Western Pennsylvania
October 1861
One week after leaving the Haggertys’ store in Bone Hollow, Phoebe Bigelow stood in line at a U.S. Army enlistment office in western Pennsylvania. She’d wrangled rides in several farmers’ wagons, a couple of nights’ sleep in their haylofts, and even a few free meals at their tables after she’d told them she was fixing to enlist. They’d sent her off with their blessings, stuffing her pockets with apples and buttermilk biscuits. But now she thought she just might faint from the heat as she waited in line in the overcrowded storefront office with dozens of young men eager to enlist.
Phoebe was so tall she could see clear over the head of the man in line in front of her. And she couldn’t help overhearing the enlisting officer as he bellowed at him. “I have to write you up as ‘4-F’! That means you’re missing your four front teeth!
“What’s that you say?” the man shouted in return. Seemed the poor fellow was not only toothless but deaf to boot.
“You can’t fight. I can’t enlist you.”
“I can’t fight?”
“No.”
“Hang it all—why not?”
“No teeth,” the officer shouted, pointing to his own. “You need teeth.”
“Since when does a fella need teeth to fight Rebels? I ain’t gonna bite into them, am I? Just give me a gun and let me shoot them.”
“You can’t tear open the gunpowder cartridges if you don’t have your teeth.”
“What?”
“I said you need your teeth to open …Oh, what’s the use. Corporal, get him out of here.”
He signaled to a uniformed man standing nearby, and before Phoebe could blink, the corporal whisked the toothless man away and she stood before the officer’s table. The wide strip of muslin she’d wrapped around her bosom was drenched with sweat. She wondered what would happen to her if the U.S. Army discovered she was a girl. Would they throw her in jail for lying? She decided she’d better play her part well so they wouldn’t find out.
“Come on, come on. Who’s next? Step forward and tell me your name, son.”
“Um …Ike Bigelow.” Phoebe had spent the past few days rehearsing her lies so she wouldn’t get tangled up in them. But she was broiling hot, her nerves were buzzing like flies, and her voice came out higher pitched than she’d intended. She repeated her name in a deeper voice. “Ike Bigelow.”
The man stopped writing and looked up, his brow wrinkling as he studied her. “How old are you, boy?”
“I turned nineteen last June.” At least that much was the truth.
His frown deepened. “Then how come all you got is peach fuzz on your cheeks?”
“Begging your pardon, sir, but ain’t none of my brothers or me ever been able to grow a beard worth a hoot. Our pa, neither. Ma says it’s the Injun blood in us.”
“Indian blood? With all that yellow hair?”
“The yellow’s on Ma’s side. Pa’s family—”
“Where’re you from?”
“Kentucky, sir. Across the river from Cincinnati.” She hadn’t dared say Virginia for fear she’d be taken for a Rebel spy. What little geography Phoebe knew had come from her few years of schooling in Bone Hollow and from listening to her brothers plan their own trip. She’d deliberately traveled in the opposite direction from them for the last week and ended up in Pennsylvania.
“Why’d you come all the way over here to enlist?”
“Well, sir. There’s four of us brothers in the family, and Ma made us all sign up in different states so’s we wouldn’t end up all getting kilt in the same battle. I picked Pennsylvania ’cause Jack and Willard already picked Ohio and Indiana. Junior joined up back home in Kentucky.”
“Are you sure it’s not because you’re underage?”
“Oh no, sir. You bring me a Bible and I’ll swear on it that I just turned nineteen on the eleventh of June.”
“That won’t be necessary,” he said with a sigh. “Let’s see your teeth. You got all your front ones?”
“Yes, sir.” Phoebe grinned widely, displaying them. “And I can shoot like nobody’s business. Better than any of my brothers. Go on and set an empty bottle on that barrel out front, and I’ll bet I can knock it clear off from across the street in a single shot.”
“Empty bottles don’t shoot back,” the officer said sternly. “And they don’t come running at you screaming like banshees, either, like the Confederates do. You ready for that?”
“Yes, sir, I’m ready to do my part.”
“All right, then. These are your enlistment papers. Once you sign them you’re obligated to serve in the United States Army for a period of three years. Your pay will be thirteen dollars a month. Can you read and write, son?”
Phoebe nodded.
“Read this carefully, then, and sign right here.”
She quickly scanned the words, too excited to make sense of them. Her sweaty hand made the ink run as she signed her name, Ike Bigelow, in neat letters.
