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Chapter 10

Sky Blue

"Simple Simon met a pieman
Going to the fair;
Said Simple Simon to the pieman,
'Let me taste your ware.'

"Said the pieman to Simple Simon,
'Show me first your penny.'
Said Simple Simon to the pieman,
'Indeed I have not any.'"

Saying the word "any," Juliet tickled Henry's belly and the boy, who'd anticipated this ever since his mother started reciting the nursery rhyme, answered with his usual delighted squeal. Hoss had been watching the repetition of this game for what felt like four thousand times over the past two weeks, but Henry did not cease to find it joyfully entertaining. He knew perfectly well at which point of the rhyme his mother's wiggling finger would attack; sometimes he giggled even before she touched him. He was five and a half months old now, sat unsupported, and listened to his mother's voice, gazing intently at her, his head cocked a little to one side, and his mouth ever-so slightly twisted into a half-smile, as if he was secretly amused about something only he saw or heard. He resembled Adam more and more every day.

Hoss buttered two slices of bread. When he offered one to Juliet, he wasn't surprised when she declined with just a short shake of her head. Food and his sister-in-law didn't go together well in the mornings lately, and at some time during their journey east, she had just stopped even trying to eat before midday. He wasn't sure she'd eat at all if he didn't push her to it. The long ride on the train hadn't done her any good; she looked even more peaked than she had those last few days at home. For all that travelling by rail was far more comfortable than riding on a stage coach—with more space to sit, the chance to stand up and stretch your legs during the ride—there still was a lot of jiggling, and the constant noise of the engine and the rumbling of the wheels on the tracks.

Even though she'd first admonished him for following her—or "tracking her down" as she'd put it—Juliet's annoyance at his insistence on accompanying her had soon been replaced by gratitude. Plagued by headaches, nausea, and sleep deprivation, and challenged by Henry whose waking hours had gotten longer each day and who demanded almost constant attention, she'd eventually broken down. She had not cried, not even after Hoss had pulled the blinds of their compartment to give her some privacy; but she had admitted she'd reached the end of her strength—and that she was with child again.

He hadn't asked if she was sure. Her symptoms were familiar. It was incredibly close to Henry's birth, but hadn't Adam always told them to expect the unexpected with Juliet? Apparently that applied even to this.

"I don't know how I am supposed to do this alone," Juliet had said and stared out of the window at the landscape drifting by.

"But you are not alone. We're with you. We…the family."

She'd smiled. Sadly, Hoss had noted, and it had made him sad, too. "That's not quite the same, isn't it?"

"Of course not." He'd searched for the right words, only there were no right words. Maybe Adam would have found something bracing for her, but Hoss was sure even his well-spoken brother would have struggled and failed to find what Juliet really needed. No, that wasn't true. No one but Adam would be able to give her what she needed right now, because all she needed was Adam. "It's better than nothing, though," Hoss had finally said. "It's better than being on your own."

The look she'd given him then had nearly broken his heart. Gratitude, hope, forlornness, longing, and pain, all in her eyes, almost scary in its intensity.

"I'm not Adam, but—" he'd started, not quite sure where this would lead to but determined to heal the raw hurt she was radiating, to fix things like Adam would have fixed things, to make everything bearable for her—and himself, too.

Juliet had interrupted him by putting a finger on his lips—a more than unexpected gesture from his demure sister-in-law, strangely intimate, but of completely chaste tenderness. "You don't have to be Adam," she'd said. "You're Hoss; and that's…all you need to be."

For the rest of their journey they'd talked about mundane things only, about what to do once they arrived at Gettysburg, about ordering food or coffee, about how to entertain Henry, about trains they'd need to catch and things they'd want to buy at their next stop. But something between them had changed: subtle little differences in the way they moved around each other, a new, easier and more open quality in their communication, and the mutual acceptance of each other's proximity. Hoss didn't hesitate anymore to take Juliet in his arms if he felt she needed that kind of support, and Juliet had more than once fallen asleep leaning against him with her head resting on his shoulder.

