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A Fine Looking Soldier

By Mrs. Jane Hadley.

IN WHICH Henry finally meets Cate and goes full ding-dong.
Content warnings: nonconsensual outing, ding-dongitude.

XVI

Fort Snelling, Minnesota
Monday, August 12, 1861

CATE held her breath and watched Schaefer carefully. Her throat felt like it was going to close as she waited for him to react. 

His eyebrows knit together in confusion. Then, he laughed. 

“Nice one, but really —” 

“I’m serious,” Cate said firmly. “I am a woman.” 

“But …” he scrambled, “you run faster than Jacob. You can lift just as much, drill just as long … No, no, you’re putting one over on me.” 

Cate glowered at him and crossed her arms over her chest to hold back her heart’s hammering. There were a thousand retorts boiling to her lips, but she suspected none of them would be particularly helpful. Instead, she stayed quiet, waiting. She could see the wheels turn in his head. A part of her feared he wouldn’t add it all up, that his prejudices would refuse to allow him to put it together. That she would have to prove it to him. The thought of doing that — it made her stomach turn flips.

Schaefer’s chin worked. He swallowed hard, his jaw flexing, his Adam’s apple catching — it was ridiculous that something so small, so subtle, should transfix her when she had so many more important things to focus on right now. Then, as if in slow motion, she saw a blush rise in his neck, travel through his cheeks, and go right up to his hairline. 

“The shift …” he mumbled. 

“Mine,” she confirmed.

“But the visit to Steele’s farm…?”

Now it was Cate’s turn to flush. “Things got … complicated. I wasn’t ready for the barracks to be such tight quarters.”

“What has that got to do with Franklin Steele?”

Cate winced. She rubbed a hand over the back of her neck. “I didn’t visit Franklin Steele. I just … borrowed some things from his laundry line.”

“I don’t understand.” 

“Uuugggh, I … my monthly … courses … came. And I needed … supplies.” 

If it were even possible, Schaefer flushed brighter. If the room had been any dimmer, he might have lit it up. 

“Right. Got it,” he confirmed, his lip curling uncomfortably. 

A long, awkward pause thickened the air. The walls of the small cell suddenly felt very close. 

“And the sneaking around the officer’s quarters?” 

Cate’s eyebrow quirked. “Following me, then, too?”

“Of course I did! I thought you were spying for Chrissakes!”

“Well, that explains why your feet are so filthy.” 

“Just answer the question.” 

“The officers have private latrines.” She shrugged. “The risk of trying to use them outweighs the risk of being caught with my pants down in the soldier sinks.” 

Schaefer nodded slowly. “And that’s why you wanted to be corporal?”

“Yes.” 

“So you could use a private privy?”

“When you say it like that, it sounds ridiculous.” 

“That’s because it is ridiculous.” Schaefer took off his cap and rubbed his hand through his hair, making it stand up like prairie grass before he replaced it. “So when you disappeared for a call of nature, you weren’t technically lying.”

“Not usually. Nothing particularly unnatural was going on, if that’s what you mean.” 

Schaefer leveled a pointed look at her. “I wouldn’t exactly call anything about this ‘natural’.”

Cate met his eyes defiantly, unprepared for how deep that comment struck. She had a thousand things to say on that matter, but they all came at once and her tongue got stuck. She exhaled slowly and looked away. “People see what they expect to see.” 

Schaefer’s eyes skimmed over her body unabashedly, his eyebrows knit in confusion. Her skin tingled under his assessment.

“You’re too tall for a girl,” he said at length.

“Indeed.” 

He crossed his arms, looking at her like some sort of confusing piece of artwork. “But why?”

Cate blinked. “I should think it’s quite obvious.”

He stared at her blankly. She sighed. It looked like she was going to have to spell it out for him. “If I want to fight for the Union, I have to be a man. So I became one.”

It was perhaps an oversimplified version of what happened, but she really had no interest in his opinion on Richard and her failed marriage. 