“Good. Who’s next?” the officer asked. Phoebe didn’t move.
“Wait a minute. Ain’t you forgetting to give me a rifle?”
“You’ll get one when you get to Washington. Next?”
“Washington! Ain’t no Rebels in Washington. I signed on to fight—not visit Abe Lincoln.”
“First you have to learn to march. After that you’ll get your rifle—and your fair share of fighting, believe me.”
“But any old fool knows how to put one foot in front of the other. Pa says I been marching all around the farm since I was a year old. And I know how to shoot, too. Give me a rifle and I’ll prove it to you.”
“There will be plenty of time to show what you can do, son. Go on in the back now, and get yourself a uniform from the quartermaster.” He pointed with his thumb to a doorway behind him.
“Thought sure they’d at least give me a gun,” Phoebe muttered as she ducked through the door. She found herself in a large, crowded storeroom that was even hotter than the storefront had been. It smelled of leather and warm bodies and kerosene from the lanterns that lit the windowless room. A soldier stood near the door doling out Yankee uniform jackets, shirts, and pants from the large piles beside him. About a dozen other men milled around inside the room, laughing and joking as they stripped off their overalls and work shirts and put on their new blue uniforms.
Phoebe hesitated, wondering what she had gotten herself into. Then she remembered that her only other choice was to wear a dress and work for the Haggertys, and her doubts faded. Seeing men in their underwear was nothing new. Neither was a lack of privacy. After all, she’d grown up in a one-room cabin with three brothers. She took the heap of scratchy wool clothing the quartermaster handed her at the door and found a space for herself in a dim back corner.
The trousers stopped two inches above her ankles—but then, Phoebe was taller than most of the other soldiers by four or five inches. The shirt was too short to tuck into the pants, but she could have fit two heads through the neck hole. “Guess they figure I might grow another head,” she said to herself. The material was coarse and itchy, and if she didn’t get out of this stifling room pretty soon she would die of the heat. She slid her arms into the dark blue uniform jacket and tried to button the long row of shiny brass buttons, but it fit so snugly across her shoulders and chest that she felt like a snake about to burst out of its skin. The only thing that fit halfway decent was the forage cap.
“Hey, there,” a voice beside her said. “Want to trade jackets?”
Phoebe looked down, then smiled. The little fellow standing alongside her wore a coat that was so huge he looked like a tiny little pea in a big blue pod.
“Sure,” she said. “Guess it can’t hurt to try.” Phoebe unfastened the long row of buttons and traded jackets. The other fellow’s coat fit her a little better, but not by much. “Must have been a sale on all these brass buttons,” she said as she fastened them again. “Can’t see why else we’d need so many.”
“We have to keep them all shiny-looking, too,” the little fellow said. “My uncle joined up a few months back, and he says we have to polish the brass with emery paper every night or we’ll get into trouble.”
“Seems like a waste of time, don’t it?” Phoebe said. “I joined up to fight a war, not polish buttons.”
“Hey, you aren’t from around here, are you?” the little stranger asked. He had an eager, friendly voice that dipped from highpitched to low and back again when he talked, like a wagon wheel sliding in and out of a rut.
“No, I crossed over from Kentucky to enlist,” Phoebe replied.
“What’s your name?”
“Ike …Ike Bigelow.”
“Nice to meet you, Ike,” he said, extending his hand. It was soft, with no calluses, a city boy’s hand. “I’m Theodore Wilson. Folks call me Ted.”
The top of Ted’s curly brown head barely reached Phoebe’s chin. He had a wiry build that made him look as though he’d be quick as a deer if he decided to run. His smooth, tanned skin and wide brown eyes gave him the innocent, trusting look of a child. Then he smiled, revealing a pair of oversized front teeth, and he reminded Phoebe for all the world of a squirrel.
“I don’t mean to insult you,” she said, “but you hardly look old enough to enlist.”
“I’m nineteen,” Ted told her. “I live around here, so folks know I’m old enough. Hey, did you get all your other gear yet?”
Phoebe shook her head. “They only give me this uniform. The man said I wouldn’t get me a gun until I get to Washington. If I’d a known that, I’d have brought a gun from home.”
“You have your own gun? You know how to shoot already?” Ted was practically dancing.
“Sure. I been shooting since I could walk and talk. I hardly ever miss, either.”