"He went to catch a dickey bird,
And thought he could not fail,
Because he'd got a little salt,
To put upon his tail.

"He went to take a bird's nest,
T'was built upon a bough;
The branch gave way and Simon fell
Into a dirty slough."

Juliet's fingers made tiny steps up Henry's arm, shoulder, neck and cheek to his nose, then slipped off and fell into his lap, tickling his belly as they went down. Henry giggled contently.

Yes, Juliet still looked unwell. But after two nights in a proper bed, and in the soothing quietness of Mrs. Milward's boarding house in the middle of Gettysburg the overwhelming tiredness had left her eyes.

Mrs. Milward was a blessing. Upon arriving after another seemingly endless ride on a stage coach from their last train stop to Gettysburg, they'd come to realise that there were hardly any rooms to rent available. After three days of battle with thousands of casualties there had been more wounded soldiers to be tended to than the field hospitals had been able to manage. Consequently, both the Union army and the Confederates had confiscated farms, schools, public houses, parts of the Theological Seminary, nearly everything with an intact roof and transformed it to temporary hospitals. Only weeks after the battles, most of the sites were still occupied by convalescing soldiers—even though both sides had already begun to transport seriously ill but stable patients to better equipped proper army hospitals in Chester, Pittsburgh, or Alexandria.

Juliet had been determined to go and meet General Schurz immediately after arriving, heedless of the fact that she'd thrown up three times on the ride, or that Henry'd been screaming himself raw to protest the sticky, hot constriction of the coach cabin until, too exhausted to even sleep, he'd just hung in his mother's arms, squirming and whining unceasingly. Hoss, who'd been hot and tired himself, and on the verge of becoming impolite, had collected every ounce of remaining self control not to shake her when he'd reasoned with her; that they needed to find a place to stay the night more urgently than to talk to the general—and that it would be more likely she'd get herself arrested than obtain any useful information by speaking to anyone in her present state of mind, if he'd read correctly the way her eyebrow twitched.

Juliet had tsked and looked annoyed and as if she'd been composing a highly imperious, rebuking reply. Three weeks ago, Hoss would have had no other means to deal with that than letting it wash over him, ignoring her tone, and silently vowing never to provoke her again. But now he'd squeezed her arm and said, "please" and that he was tired and hungry—and Juliet had given in. Just like that.

By sheer luck, the second door he'd knocked at was Mrs. Milward's. Mrs. Milward, who'd lost her husband during the first weeks of the war, had two free rooms, a big open heart for small tired babies, and had provided them with a hearty, excellently cooked supper, a cradle for Henry she'd acquired from the neighbour's house, and nearly motherly concern and sympathy and the offer to look after Henry if required once she'd heard about their reason for coming to Gettysburg.

The reason they'd come to Gettysburg. Hoss spread strawberry jam over yet another piece of buttered bread before he started eating it slowly. Very slowly. He was procrastinating, he knew that, but Juliet was doing the same. The way she savoured her tea…she always took her time over that, but this morning she seemed determined to drink her tea cold. After having gone through all verses of "Simple Simon" she remembered or thought fit to be recited to Henry's tender ears, she now turned her attention to the baby's naked toes and jiggling one after the other declaimed,

"This little piggy went to market,
This little piggy stayed home.
This little piggy had roast beef,
This little piggy had none.
And this little piggy went
Wee, wee, wee, all the way home."

At "wee, wee, wee" her fingers ran up Henry's leg and leapt back to their old tickling spot on his belly. Screeching loudly, Henry went into raptures.

The reason they were in Gettysburg: find out what happened to Adam, see his grave, speak to someone who'd been with him in his last days on earth.

It sounded easy, and accomplishing it had in fact been easy, much easier than they'd anticipated. Much easier…and much harder at the same time.