“What could be so important in this war to make you give up your entire life just to fight?”

“I could ask the same of you.” 

He tilted his head to the side as he looked away, nodding. “Fair enough. You said you had proof?”

“What?”

“What do you have, some sort of papers or something?” 

She stared at him. He stared back. 

“Papers,” she said slowly. “Like, some sort of woman papers?” 

He frowned. “When you say it like that it sounds stupid.” 

“It is stupid. Schaefer, I don’t need papers. I have this.” She swept her hands down the sides of her body. “What more proof do I need?”

He blushed again and Christ, if she didn’t revel in causing it. The idea of having to reveal her body as proof was both mortifying and the slightest bit tantalizing. The part that was tantalized also served to further mortify her. Her eyes swept up to the cell door and back. The only thing worse than being caught fighting again would be getting caught in a more compromising position. She wasn’t so ruled by her senses to fall victim to such a foolish temptation. Besides, just because she was a woman didn’t mean that Schaefer would automatically have interest in her anyway. If men were that simple, surely she’d have been married years ago.

Schaefer looked at the floor and grimaced embarrassedly. “Oh, I … I don’t need that kind of proof. I really don’t.” 

There, as she thought. Cate swallowed against any potential feelings of self-consciousness. He glanced up at her again and his expression, so confused and embarrassed, was an image that she might keep for later, just to remember how soft and vulnerable he could be. “But, I … I just really don’t see it. I don’t understand. You don’t look like a woman.” 

The words stung. Perhaps if she hadn’t been so attracted to him, it wouldn’t have felt so cruel. He certainly didn’t mean it to be (for once). And it wasn’t anything she didn’t already know — she was too tall, too broad of shoulder, too foul-tempered. Her face was too angular, her brows too thick, her expression too critical and off-putting. These were the things that ensured she was unattached until twenty-six. These were the things her father leveraged towards her when she’d wanted to reject Richard’s attention. They were the same things that had dogged her for years.

Certainly, she was still a veritable outcast, but at least during this past month at Fort Snelling, she could say what she wanted. Even if all the attention she’d received since enlisting had been negative, at least they had known she was there. In a dress, she became completely invisible. Silenced. No more interesting than a sideboard. 

So yes, it did sting to hear him point out how unfeminine she was. But it was also vindicating. The attraction she’d been harboring aside, she’d been working hard to ensure she kept up, performed, and maintained her facade. Here was proof it had worked. Even as she was telling him that she was a woman, he still couldn’t see it. This proved that she was better suited to the male sphere to begin with. If she could get out of this situation, maybe she could find a way to belong here. Only Schaefer stood in her way. 

“Thank you, that was the point,” she drawled. 

“What did you … That is, how …?” He gestured vaguely around his chest. 

She rolled her eyes. “I have stays on.”

“Like a … corset?” The way he hesitated to say it was adorable, like he’d never even seen one before. It suddenly struck Cate that he probably hadn’t. Coming from a small, newly-founded town, the youngest of three brothers — was it possible Henry Schaefer had never seen a disrobed woman?

He seemed so much older than Williamson, but now that she thought about it, he was closer in age to him than he was to her. He just looked older. 

Cate pressed her lips together to keep a cat-like grin from creeping across her face. “Mmhmm.”

His eyes widened as something came together for him. “Last night, I felt like there was something strange about your back. Was it laces?”

It had not even occurred to her that he might feel her laces through her shirt while they shared a bunk. She realized her mouth was open and she closed it. “Most likely.” 

He had not realized his mouth was open yet. He looked at her now with unfiltered curiosity, but he didn’t seem to share the tension she was experiencing. He looked more like he’d discovered some new species and was utterly fascinated; his embarrassment had faded and he now regarded her like a novelty. She shook her head. If she got through this, she’d be sharing this cell with him, using the same chamber pot, sharing the same bunk once they got out. Better to rip all the mystery out of the situation in one fell swoop. The more he knew, the less he would want to find out. Then maybe he’d leave her the hell alone. 