“Will you teach me how?” His voice squeaked with excitement.
“I reckon so,” she said, hiding a smile.
“Great. Thanks. Hey, we get our knapsacks and stuff in that line over there. Come on.”
Phoebe followed her new friend to the supply line, enjoying the fact that Ted already looked up to her in more ways than one. As the youngest and smallest sibling back home, Phoebe had always been picked on by her brothers and had to fight for the right to do all the things they did. Her brother Jack, especially, took great delight in reminding her that she was a girl.
“You got a girl, Ike?” Ted flung out the word girl so suddenly that it threw Phoebe off balance. It took her a moment to realize that he wasn’t accusing her of being one but was asking her if she had one.
“Huh? No …no, I never had a gal or nothing.”
“Me, either, but I sure would like one, wouldn’t you? Some of the other fellows carry pictures of their girlfriends. They were showing them all around a while ago and bragging about which one was the prettiest. Sure wish I had a pretty girl’s picture to carry with me. … But, hey, I kissed a girl once.”
“You did?” Phoebe looked at Ted’s lips—soft and full, like a baby’s—and tried to imagine them pressed against her own. She couldn’t recall ever being kissed, not even by her ma or pa, much less a beau.
“Yeah, I kissed Maggie Fisk in the schoolyard one day. Just on the cheek, though. Gosh, she smelled good. Like something you’d eat for dessert.”
They finally reached the front of the line. The supply sergeant began piling items into Phoebe’s outstretched arms: a haversack for her provisions, a woolen blanket and waterproof sheet, a cartridge box and belt, a bayonet, a tin drinking cup, a canteen, and a knapsack to carry all her personal belongings. The supply sergeant glanced down at her feet, then set a pair of square-toed brogans on top of the pile. Phoebe had never owned a brand-new pair of shoes in her life; she’d either worn her brothers’ hand-me-downs or gone barefoot, which she preferred.
“How do you know them are gonna fit me?” she asked the soldier doling out the shoes.
His look told her that asking questions was the wrong thing to do. “We only have three sizes left,” he finally said. “Since your feet are the biggest ones I’ve seen all morning, I gave you the biggest pair I got. Move along now. Gotta keep this line moving.”
Phoebe sighed in resignation and followed her new friend through the back door and into a vacant lot behind the building where the other recruits were gathering. The fresh autumn air felt good. Ted flopped down in a small patch of shade to try on his new shoes; Phoebe did the same. The leather was very stiff, and they made her feet feel squished, even before she laced them up. She decided she’d better keep her old, worn-out shoes for now and stuffed them into her new knapsack along with her blanket, rubber sheet, and the possessions from her burlap bag. The knapsack was crammed full to the top, and she was still left with a tangle of straps, sacks, and all the other contraptions they’d just given her.
“What’re we supposed to do with all of this?” she wondered aloud.
“My uncle showed me how to carry everything,” Ted told her. “Watch.” Following his lead, she soon had her cartridge box, belt, bayonet, and haversack fastened properly, her canteen and tin cup hung where they’d be handy, and her bedding rolled up and fastened to her knapsack, ready to carry. She hefted the pack onto her shoulders with a grunt.
“I sure hope they don’t expect us to carry this stuff very far,” she said. “Feels like somebody’s hanging onto the back of my pack, trying to pull me over backward.”
She looked down at Ted and saw that the little fellow was bent nearly double beneath his load. She’d watched him pack a lot of extra stuff from home into his knapsack—three books, four extra pairs of socks, two flannel shirts, two spare suits of underwear, a sewing kit, a mirror and shaving items, a jar of homemade preserves, paper and writing utensils, and a bottle of Dr. Barker’s Blood Tonic.
“I …um …hope you don’t take offense, Ted, but you better get rid of some of that extra gear you’re carrying or you’ll be a hunchback by the time the war ends.”
“I’m fine,” he said, puffing slightly. “Hey, I think we’re supposed to go on over to the train depot when we’re done changing. You know where that is?”
Phoebe shook her head.
“Come on, I’ll show you.” She set off down the lane beside Ted, both bearing their loads like pack mules. Phoebe’s shoes squeaked and groaned. When she and Ted walked side by side, their tin cups, canteens, and other equipment jangled and clanked and rattled so noisily they sounded like a tinker’s wagon going down a bumpy road.
“I think I know why the Union ain’t won very many battles,” Phoebe said.