The day before, they hadn't been let in to General Schurz, which, to Hoss's utmost surprise, Juliet had accepted without argument. They had been directed to the Gettysburg cemetery, though, and Hoss suspected that Juliet was more interested in going to Adam's last resting place than being confronted with…well, anything else.

The cemetery was huge. Row after row of freshly dug graves, all adorned with wooden crosses, some with names on them, some without. Newspapers had talked about more than 7,000 soldiers killed during the three days of battle, and, Good Lord, Hoss had started to believe it, to actually understand it while they'd been walking through the endless alleys framed by earthen mounds. Line after line they'd paced off in the scorching heat of the advancing midday, reading the names of men they didn't know, and yet each name had torn at their hearts, quieted their voices, made them walk closer together. Juliet had stopped once, to set an unlabelled cross straight and run her hand over the fresh soil underneath it murmuring something too soft for Hoss to discern any words.

"Those men," she'd said upon getting up, making a wide gesture that included the whole grave field, "all have someone somewhere."

Hoss had nodded.

"But they don't know they're here."

He'd reached out for her. "Juliet…"

"Let's go find him," she'd waved him off. "Just…find him."

Find him. It had taken them hours, but like Juliet, Hoss hadn't been willing to give in to the heat and the sun and the desolation of the place before they had found him. He had never seen his own mother's resting place, secretly always envied Joe for having a place to which he could address his grief, and he was determined to find such a place for grieving his big brother. Here. Although he felt sure he wouldn't come back to this place ever again, he'd at least be able to carry a picture of it in his mind, a memory. Find him.

Then they had found him. A dried-up flower had lain on the grave's soil, and that nearly had caused them to pass it by—but the stone had caught their attention. Few graves had stones, very few graves, and Hoss suspected it would take years to bestow every one with a proper marker. But Adam did have one. A stone, and a withered flower.

"Adam Cartwright," the inscription read. "Brother not only in arms, 1830 – 1863."

If Hoss had thought this cemetery was the most sorrowful sight he'd ever see, he'd been wrong. It was his sister-in-law's blank, composed countenance that saddened him more than anything; her stony face that might have fooled him if not for the string of tears silently running down her cheeks.

He didn't remember how long they'd stood there, staring at the incredible headstone, and the flower, and the soil: Adam's memorial. Hours, maybe, an eternity or two. Until "Are you Mrs. Cartwright?" had made them look the other way.

A youngster, not older than Joe, but with the eyes of an old man. He'd had flowers in his hand, some daisies, and he'd looked at Juliet as if she was everything he'd ever wanted to see.

Hoss had stepped in front of her. "Who wants to know that?"

But Juliet had shoved him out of the way and whispered, "Fritz? Fritz Boettcher?"

The boy had nodded; and before Hoss had a chance to ask, Juliet had pointed to the right to a nearly identical stone and said, "His brother lies there."

Fritz Boettcher. Fritz Boettcher from Adam's letter.

"You commissioned the stone, didn't you?" Juliet had asked.

"Yes. I hope you don't mind. I didn't know…" He'd looked down at his dusty boots. "I just…I wanted him to be remembered."

Juliet had breathed heavily, but said nothing.

Fritz had shuffled his feet, separated his bunch of flowers into two equally sized bundles and deposited one on either of the two graves he apparently visited every day. "It should be marble," he'd eventually said, pointing at the plain fieldstone on Adam's grave. "I owe him. Without Adam…I'd be court-martialled at least, maybe captured by the enemy, or killed. Most likely killed."

And then he'd told them how Adam had found him with his dead brother in his arms and how he'd dragged him through the streets of Gettysburg, saving him from desertion, capture, enemy fire. How Adam had talked sense into him, and how he'd found time in the middle of the storm to be a friend, a brother, a reassuring presence.