Cate lifted her overshirt up and over her head, then shrugged off her suspenders. Schaefer made a choking sound. She’d already set upon her shirt buttons before he managed to get any actual words out. 

“Wait, uh, what are you doing? That’s not necessary,” he insisted, flapping a hand at her as he glanced toward the cell door. “Seriously, stop,” he hissed. “I believe you.” 

Her shirt had a buttoned placket that went down to her sternum. She pulled the two sides of her shirt apart and revealed the top of her working stays, stained yellow with sweat and compressing her bosom such that only a small, vague mound appeared across her chest when she pulled the shirt taught. 

“Alright, I get it, I get it,” he rambled, averting his eyes to the rough-hewn wood floor. He was leaning against the far wall, as far as he could get from her. 

“Good,” she said, buttoning her shirt back up matter-of-factly. “Now, will you keep your mouth shut?” 

Schaefer rubbed his forehead with his fingers, eyes still steadfastly on the floor. “Yes. Alright. Yes, yes, you have my word.” 

Cate felt like she was exhaling fully for the first time since he’d confronted her in the scullery this morning. “I had better.”

⸻

Henry sat on the hard floor of the cell, rats be damned, worrying the splintering wood planks with his fingers and trying his damndest not to picture Smith naked. 

He — she — sat on the other side of the room, but with the cell so small, they both had to curl their legs under themselves to keep from touching. 

It all made a sinister sort of sense, but even after Smith had shown her stays to him, he was having a hard time reconciling the snide boy he’d come to loathe with the woman she’d revealed herself to be. He knew intellectually, but his eyes could not perceive it, even as her baby-smooth cheeks and arch neck unmarred by an Adam’s apple confirmed her story. 

The entire revelation had additionally served to ruthlessly castrate his anger towards Smith. While he still resented him for being such an insufferable little jackanape, he couldn’t blame him either. Of course she wanted to keep people at a distance. Of course she pushed him away. Of course she punched him in the jaw. She did it all in defense of her secret. 

He made a half-hearted attempt at reviving his resentment, but all he could muster was a sort of desperate embarrassment. He’d tried to pummel her. He would have too, if the others hadn’t intervened. And regardless of whether she was a woman or a man, he’d known he had the superior strength and he’d fought her anyway. Even after all the training in sparring and self-control, even after his brothers had beat on him for sport, he’d still done it. It shamed him deeply. 

The only thing he could muster that even remotely resembled the energy of his previous sentiments was a sort of mild irritation that he’d become her unwitting accomplice. It was a completely inappropriate and unsustainable charade, one he was now complicit in. Not even complicit — he was her bunkie, he could be implicated for colluding with her and his moral character could be called into question. 

He should have been furious with her. But he wasn’t. In fact, the more time that passed in the cell, the more he found curiosity to be his dominant sentiment. His shame, embarrassment, irritation, and dislike couldn’t compete with the growing fascination, the multiplying need to know her story. 

 “Smith?” Henry startled himself that he’d spoken the name aloud. “But … uh … how?” The dam of polite interest had been breached.

Smith leveled a flat glare at him. “Could you be a little more specific?” 

“And … why?” 

“That’s an entirely different question than ‘how,’ which I must point out, is also not a complete sentence, much less a complete question. Besides, haven’t we already covered that?” 

“Were you a schoolteacher?” 

The efficiency of the withering look Smith set on him made him more confident in his guess.

“No.” She crossed her arms and looked at the wall. 

Henry peered at her, trying to imagine her in a dress. He still could not do it. He tried to think about everything he knew about Smith, all the clues he’d gathered. None of them — not the frequent privy visits, the sneaking off, the shift (which, now that he was no longer in need of it as evidence, he had every intention of throwing down the latrine) — offered any threads that he could form an inference from.

“Are you actually from St. Anthony?” 