“Why’s that?” Ted asked, panting.
“I reckon them Rebels can hear us coming for miles.”
The army fed them supper in the town’s only hotel, then billeted them there for the night, cramming as many recruits into each room as they possibly could. When the train arrived before breakfast the next morning, it seemed to Phoebe that the entire town turned out to see their boys off. The ladies boohooed, waved their handkerchiefs, and threw flowers as mothers and sisters and sweethearts said farewell to their loved ones. With no one to see her off, Phoebe was the first one to board the train, and she took a seat by a window. She’d never been on a train before—had never even been this close to one—and she didn’t know if the tremor that rumbled through her was from the huge steam locomotive or from her own excitement and fear.
Outside on the platform, a woman who had to be Ted’s mother cried a cloudburst of tears and gripped him in her arms as if she had no intention of ever letting go. She was small and squirrel-like, too, with the same tanned skin and curly brown hair that Ted had.
“Teddy! Oh, my Teddy! Don’t leave me. Don’t go,” she cried in such a heartbroken voice that tears filled Phoebe’s eyes. She sometimes dreamed of someone holding her that way, rocking her, loving her, but as far as she knew they were only dreams, not memories. She slouched down on the stiff bench seat, pulling her forage cap over her face and closing her eyes to block out the sight of hugs and kisses and expressions of love beyond her reach. She didn’t open her eyes again until the train whistle shrieked, nearly startling her out of her seat.
“Hey,” Ted said a moment later. “Mind if I sit here?”
“Go ahead. It ain’t my train.” She tried to sound indifferent and gruff, but she was secretly pleased to see him. They’d only met yesterday, but she’d already taken a liking to the little fellow. She moved over to make room for him.
Ted perched on the edge of the seat, shrugging off the straps of his bulging backpack so he could set it on the floor. He balanced a huge parcel wrapped in brown paper on his lap.
“Confounded woman got me all wet,” he mumbled, wiping his face against his shoulder. “Did your mama bawl and carry on like that when you left home?”
Phoebe glanced at him, then quickly looked away. The tears Ted was trying to wipe away were his own. “My ma died when I was pretty young,” she told him.
“Oh. Sorry.”
“That’s okay. I don’t remember her at all, so I can’t really miss her.”
That much was true. But Phoebe did miss knowing what a mother’s love was like. She’d seen mothers like Mrs. Haggerty who yelled all the time and went after their kids with a hickory switch when they didn’t mind. But she’d also seen mothers back in Bone Hollow who looked at their kids like they were made of gold or something. Those mothers couldn’t stop touching their kids’ cheeks or ruffling their hair all the time. She was willing to bet that Ted’s mother was the second kind—the kind Phoebe dreamed of.
The whistle screamed again, drowning out the last good-byes and cries of farewell from the platform. The train gave a huge lurch, nearly pitching Phoebe out of her seat. It began rolling forward, hissing steam and huffing like a tired horse plodding uphill. She gripped the armrest, excited and scared at the same time.
“Guess your ma was sorry to see you go, huh?” she asked, trying to push away her fear as the locomotive picked up speed.
“Yeah, I’m all she has now that my sisters are all married and my father’s passed on.” Ted’s voice sounded even shakier than usual. “She didn’t want me to go to war at all. Begged me and begged me not to enlist. But I had to get away, you know? See new things, meet new people. I’ll have to send my paycheck home every month so she’ll have something to live on.”
He unwrapped the parcel while he talked, and Phoebe saw that it contained food—fried chicken, a square of johnnycake, several dill pickles, a couple of turnovers, a jar of plum jelly. It also contained a small frypan, a pair of homemade mittens, a pocket-sized Bible, and three more bottles of Dr. Barker’s Blood Tonic.
“What’re you fixing to do with all that stuff?” Phoebe asked. “Your knapsack’s gonna burst at the seams if you try and put anything else in it.”
“Hey, I’ll make you a deal. If you help me carry some of this, I’ll share my food with you.”
Phoebe reached for one of the turnovers. “It’s a deal.”
Outside her train window, the rolling Pennsylvania countryside flew past faster than a whole team of horses could have carried her. She was on her way to an exciting new adventure, with good food in her stomach, new shoes on her feet, and a new friend by her side. Nobody knew that she was a girl. Phoebe Bigelow had never felt happier in her life.
