Charles didn’t mind the long marches. He treated most days as an adventure. For years he marched miles every day along the main levee, inner streets, and alleys of New Orleans, looking for scraps and items that could be used at St. Mary’s. In New Orleans, few things ever changed: The streets were often filled with garbage; the alleys always smelled like overflowing chamber pots and sour feet; the pickings were always the same – slim to none. On a march, the scenery was different, the smells were expansive, often pleasant, the people they encountered were . . . interesting.

Most of the men in C Company swore they never got used to the way Southerners looked at them, with white-hot hatred shooting from normally placid faces. The looks didn’t bother Charles: as an orphan, as a professional scrounger, he was used to being the receptor of looks of distrust, of malevolent dislike, even unwarranted hatred. Some of the womenfolk in the northern neck-end of the Shenandoah Valley, seen standing in the porch shadows of canted log houses, or working in small gardens near the house, looked at Charles with what he took to be pity. He was used to that look, too; being an orphan, a homeless, youthful scavenger pulled at feminine heartstrings.

And everybody knew that you could see a woman’s feelings through their eyes, just like in a fortune teller’s crystal ball.
Everybody? Everybody but me. 

Like slow-moving weevils, the men slid into the tendrils of early-morning fog; some stumbled toward the communal water bucket, others headed to the creek to wash sleep from their eyes. Charles kept a little pan of water by his tent; a sip or two during the night, the remainder used for a quick face rub in the morning.  

 The Ninth men were tired after the long march and a short sleep. Most were heel-dragging tired, heads down, shoulders slumped. This was more new country for Charles and he kept his eyes open and roaming. A mockingbird skidded through the hot August afternoon, chasing a flying bug or moth. Whatever it was chasing, it caught in a side-down swoop, and settled on a rail fence for the well-earned snack.

The long column of men, four abreast in the sandhill road, not in step but in a shoulder-to-shoulder stumble, wrapped around an S-bend, before disappearing behind a lone stand of hardwoods off to the right. A small house, dwarfed by one of the biggest barns Charles had ever seen, stood in a rowed field green-gold with corn, peas, and other garden-variety plants that Charles didn’t know.

A young boy, hollow-eyed, with a high forehead and pinched nose, walked out from between two cornrows and watched the army pass him by. Armed with a strange implement that was part hoe, part pickaxe, he held it in front of him, almost as if he patterning the order for “present arms.” The youngster eyed Charles and they both nodded at the same time. A tiny curl at the corner of the boy’s lip was the only acknowledgement of the silent greeting.

Charles sidled up on Sergeant Reilly’s right side: “Sergeant Reilly, do you mind if I drop out of line for a minute?”

Without looking at him, the gruff sergeant said, “Can’t you wait till we hit them woods yonder?”

“No, that’s not it. I just want to hey that boy back yonder. Just to talk for just a minute. Is that all right?”

A cloud passed over Reilly’s face. “Just a minute? Methinks it will be more than that, Laddie. But go ahead. We’re going to camp up around the bend, I hear tell. Catch up quick so you don’t miss your camp chores.”

Charles ran a few steps ahead of Reilly and threw him a big grin and a flamboyant salute. No smile, but almost.

“Git on with ye, and don’t be late for chores! You’re helpin’ the surgeon get all set up and then helpin’ unpack the quartermaster’s wagon.”

Holding his drum close so it didn’t rub his leg, Charles crossed the ditch and followed the fence back to the corn patch. The boy just watched him coming.

“Hey,” Charles said. Without a sniggling of emotion or movement above his chin, the boy heyed back.

 “You live here?” Charles said, head-nodding toward the smallish house with an ample dogtrot through the middle. He grimaced at the abysmal question. He could hear Ian’s braying voice.

      Wha-where else wah-would he live, ah-old sot?

“Me and mama and my baby sister, Little Bit.” The youngster cast his eyes behind him and whistled softly. A large, mangy yellow dog with blood-red eyes eased out from under the porch and trotted toward the boys. He had matted, thick fur and a train of slobber hanging from his lips. “This here is Ben,” the boy said. “He looks mean but he would just as soon lick you to death as bite ennybody.”

“Hey, Ben,” Charles said, instinctively squatting on his heels to get closer to the dog’s level. After looking up at the boy, the dog took a tentative step forward, testing the air with its large, wet nose. Charles held out the back of his hand, allowing the dog to give a half dozen healthy sniffs. The dog’s tail started beating a silent tattoo in the humid air.

“He likes you,” the boy offered. “He don’t cotton to many folks, ‘specially Billy Yanks. One of you boys shot him a while back, thinkin’ he was gonna attack, I reckon. Pshaw! The only way Ben would attack a man is if he thought the man was a pork bone.”

“Sorry someone shot at Ben. There’s some good people in this army, the South’s too, I reckon. But, likely as not, there’s bad ‘uns in both, just like about everwhere.”

The boy looked down. “I don’t know about there bein’ bad southern soldiers. All that ever came by here was nice and nary a one of them shot at Ben.”

Charles let the statement sit heavily between them as he petted Ben, who had squatted down in the shade; the dog’s heavy panting and dripping tongue soon soaked Charles’ knee. He laughed as he got up and went over to the porch step to sit down next to the boy.

“What’s your name?”

“Ben Alouis Parmenter.”

“Ben? Like the dog’s name?”

“Yep. May be queer to some folks, but Maw says he saves her a bunch of time not havin’ to hollar at the two of us all the time. Just ‘Ben! Get to the house,’ and both of us show up.”

Charles leaned back against a porch post, his smile a slash of joy. He heard the house’s front door open and he jumped up, grabbed his hat and turned around. In the door, hands on ample hips, arms akimbo, stood a large, red-haired woman whose features fairly spit venom.

“You, boy, you got some reason to be lollygagging on my porch? Shouldn’t you be off down the road with your ragtag bluebellys, rapin’ and killin’ folks and stealin’ evathing anybody done had? Burned ennybody out today? Killed any cows and such? Shot any dogs?”

Stunned, Charles took a step backward and was turning to leave when Ben Alouis said, “Maw, we was just talkin’. He wasn’t doin’ no harm.”

“YET!” the woman screamed, throwing her hands over her head and pumping them up and down like she was trying to swim skyward through the humid air. “He ain’t done nothin’ YET! That don’t mean he won’t or that he don’t. Those damn soldiers who took the cows a month back, you done forgot that? They didn’t do nothin’ till they did that, now did they?”

“Ma’m,” Charles said while nervously rolling his kepi up in to a tight ball, “I . . . .”

“You shut up! Not a damn nuther word! This is my home. My home, you hear me? You will not talk to me that way in my own yard, at my own house. You will git off this place and git off quick or I’ll make you wish you did it quicker than that.”

“Sorry to have upset you, Ma’m . . . “

“GIT! GIT and stay git! And don’t you come back, ya hear me? And, Ben, git in this house now. And I mean right now!” The boy glanced at Charles, then hung his head and trooped past his mother into the house. Charles nodded at the woman. Her face fired up into a red blow-cloud and she pointed her finger to the north down the road.

“Your kind done kilt this valley and half the menfolk in it. This here is our valley and I hope the devil takes every damn one of you and drags him kickin’ and screamin’ and hollarin’ straight down to Hell!”

The slam of the door rattled the single-pane windows and spooked two yard chickens. Ben’s face, frozen with an ugly brand of sad, appeared in the lower left corner of the window. He shook his head from side to side, closed his eyes. and slipped beneath the window sill. Charles set out at a mild trot, chasing C Company’s dust.

Lord, what did I do to deserve that? This damn war is gettin’ totally out of hand if folks just cain’t stop and talk to folks.