Smith’s glower deepened. “Yes,” she replied, almost indignantly.

“Are you actually a lumber… man…?” Henry shook his head. What a stupid question.

“No. They don’t tend to let ladies dance the logs.” Her eyebrow quirked. He thought it might have been amusement. 

“How long have you been dressing this way?” 

“Not long. Just since June.” 

Henry’s mouth dropped astonishedly. “That’s not long at all. That’s … quite impressive, actually.” 

“Thanks.” Deadpan. 

“What made you do it?” 

Smith opened her mouth and then shut it again. She regarded him under the shadow of her thick brows, the masculine of the brow and the feminine of her round eyes battling for dominance in the composition of her face. It took a long moment of her searching his face, her eyes becoming markedly more narrowed, before she said, “That’s not any of your business.” 

“I’ve been unwittingly made your accomplice, so I should think I’m entitled to something,” he replied more defensively than he expected. “Besides, you said you’d answer my questions.” 

“You are not an accomplice. If anything, you’re a blackmailer. You backed me into a corner. I could either tell you the truth or accept the consequences of your more baseless accusations, which, as outrageously unfounded as they were, would have certainly led to more scrutiny than I am willing to bear.” 

“Blackmailer?” he squawked indignantly. “I was trying to protect —”

“ — Military secrets?” she mocked. “Yes, of course, very noble. How dare I suggest otherwise.” 

Henry glowered. “I already know the most explosive secret. What’s the harm in telling me the story?” 

“No.” 

He threw his hands up. “Ugh, you’re impossible.” 

“Good.” 

They fell into silence. Though she had made clear how she felt about answering his questions, every moment he was left to think, he felt like he concocted a thousand more.

“Salutations, fellas!”

A voice greeted them from outside the cell. The sound nearly made Henry jump out of his skin. He scrambled to his feet and turned toward the door. “Is that you, Elias?”

“The very same. Are you all done fighting, yet?” 

Henry and Smith exchanged significant glances. 

“Yes, sir,” Smith said firmly. 

“Oh good,” Elias said quickly as the lock turned in the door. “Because there’s been a munitions shipment and our barracks was chosen to do the heavy lifting. We could use the extra hands.”

Henry stood and waited for Elias to open the door. 

“Is Lieutenant Thomas amenable?” he asked reluctantly.

Elias shrugged. “If it were up to him, you’d sleep here for a week, but speaking for the squad, your arms are needed more than your spirit needs crushing. He’s begrudging, but he’s given leave for us to let you out. Just give him a wide berth.” Elias leaned in, leveling a serious stare at the two of them. “And if you ask me, I would make sure that you never, ever use your fists to solve problems again, unless it’s a Reb you’re pummeling.” 

Henry nodded earnestly. All that nervous suspicion, the sleeplessness, the anger, felt like it had been swept out from under him, and now he just felt exhausted. Exhausted and completely confused. He could hear Smith’s footsteps follow behind him as he squinted against the light flooding through the windows of the guard room. 

Jacob was outside to greet them.

“Oh, thank God,” he exclaimed. “I was getting nervous you’d be in lock-up for my wedding!” He grinned at Henry but also afforded a friendly glance at Smith. Henry looked quizzically between the two. Were they friends? Since when? Had he been so wrapped up in his own bunk theories the past week or two that he’d become completely oblivious to anything else happening? 

“Catch up!” cried Williamson from the gate. The four of them jogged to join him. The young man grinned ear to ear. 

“We’re getting guns!” 

⸻

XVII

Henry spent the entire time lugging crates up the steep incline road watching Smith. He still could not believe he was a woman. (She. Dammit, he could not keep that straight.¹) Smith kept up with the rest of the squad. He lifted, strained, and juggled his end of the crates without complaint. He staggered, but no more than the average youth of similar height and build. Physically, he fit in. It was an anomaly Henry could not reconcile.² He tried to imagine the boy in a dress, and while he had previously understood that his smooth cheeks would allow for the illusion, he could not reconcile a gown as Smith’s normal state of dress, not even the most plain farmwife frock.