Later that day they arrived in Harrisburg, and Phoebe’s happiness quickly began to fade. She and the other recruits were thrown together with greenhorns from other small towns across southern Pennsylvania, and army life truly began. She had her first taste of U Army rations—stringy beef, overboiled potatoes, and bitter coffee. She spent her first night in a Sibley tent, a round, pointytopped contraption where eighteen recruits slept spoon-style, their feet pointing toward the middle. And she met her new drill sergeant.
Phoebe was barely off the train, her head still spinning and her knees all wobbly, when Sergeant Anderson herded all the new recruits together and began to yell at them. He was almost as short as Ted but very broad across the chest, and he wore a look on his face like he was about to pick a fight with someone. He turned red all over when he yelled, and his neck swelled up and his eyes popped until he reminded Phoebe of a bullfrog.
Sergeant Anderson ranted on and on about how he was going to turn this trainload of pantywaists and mama’s boys into real men, how he’d better not hear any bellyaching from anybody or they’d find out what hell on earth was really like. He screamed for the longest time, until Phoebe was not only getting a headache but was also starting to worry that the man would maim his vocal cords if he kept on that way. When she couldn’t stand any more, Phoebe took a step forward, raising her hand politely like she’d learned to do in school.
“Excuse me, mister, but I don’t reckon you have to yell like that. I can’t speak for everyone, but I can hear you just fine. Besides, I saw a man who was hard of hearing trying to enlist, and they wouldn’t let him.”
She heard ripples of nervous laughter behind her. Sergeant Anderson bellowed a word that might have been “Quiet!” but he was so angry, Phoebe couldn’t tell. She’d never seen a face as mean as his in her life. He stuck it right up close to hers and roared so loudly and for such a long time that her ears rang and she started to see spots. He scared her so badly she didn’t catch most of what he said, but she did understand that she had to report to his tent after all the others were dismissed.
“Good-bye, Ike. It’s been nice knowing you,” Ted whispered when the time came. She could tell he was trying to make a joke of it, but his boyish face looked paler than usual.
“Aw, I’ll be fine,” she replied, trying to believe that she would be. “I reckon he can’t shoot me—that’s Johnny Reb’s job. I just hope he don’t start hollering in my face again.”
When she first arrived at Sergeant Anderson’s tent, Phoebe did have to listen to him yell for a while. He carried on about military discipline and how she needed to learn to hold her tongue and to show respect for officers, but he’d clearly run out of steam after screaming at all the other recruits for the past two hours. She sup-posed that even a rattlesnake had to slither off and make some new venom after biting two or three people, and she felt a little sorry for Anderson.
Her punishment was to clean up after him—tidy up his tent, wash his clothes, clean his lanterns, scrub the mud and manure off his shoes, shine all his uniform buttons. It was women’s work and probably would have been very demeaning if it weren’t for the fact that she was a woman. True, she had joined the army to get away from cleaning and scrubbing and things like that, but her brothers had left much bigger messes for Phoebe to clean up than Sergeant Anderson had.
“Can you clean and oil a rifle?” he asked when she was finished with everything else. His voice was softer this time, and truth be told, he sounded a little hoarse.
“I ain’t never had a rifle,” Phoebe replied, “but my pa taught me to clean his shotgun as soon as I was old enough to hold one.”
“Let’s see how you do with this.” He handed her a brand-new Springfield rifle, and it was the most beautiful gun she had ever seen, with a smooth walnut stock and shiny metal bore. She lifted it to her shoulder, sighting down its length.
“My, oh my …I bet I could hit a fly off a fence post with this,” she murmured.
“Are you a pretty good shot, Bigelow?”
“I’m a crackerjack shot! I been trying to tell the army how I hardly ever miss, but they ain’t seen fit to let me show ’em what I can do.”
He studied her for a moment through squinted eyes. She could tell he was trying to look mean, but she thought he was probably a little curious, too. “How about if I take you out tomorrow afternoon, Bigelow, and you can put your money where your mouth is.”
His words baffled Phoebe. “Put my money…? No, sir. I ain’t got any money, but if I did, I don’t think I’d want any of it in my mouth.”
Sergeant Anderson started to laugh, and he laughed so hard he began to cough and had to sit down for a minute on his campstool. “You’re something else, Bigelow,” he said when he caught his breath again. “No, what I meant was, how would you like to show me what you can do with a rifle?”