"He didn't belong here," Fritz had said. "And yet he needed to be here. His humanity…it made a difference." He'd looked into Juliet's face, nodded and then said it again, "It made a difference."

Fritz had told them more, everything he knew. That the XI. Corps hadn't been involved in fighting much on the second day of the battle, but that Adam had been sent to General Ward to deliver a message from General Schurz—and had never returned. That on further investigation it had turned out that Adam had been sent back with an answer, but hadn't made it back to Cemetery Ridge. That he'd been found two days later, delirious with a festering wound in his right leg, and brought to the XI. Corps field hospital. And that Fritz couldn't forgive himself that he didn't find out all that until Adam had already died.

"The nurse said he wouldn't have recognised me anyway, or that there'd been a visitor at all—but still…"

He'd arranged for Adam to be buried next to his brother Karl, and he'd ordered a headstone just like Karl's to pay back at least something.

"…wee, wee, wee, all the way home." That was not Juliet's voice.

Hoss looked up from the crumbs of his breakfast on his plate to find that Juliet had handed Henry to Mrs. Milward and now looked expectantly at him.

"Shall we?" she said, and Hoss nodded. They should.

Fritz had told them where to find the nurse who'd been with Adam during his last days. The temporary field hospitals had mostly been taken down already, Nurse Maxine Tindell had moved with her patients to the Bushman farm—and that was where they went.

Nurse Maxine didn't have much time, but she sat down with them in a small room where the nurses could rest during night watches. It looked completely unused.

She handed Juliet a letter with her name in Adam's bold script on it, but without an address. "I wanted to find out where you live and send it once things slowed down a bit," the nurse said. "He had it in his pocket. 'Twas the only thing that told us who he was."

Juliet stared at the folded paper she'd put on the table, smoothed it down, ran her fingers over the letters of her name, then laid her hands flat upon it and looked up.

"His comrade told me Adam was very ill and didn't…" She gazed at her hands, started to run them over the letter again. "Didn't…wasn't in his right mind." Now she folded her hands over the letter, clasping them tightly. She tore her eyes away from them, looking back at the nurse, and took a deep breath. "Did he, did he…" She bit her lip.

Hoss laid a hand over hers, caressing them with his thumb until he felt the tension ease. "Ma'am," he took up where Juliet had broken off. "Did he…was he hurtin' much?"

Maxine gave them a small smile. "He was delirious. He was very unwell, but I don't think he really registered much. He was unconscious nearly all the time."

Juliet opened her mouth, then closed it again, and looked at Hoss, pleadingly.

Hoss squeezed her hands. "He never woke up?" he inquired.

"Only once, nearly…at the end." The nurse reached over to touch Juliet's arm. "He woke up, briefly, and looked at me with bright, clear eyes. He wanted to say something, something important. He seemed completely lucid, impossible as it was."

"What…?" Juliet's voice was nearly inaudible.

"He tried to say your name, Mrs. Cartwright. I think he wanted to say that he…you know."

Juliet pressed a hand to her mouth.

"Ma'am, I'm so sorry. This must be incredibly hard…but maybe…maybe it gives you a little comfort to know that his last thoughts were of you." She patted Juliet's arm. "He loved you, ma'am. He was a brave and handsome man, and he loved you."

There was no reaction from Juliet, she just remained sitting there stock still with her eyes closed and her hand on her mouth.

Hoss cleared his throat. "My brother said nothing more?"

"No. He tried, but he couldn't." The nurse gave Juliet a sideways glance then looked back at Hoss. "It's really amazing, Mr. Cartwright. Your brother looked nothing like you. Only his eyes…they were the same as yours, the same sky-blue."

"We're only half bro—" He broke off, dazed.

"Blue?" Juliet leaned over the table. "Blue eyes, you say? Not brown or greenish when the light…" She choked a sob. "Blue. Dear Lord in heaven, blue."

And then she burst into tears.

ooOoo

The universe is wider than our views of it.

Henry David Thoreau