When the guns were secured in the armory and the squad was finally dismissed for some leisure before supper, Henry trailed behind the others, his eyes still following Smith absently like he’d entered some kind of trance. He didn’t notice when Jacob doubled back and fell into stride next to him.

“Well,” Jacob said, “how was jail?” 

“Terrible,” Henry replied, his eyes still following Smith. She didn’t walk like a woman at all. No sway of the hips or anything. She veritably swaggered, as if there were anything to speak of between her legs. Dear God, what was wrong with him? Henry scrambled to think of something — anything — else as he felt his cheeks heat. 

“So Smith’s not a spy after all, then?” 

Henry let out an exasperated sigh and scrubbed his face with both hands quite miserably. “No. He’s not.” 

“I’ll admit, I thought you were as mad as a March hare talking all that nonsense in the mess yesterday, but then he snuck out in the middle of the night and I couldn’t help but wonder if maybe you might be on to something. Did you find out what he was up to?”

Henry felt discomfort slither over his shoulders as his eyes fell away from Smith and regarded Jacob sidelong. He was going to have to tread carefully to keep his word. He wished he could think straight right now. He felt all higgledy-piggledy, still reeling at the ever-expanding implications of Smith’s revelation. He hadn’t had any time to figure out what he was going to say to the other boys, who apparently still wanted to know what had become of Henry’s wild spy theory despite finding it whole-heartedly ridiculous. 

Henry sighed. “Let’s just say that when I confronted him about it in confinement, he laughed at me about as hard as the rest of you did.” 

“So he denied it?” 

“Of course,” Henry shrugged. “He had a reasonable explanation for everything.” 

“Did he?” Jacob pounced, an eager smile on his face. “Do tell!”

Henry held back a grimace. He’d never been particularly good at lying, but this was too big to fumble for lack of skill. Not only was his word of honor on the line, but Smith’s very livelihood as well. Who knew what kind of miserable life she’d have to return to if she was found out. Women didn’t just throw their whole lives away to fight in a war — not when they were expressly prohibited from doing so. A young woman with a loving family and good prospects wouldn’t do that. Besides, the amount of teasing he would earn after Smith was gone would be nothing in comparison to the inevitable inquiry into Henry’s own moral fitness. Regardless of what Smith said, he would be culpable for sharing a bed with her. There were only so many salacious implications that could be borne; the command couldn’t just turn a blind eye to it. 

“He made me swear I wouldn’t tell,” Henry hedged, but as soon as he said it, he knew it was too enticing to put Jacob off. 

“Oh, sure, and now you’re putting Smith’s confidence over mine?” Jacob said. “Come on, tell me. I promise I won’t let it get back to him.” 

Henry shook his head. 

“It was a woman, wasn’t it?” Jacob guessed. 

Scheisse. Henry’s heart hammered and he tried very hard to keep his face straight as he shrugged. This was terrible. He’d lose every last shred of honor if even his word was worth nothing. He felt sweat bead at his temple.

“One of the laundresses, maybe?” Jacob added, watching Henry’s face carefully for confirmation. 

Henry slowly exhaled the breath he’d been holding. His friend meant that Smith had been liaising with a woman, same as they’d surmised when he’d made his accusation in the mess yesterday. He hadn’t guessed the truth. Henry pressed his lips together and shrugged again, perhaps a little bit too hard.

“Or was it actually Franklin Steele’s daughter after all?” Jacob laughed. 

“That’s ridiculous,” Henry said, but he was so tense that his tone struck more squawky than flippant. 

“Wait, are you serious?” 

“I’m not telling you, Jacob.” 

“Yeah yeah, I know, you’re not telling me. But seriously — Steele’s daughter?” 

Henry winced, because he was a terrible liar and he was out of his depth and he just wanted Jacob to leave him alone. 