“I’d like that real fine!”
While Phoebe lovingly cleaned Sergeant Anderson’s rifle, they talked about different kinds of guns and how they both liked to go deer hunting. By the time she returned to her own tent, Sergeant Anderson didn’t seem quite so mean anymore.
He sent for her the next afternoon, as he’d promised, and they walked out to the edge of camp with his Springfield rifle. For the next hour, Phoebe hit every target he gave her, big and small, until they ran out of old tins and bottles to shoot at.
“I’ve never seen anyone who could shoot as good as you, Bigelow,” the sergeant said as they walked back to camp. “I should put your name in for a sharpshooter.”
“That’d be just fine with me.” Phoebe ran her hand over the smooth wood one last time before she had to give the rifle back. “I can’t wait to get me one of these,” she said. “In the meantime, can I ask you a favor?”
“What’s that?”
“Will you let me come back tonight and clean it again?”
Anderson snorted. “You’re a corker, Bigelow. All right, report to my quarters after dinner and I’ll let you clean my rifle.”
Phoebe was very disappointed that she didn’t get to shoot it again. Her daily routine took on a numbing sameness that bored her to tears. She was awakened at dawn by the off-key squeal of fifes and the clatter of drums and was forced to scramble out to the lane in front of the long row of tents so Sergeant Anderson could call roll. Everyone quickly ate breakfast, then for the next two hours, she and the other recruits learned to march—elbows touching, rows thirteen inches apart—using short lengths of fence rails for rifles. They learned to march in a column, to form a battle line, to march double-quick, to dress the line. They drilled until the noon meal, then drilled for two more hours after that. There was a brief rest period in the afternoon, but they were expected to use that time to clean themselves up and polish their buttons—“I told you so,” Ted said with his toothy grin—then get ready for another roll call and inspection. Sergeant Anderson would strut up and down the rows, carefully looking them over from head to toe, and Phoebe could tell he was just itching to find a reason to yell.
After inspection they drilled until dinner, and by that time she and the others had been on their feet for most of the day. She figured they’d probably marched several miles and could have caught up to some Rebels if they’d been allowed to keep going instead of hiking back and forth across the same field all day. Shortly after dark, everyone fell asleep, exhausted, and then woke up at dawn to do it all over again.
Every day was the same, drill and more drill. By the end of the first week Phoebe had finally had enough. Instead of joining the scramble for breakfast after roll call one morning, she went forward to talk to Sergeant Anderson.
“Excuse me, sir, but I don’t get the point of all this marching around in circles all day. What does it have to do with shooting Rebels? Seems like we’re just wearing out our new shoes for nothing.” Anderson’s eyes bulged. A scarlet flush began slowly creeping up his neck to his face. “Please don’t yell at me,” she said quickly, “but I just don’t understand what it’s all for.”
“It’s not your job to understand,” he said through gritted teeth. “Just do what you’re told.” He turned to stride away with all the dignity of an officer, but Phoebe easily kept pace beside him. Anderson’s legs were so short and her legs so long that it was like a stubby little burro trying to outpace a Thoroughbred.
“It’s just that it seems like a mighty big waste of time,” she continued, “turning this-a-way and that, coming and going and marching around all day until you end up right back where you started. Don’t anybody care that there’s a war to fight?”
He halted suddenly, glancing all around as if to make sure no one was listening. “Listen, Bigelow. You’re going to get yourself in big trouble if you keep shooting off your mouth like this. I’ll tell you the reason why we drill because I like you. But in the future, you have to stop asking so many questions and just do what you’re told, okay?”
Phoebe nodded.
“It’s my job to get everybody in shape for long marches. If you learn to advance in neat rows, then everybody will keep up and there won’t be stragglers. You’re also learning how to quickly form a battle line from a marching column. And as ugly as this sounds, I’m teaching you to dress the line so that you’ll move together, elbows touching, after the fellow beside you falls. You’ll keep on firing and hold your line so it doesn’t fall apart. Our troops weren’t prepared at Bull Run, and it turned into a shambles. But we have a new commander now, and General McClellan is determined to be ready this time.” Anderson finished his speech with a curt nod, his chin jutted forward as if ready to take on the entire Confederate army all by himself. Phoebe would have gladly joined him.
“When do you reckon we’ll get to fight?” she asked.
