One man, a young lieutenant we called Teddy, asked me that one evening.
“Is it really godforsaken, Teddy?” I said. “You’re here, aren’t you? You’re not lost in that field out there.”
He grimaced and turned away, but I leaned in closer. He had the metallic smell of dried blood, dirt, tobacco, and gunpowder mingled about him. His shirt was yellow with his fevered sweat, his torso bloated with infection.
“I’m not supposed to be here either, Teddy. Look at me.”
He squinted at me. I realized he probably needed glasses to see and had lost them in the fighting.
“I’m colored, Teddy. Had a white papa. My mama was a slave.”
His eyes widened. “You were a slave?”
“I was. I ran away.”
He grasped my hand. His skin felt cold and thin. “What the abolitionists say—it’s true?”
I unbuttoned one of my sleeves and pushed it up. I showed him the dark line on my forearm where I had defended myself from Missus Everett’s whipping. “Here is a scar from being whipped. I can’t show you the rest. Wouldn’t be proper.”
I told him a bit about Fanny and how Aunt Nancy Lynne had lost her children but helped me run away.
“The worst part,” I said, “is the white people making us think we’re not human. That we’re beneath them and this is the way the world is supposed to be.”
Teddy lifted his head slightly, then rested it back again, like it was too heavy for the effort. “It’s worth it, then.”
I wet a cloth in the basin near his bed and put it on his forehead. He was burning up. “What is, Teddy?”
“The fighting. If we can right that wrong, get people free, it’s worth it.”
He didn’t say anything else. I thought he’d passed out or fallen asleep. But when I got up to leave, he stirred.
“Miss?”
“Yes, Teddy?”
“Would you mind writing a letter for me? To my mother?”
When he asked this, Mother B. happened to be going by and stopped. She came over to us.
“You know how to read and write?” she asked me.
“Yes, ma’am.”
She went away and quickly came back with a wooden box that she put on my lap. She showed me how to lift the lid. Inside were paper, a pen, and ink. When the lid was closed again, I could write on it.
“Teddy, tell Miss Bébinn what you want to say. I’ll make sure it gets to your family.”
He began to talk. I wrote down what he said. He wanted to tell his mother some things. Like how he’d met up in his regiment with a boyhood schoolmate and had a chance to laugh over the mischief they’d gotten into when they were young. They’d let the pigs out into the garden for the fun of rounding them up again, but they were sorry for the damage they’d caused to his mama’s squash plants. He talked about the cold soon coming on but said not to send socks or anything. “I’ll be just fine. Got everything I need.”
Tears welled up in my throat. He was not going to tell his mother, not directly, that he was dying. He was doing it another way—by telling her that her mothering duties were done. That he knew right from wrong, that he loved her, that she had provided for him and he was grateful. He told her about me and why I was writing the letter for him. He said I’d been a slave and he was happy to know many more souls would be saved than lost from the fighting.
When we were finished, he told me how to address it, and he thanked me. I took the box and the letter to Mother B.’s tent.
“Thank you,” she said. “The men often need this service. You don’t mind?”
“No, ma’am. It’s something I can do. Can’t keep them from dying.”
I went back and sat with Teddy. His face had turned even paler, and I could see he had gone beyond his pain. I heard a percussive rattling in his chest, and I grasped his hand.
“You’ve been so brave. Your mama is proud of you, so proud.” I kept repeating that until the sound in his chest stopped.
I’ve observed that in those moments, sitting with a dying soldier, everything else falls away—the awful smell of limbs black with gangrene, the noise of horses and wagons coming and going, the thunder of cannons in the battlefield. The world just shrank, and it was me and him, and then, slowly, there was only me. The further his spirit sped away, the more the world recrystallized and I was in it again. But I was aware of what was missing, of a soul departed, and of the space left in the veil where his soul had gone through.
A few weeks later, with the autumn of 1861 bringing a chill into the air, we packed up the field hospital and left for Kentucky. I was relieved to be traveling in that direction. If we had stayed on in Virginia and moved east, I would have feared seeing Mr. Colchester or Colonel Eshton. There was also the chance, however slight, that I could retrace Dorinda’s path and make my way eventually to Catalpa Valley.
Silas drove one of the supply wagons, and I rode with him. It seemed like we were made to travel together, like we’d been when we’d run away. Only I wasn’t wearing a disguise.
“I heard you telling a man you half-colored. Why you do that? You’re light enough to pass, just like when we were on the run.”
“I don’t want to live that way, always being afraid of who might find out. That’s the way I felt when we were running. I can’t live like that, living a life that’s not mine, like I stole it or something.” I thought of Mr. Colchester. “My papa didn’t want me to hide.”
“You brave, Jeannette. Them soldiers? They do the fighting in the field, but you just as brave as they are.”
“I don’t know what brave has to do with it. What would you do, Silas? If you were lighter, would you pass?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Can’t imagine looking any other way. But there’s one thing that would trouble me, keep me awake at night.”
“What’s that?”
“I wouldn’t want to think like white people do. If being lighter means I might see myself as better than someone else, I don’t want no part of that.”
He was quiet a few minutes.
“You still young. How come you ain’t married?”
I looked away and swallowed. “Almost was.”
“What happened?”
“He wanted to pass. I couldn’t abide with him like that. And I just told you why.”
Silas shook his head. “He a fool, whoever he is.”
I smiled.
“Where is he now?”
“I suspect he’s fighting now. Not sure where.” My throat tightened. “He could be dead for all I know.”
After some silence I decided to ask the question that had been on my mind since he’d discovered me in the camp weeks before.
“Silas,” I began.
“No.” He said it quickly and glanced at me. “No, I wasn’t mad at you for leaving me in Philadelphia. You were right. Safer for us to be on our own.”
“And you’ve made your way pretty well since then?”
“Yeah. Being free? Nothing better. I thought it felt fine traveling with Massa Holloway. Thought that was a measure of freedom. But it wasn’t. Now that I know real freedom, I know that was nothing, nothing next to this. I’m my own man now.”