didn't mind that a bit in the world.
***
Rose walked along beside her new husband. Ahead lay the cabin. The afternoon sun gilded it with touches of gold. Home. This is what she had come so far to have. She glanced over at Woodrow and found what she never expected to find. Love. Tears unexpectedly filled her eyes. She hung her head, truly ashamed that she had not even considered love when she so desperately placed that want ad; it felt a lifetime ago now.
Dakota Territory seemed so far away from the hunger, squalor and humility of Piney Creek, Silas Farthingham, and war. Silas Farthingham. Rose hoped he rotted in hell. He was a greedy cruel man. Rose stumbled, and would have fallen if Woodrow had not grabbed her.
“Rose?” Woodrow asked seeing her tear-filled eyes. “Are you crying? Did I hurt you?”
“Merely tears of joy,” Rose reassured Woodrow with a smile, and clutched his hand to her chest. “I can’t believe all this,” she said, sweeping her free hand outward to include the cabin, the fertile land, and the whole valley.
Shyly, she looked up at Woodrow and met his eyes. “You,” she whispered. “You have made me happy again. I never expected to feel that way in this lifetime.”
“I know how you feel. I feel the same way. I never expected to be happy. About the best I hoped for was contentment.”
“I never thought about anything beyond getting here. Your letter was miracle in my life, which I didn’t think beyond. Pretty naive of me, huh?”
“Not any more than my answering the ad to begin with. Rose, we’re going to have a good life together. I can feel it.”
“I feel that way, too. But, right now,” Rose turned away with a smile and took a step, tugging Woodrow along with her. “Time’s a wasting and Pearl’s a waiting.”
“Did you have to mention Pearl?” Woodrow said sourly. “You might have just ruined my whole afternoon.”
“You don’t like your sister-in-law, then, I take it?”
“Let’s just say we’ve had our differences,” he answered cryptically, and tugged his pipe makings out of his pocket.
***
"It was a hard time, Ma." Michael sighed. He lifted his coffee cup to his lips with hands that shook a little. His mother's probing questions touched on places in his psyche that still tortured him with unresolved pain
"Pearl, why don't you see about supper and let me show Michael the new barn." Ennis didn't often interrupt Pearl. Michael felt something inside him loosen. He watched as Pearl blinked at Ennis owlishly for a moment.
"All right," she stammered. "It's so good to see you, Michael; I guess I did get carried away a little."
Michael gave her a watery smile and followed Ennis out into the afternoon sunshine.
"Rough time in the war, Son?" Ennis asked his own gentle question once they'd reached the barn's dimness.
"It still gives me nightmares, Pa," Michael was able to admit; away from his mother's prying eyes.
"That how you lost your leg?"
Michael turned and really looked at the man he called Pa. Ennis met his gaze openly. A new respect for Ennis filled his face. "You're dumb as a fox. You know that."
"You will have to tell her. Eventually, even she'll catch on."
Michael looked up at the new rough-hewn rafters over his head, as he fought back the urge to fall on this man's shoulder as he used to do as a boy.
"It's not easy to talk about. The words seem to get choked up inside me and I can't get'em out."
"Sometimes talking about it's like picking a festered splinter. It hurts while you're doing it, but it feels a hell of a lot better when it's done."
By now, Michael and Ennis had walked to the back end of the barn where the shadows flung out a soothing net over the stalls. Within those shadows, Michael found it easier to get the first words out.
"I didn't mind the fighting and such so much until my friend, Tolliver, and I, were transferred to General Oliver Otis Howard," Michael said, leaning up against one side of an empty stall. His pa leaned up against the opposite wall.
"General Howard was in command of the right wing in Sherman's March to the sea. The utter destruction so sickened Tolliver and I, we decided to desert."
"You deserted?"
"We weren't the only ones, Pa. The men were deserting like flies. Tolliver and I only had three months left to serve. We weren't too worried about mustering out a little early."
"But deserting, Son. You could have been court-marshaled!"