“You’re just a foot soldier, kid. You’ll be the last person to know what’s going on and when it’s going to happen. Sometimes your company will go on the march for two or three days, then march back again without ever knowing what it was all about. Usually when the whole army marches, only the generals know where they’re going and why. It’s better that way, see? If you get captured, you can’t tell the enemy our plans. Understand, Bigelow?”
“I guess so …sir.” She remembered to salute, then watched the sergeant’s retreating back as he finally strode away.
Ted sidled up alongside her, chewing a piece of bacon. “Hey, you’re awfully brave asking questions like that. What did he say?”
“He says we’re gonna keep on marching and drilling until we don’t have to think about it anymore, just do it in our sleep.”
“Well, next time you talk to him, tell him that I march up and down that blasted field every night in my dreams.”
After a month in training camp, the U.S. Army finally loaded Phoebe’s company of recruits onto a train bound from Harrisburg to Baltimore. They spent the night in a rest home for soldiers, then boarded another train the next morning and headed south toWash-ington. Phoebe enjoyed her second train ride much more than her first. In fact, now that she knew how fast a train could go and how many miles it could lick up in a day, the knock-kneed horses and rickety farm wagon back home were going to feel like they were standing still. As more and more army encampments came into view outside her window, she nudged Ted, who was napping on the seat beside her.
“You better wake up. I think we’re almost to Washington City.”
“How do you know?” he said without opening his eyes. “Ever been there before?” Ted’s voice, thick with sleep, made Phoebe smile. But then, lots of things about Ted made her smile.
“No, I ain’t ever been there, but it’s starting to look like fields of cotton out my window, only it’s acres and acres of white tents all lined up in rows. And soldiers everywhere. Like a mess of blue grasshoppers.”
Ted finally stirred and sat up. He leaned close to Phoebe, who was near the window, and they gazed at the passing scenery together.“I wonder which of these camps is going to be ours?” he said.
“I hope it’s none of them. You see what all them soldiers are doing?”
Ted watched for a moment, then shrugged. “What?”
“I been watching for a few minutes now, and most of the ones we passed looked like they was doing exactly what we just spent the last month doing—drilling.”
“Maybe the soldiers you saw were greenhorns, like we were back in Harrisburg. Some of them are doing some real soldiering, aren’t they?”
“I seen some armed men guarding a bridge back there and a couple more peeking out from behind a cannon—but look at the rest of them, Ted. I swear they’re just marching back and forth in rows just like we done, going nowhere.”
Ted flopped back against his seat as the train slowed to a crawl.“I’ve had it up to here with drilling,” he said, slicing the air above his head with his hand.
“Me too. I’d just as soon go on home than waste any more time. I sure do hope we finally get to fighting.”
“Oh, I expect we will,” he replied. “I read in the paper the other day that President Lincoln ordered a unified aggressive action against the Rebels. I think he means business.”
It took Phoebe a minute to figure out Ted’s ten-dollar words. He had to be one of the smartest people she’d ever met—working as a clerk in his uncle’s factory and all, counting money and keeping his books. She decided that what he’d just said meant that Mr. Lincoln was finally going to let her fight.
“When I signed up,” she said, “they promised we’d get ourselves some real guns once we got to Washington City.”
“I sure hope so. Hey, Ike, don’t forget—you promised to teach me how to shoot.”
“I won’t forget,” she said, smiling at his eagerness. Ted had his hat off, and she had to resist the urge to ruffle his curly brown hair the way you would a child’s.
They quickly left the outlying encampments behind and entered the city itself. Phoebe’s first glimpse of her nation’s capital left her disappointed. There were some bigger buildings that looked brandnew, but the city didn’t look nearly as nice as Baltimore or even Harrisburg. And most of the streets weren’t even paved. She hoped they didn’t stay here too long.
When the train finally pulled into the station, Phoebe and Ted shouldered their gear and stood in the aisle with all the others. Soldiers crammed the platform outside, and Phoebe worried that little Ted would get lost in the sea of blue uniforms.
“Grab onto my belt,” she told him. “I’ll keep an eye on Sergeant Anderson.”
“Lucky for me you’re so tall,” he said as he slipped his hand around her canteen strap.
