He shifted his hands on his rifle barrel and looked past her out the window, his eyes full of light, thinking about his response but finding no words that he felt would be very interesting to anyone else.
"I'm on our regimental rounders team. We're gonna play some Vermont boys soon as I get off duty," he said.
"Rounders?"
"It's a game you play with a ball and a bat. You run around bases. That's how come it's called 'rounders.'" He grinned at her.
"It's nice seeing you," she said.
"Ma'am, I didn't go in that place last night," he said hurriedly, before she could walk away.
"I know you didn't," she said.
He had just called her "ma'am," something no white person had
ever done. She looked back over her shouldee at him. He was twirling his kepi on the point of his fixed bayonet, like a child intrigued with a top.
THAT night, when she returned to the hospital, Ira Jamison was in an ebullient mood, one she did not understand in a dying man. He had two visitors, men with coarse skin and uncut hair, with a lascivious look in their eyes and the smell of horses in their clothes. They pushed the screens around the bed and lowered their voices, but she heard one man laugh softly and say, "Ain't no problem, Kunnel. We'll move the whole bunch up into Arkansas, safe and sound, ready to fetch when the shooting is over."
After they were gone she brought Ira Jamison hot tea and a piece of toast with jam. The ledger book with the lists of names was on the nightstand. On top of it was a page of stationery that Jamison had been writing on. Her eyes slipped across the salutation and the words in the first paragraph as she propped up the tray on Jamison's lap.
"Who was them men, Colonel?" she said.
"Some fellows who do work for me from time to time."
"They got dirty eyes," she replied.
He looked at her curiously.
r />
"I could have sworn you were reading the letter I was writing to a friend," he said.
"How could I do that, suh?"
"I don't know, but you're no ordinary-"
"Ordinary what?"
"No ordinary girl. Neither was your mother."
"I ain't a girl no more, Colonel."
She picked up his soiled bedclothes from the floor and carried them to the laundry.
DURING the night, out in the foyer where she kept a cot, she overheard a Union physician talking to one of the nurses.
"You say he's mighty cheerful? By God, he should be. I thought sure we'd be dropping him into a hole, but his specimen has been clear two days now. The colonel will probably be back abusing his darkies in no time. I guess if I ever wanted to see a nonsuccess in the treatment of a patient, my vote would he for this fellow."
Flower sat up on her cot, her body still warm from sleep. The ward was dimly lit by oil lamps at each end, the air heavy with the smell of medicine and bandages and the sounds of snoring and night dreams. She walked softly between the rows of beds to the screened enclosure where Jamison slept, unable to think through the words she had just heard. She stood over his bed and looked down at the mound of his hip under the sheet and the pale smoothness of his exposed shoulder.
His face was turned into the shadows, but even in sleep he was a handsome man, his body firm, without fat, his skin clear and unwrinkled, his mouth tender, almost like a girl's.
Had he known his life was out of danger and not bothered to tell her? Was he that indifferent about the affections and loyalties of others?
She had other questions, too. What about the visitors whose clothes smelled of horse sweat and whose eyes moved up and down her body? Why had the colonel been reading from a ledger book that contained the names of all his slaves?
He had completed the letter he had been writing and had stuck it inside the cover of the ledger book and had slipped the book under his pillow. She eased the sheets of paper out of the book and unfolded them in the light that was breaking through the window. Each line of his flowing calligraphy was perfectly linear, each letter precise, without swirls or any attempt at grandiosity. She began reading, moving her lips silently, tilting the page into the grayness of the dawn.