"I know, Pa. But General Sherman had ordered his troops to burn those people's crops, kill any farm animals the army couldn't eat, burn their barns, their houses. Winter was coming on. They left those people to starve. That was the point. Leave the south totally devastated and demoralized in order to end the war. I couldn't be a part of that. It was sickening to see."
Michael paused a moment to look up at the rafters again, thinking back to all the fires he'd set. "I've burned barns like this one. Pa. Some better."
Ennis looked up at the barn he was so rightly proud of, and swallowed before he looked back at his son.
"Tolliver and I planned to leave before we reached Savannah. The army had bivouacked about twenty miles west of there when Tolliver got our chance to slip away. They sent a group of us out on a foraging expedition. When we split up into pairs, Tolliver and I made a run for it. Tolliver and I split up ourselves, to be less conspicuous. I had the misfortune to run into a civilian. His only weapon was a hoe he was using on the weeds in his field."
"Oh dear lord, Son."
"It was an accident, Pa. I wouldn't have shot that man on purpose for anything. The army had bivouacked at their family's plantation. This girl had come to warn her uncle about it. She was bringing her uncle's shotgun to him."
"What went wrong?"
"She came out of nowhere. Ran right into the back of me before she even realized I had a rifle pointed at her uncle. The rifle discharged straight into her uncle's chest. He died almost instantly."
Michael closed his eyes against the remembered pain; seeing again that red flower of blood blooming on the man's chest. He hung his head over the top of the stall and stared down at the hay covering the dirt floor, wondering if he was going to be sick.
He finally raised his head and stared at his pa with eyes that glistened with unshed tears. "How can I tell Ma that?"
"Don't you be worrying about that, Son. You don't have to even tell me all this. It was a war. Things happened."
"I want to tell you, pa. I want somebody to know. I've never told anybody how it really happened."
"Then go ahead, but only if you need to. I understand how that is, too." Michael looked at his pa. What had happened to Ennis, he wondered. Something bad, Michael suddenly knew. It made it easier to go on.
"The girl, I say girl, but she was really maybe fourteen, fifteen. She backed away from me as if I was a rattlesnake. She stopped about twenty feet away from me. Before I knew it, she swung that shotgun up, aimed it at me, and loosed both barrels. If she'd been any kind of a shot, I wouldn't be standing here to tell the tale. There were plenty of times I wished I hadn't been, too. I can still hear what she screamed at me just before she threw the empty shotgun at me. 'I hope you rot in hell! The next year or so, I thought I had.'"
"How'd the army ever let you back in?"
"That was Tolliver's doings. He found me unconscious, my leg blowed all to hell, and rushed me to the only doctor he knew. I woke up in the fanciest bed I've ever been in, with Tolliver sobbing over me as if I was dying. The medic, Lieutenant Harrison, had his boot in my crotch, pulling my leg back together so the two orderly's could splint it. I wished to hell I hadn't chosen that moment to wake up."
"So the army never found out?"
"Only one figured it out. Major Jeremiah Roundtree. He forced Tolliver and I both to reenlist in exchange for his silence." Michael looked away. "I found out later that was why he was crying so hard by my bed. He had inadvertently doomed us both to another three years of hell. What choice did we have but to sign up?"
Michael heard his pa sigh. "You've had a hard row to hoe, then haven't you?"
"I reckon, Pa."
"You're leg didn't heal, I take it."
"Gangrene."
Ennis grunted. His eyes sympathetic. "And Tolliver?"
"Killed north of Atlanta four months later."
"That's too bad."
"There's more, Pa. I don't know how we're are all going to deal with this."
"What's that?"
"That gal Uncle Woody married. She's the girl that shot me."
Ennis choked. "Damn a 'mighty, Son. You're ma's going to have a conniption fit. She already don't like the girl."
"Pa, I've only got three months left on this hitch. I'll do whatever it takes not to reenlist again."
Both men suddenly went silent as the unmistakable sound of wagon wheels broke the stillness of the afternoon.
"Oh hell!" Ennis moaned. "I plum forgot. Guess who your Ma invited to supper."