Together they followed the sergeant through the station and outside into the street. The air was smoky from hundreds of campfires, and Phoebe thought she also smelled the damp, fishy scent of a nearby river. A military band played a rousing march to welcome them, and the lively sound of bugles and drums seemed to make her blood pump twice as fast through her veins. She could lick a whole gang of Rebels if they kept on playing music like that. It even made her want to march—which was a lucky thing, because the sergeant told them to fall into formation. He ordered a roll call, and when everyone was in place, they began to march down the street through ankle-deep mud. If Phoebe’s new shoes hadn’t been a size too small they would have been sucked right off her feet. She wondered if the army had planned it that way.
Except for some of the newer buildings, Phoebe thought most of Washington City was pretty ugly. The streets around the government buildings were nice and wide, and the Capitol building looked like it was going to be fancy once they got that dome-thing finished. And Mr. Lincoln had himself a pretty nice place, too, even if there were a bunch of soldiers lined up outside in his yard. But the streets were mired in so much mud the people could have used boats to get around instead of wagons. There were so many soldiers marching and horses trotting and mules pulling long trains of white-roofed army supply wagons that they kept the mud all churned up and soggy.
Phoebe had never seen so many Negroes in one place before, either. Everywhere she looked she saw dark faces—and all of them wearing rags. Folks back home in Bone Hollow didn’t have much, and Phoebe had never worn brand-new clothes or a pair of new shoes until she’d joined the army. But these folks were so pitifulpoor they brought tears to her eyes, especially when she saw little children begging.
The march to their new camp near the river was the longest one Phoebe’s company had ever taken in a straight line. She had helped carry some of Ted’s supplies in her own pack, but even so, he looked done in by the time they arrived.
“You better throw out some of that extra gear you’re toting,” she told him as they ate supper that evening, “or it’s gonna weigh you down so deep in all this mud it’ll take a team of mules to pull you out.”
“I know, I know,” he said, yawning. “I’ll sort everything out first thing tomorrow.”
Ted crawled into the Sibley tent they would share with a dozen other men and fell sound asleep before Phoebe even got her shoes off.
As the sky was growing light the next morning, Phoebe was awakened by the telltale cramping she’d grown to dread. She couldn’t believe her rotten luck. Oh no. Not the curse. Not now. She had no privacy here, crammed together as she was with dozens of men day and night. This would give her secret away for sure.
She crawled out from under her blanket as quietly as she could, retrieved her knapsack, and carefully stepped over her sprawled, snoring tentmates. As she made her way to the latrine area in the damp, cold air, longing for the warmth of her blanket, she wished with all her heart that God hadn’t seen fit to make her a girl.
Phoebe found a private place behind some bushes and knelt on the ground. She was still digging through her pack when a voice startled her.
“What are you doing, Ike?”
She yelped with fright. “Oh, Ted! You scared me half to death!” She pressed her hand to her chest and felt her heart racing like it was trying to run for cover. “Why did you sneak up on me like that?”
“I saw you get up and leave …and you had your pack with you. I was afraid you were going home or something.”
“Why would I do a fool thing like that?”
“I don’t know. You said you were sick of drilling. I was afraid …They shoot deserters, you know, and I didn’t want anything to happen to you.”
Phoebe couldn’t reply. She was surprised—and touched—to find out that he cared. “Naw, I’m just using the latrine,” she said after a moment. “I think …um …I got the trots. You know?”
“Yeah …everybody’s got them.”
“Anyhow, I promise you, the last thing I plan on doing is running off. We got a war to fight, remember? Go on back to bed. I’ll be there in a minute.”
Ted nodded and made his way back through the bushes.
Alone again, Phoebe was dumbfounded to feel tears filling her eyes. She wondered why. Part of the reason, she decided, was because having a friend like Ted was such an amazing new feeling. Nobody had ever cared where she went or what happened to her before. Back home, she had once gotten herself lost in the woods for two days and her pa had never even thought to look for her. Her own brothers had traded her to Mrs. Haggerty like a bushel of corn when they had no more use for her.
But the other reason for Phoebe’s tears was fear. She liked her new life as a soldier, in spite of all the drilling. And she was scared to death that she would lose it all if they found out she was a girl. For the next week or so she would have to get up early every morning to make sure she had privacy. But as Ted had just proved, sneaking around in the dark was risky, too. What if someone else followed her? Or what if she forgot the password one morning and a nervous sentry shot her for a Rebel spy?
If only they would hurry up and start fighting. Then everybody would be too busy to notice that she was a girl. Like she had just told Ted, there was a war to fight, and Phoebe Bigelow was determined to be part of it.