“Oh my God.” Jacob’s eyes were like saucers. He looked ahead of them at Smith striding across the parade ground towards the mess. “You’re kidding.” 

It didn’t matter whether Jacob was barking up the wrong tree or not. People trying to pry into Smith’s business presented the same level of threat regardless of the reason, and now, whether he wanted to or not, Henry was in the business of protecting Smith’s secret. Though, if Henry cared to admit it, he had no desire to tell at all. The entire thing was too mortifying to consider. If suspicion of Smith’s sex was leveraged, what would they do to confirm it? Strip search her? He had no affection for Smith, but he couldn’t bear the idea of any woman enduring such indignities. Besides, he couldn’t deny that he was somewhat thrilled to be the only one in on the secret. 

“I’m not telling you anything, Jacob. Leave. It. Alone.” 

“Absolutely, mum’s the word,” Jacob pledged giddily. 

Henry grabbed Jacob’s shoulder and stopped him near the well. “Jacob, I mean it. It’s none of our business, and if rumors start going around about Smith’s personal business, it’s going to wreck whatever tentative truce we have, so please please keep your big mouth shut.” 

“Jeez…” Jacob rolled his shoulder out of Henry’s grip. “I didn’t know you’d become such fast and loyal friends. I won’t say anything.” 

Jacob looked away, and Henry felt him go distant. God, this was so frustrating. He couldn’t throw off his actual friends over this, but he had no idea how to walk that line when the inquiry was so direct.

“It was just a call of nature,” Henry grasped. “Last night. It was nothing. I guess I read one too many dime novels or something.” 

Jacob gave him a wry look. “Or we’re just so bored, cooped up in here drilling every day, we gotta come up with something interesting to talk about.” 

Henry chuckled. “Yeah. You’re not wrong there.” 

“If I have to play one more game of euchre, I think I’m gonna scream.” 

⸻

That evening, the boys played a raucous game of poker — not euchre — with the squad from Hastings in the barracks. The tiny room was hot and muggy and smelled of sweat. Instead of icily refusing to play and pretending to sleep, Smith allowed Williamson to cajole him to join. He seemed more relaxed than he had in weeks. He drank from the flask when it was passed and swore mightily when he lost. And he actually smiled, laughed, and told a couple jokes, although most of them were still at someone else’s expense. It seemed a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. Perhaps because that weight had been transferred directly onto Henry’s.

As Henry glanced up at Smith from across the poker table, he had to keep reminding himself that Smith was a girl. He kept stumbling over pronouns in his own mind, struggling to remember to think “she” instead of “he”. He’d seen Smith’s corset, for God’s sake. He’d seen the curve of her waist, the swell of breasts laced down. He had no doubts on that count. But once that was concealed again under baggy, government-issued clothes, he started to wonder if he’d imagined it all. He sighed. He’d just spent too many days obsessing over Smith, too much time worrying about the girls Jacob had brought to the fort, and now, with this behemoth secret weighing him down, he was bound to feel confused.

Henry was just about to ante up when he froze in horror. 

The night he’d met Jacob’s fiancé, after returning from guard duty. He’d been tired and frustrated and had spent too much idle time agonizing over Miss Walsh and his endless parade of romantic failures. And he’d brought himself off in his bunk. And he’d heard Smith do the same. 

And Smith was a woman. 

Henry choked and stood suddenly, hitting his knees against the table and knocking his chair over. The boys around the table all looked up at him, startled. Smith glared at him. 

“I, uh,” Henry stammered, all too aware that his cheeks were burning red. “C-call of nature.” 

And he dashed out the door, outside into the twilight of the parade ground, where a few men from Company H were stubbornly finishing up a game of baseball despite the waning light. 

He rubbed his hands over his face and groaned helplessly. He squatted down on his haunches and tried to just breathe. Could women even do that? Bring themselves off? He tried to imagine how it would even work, based on what he’d heard from Elias and others, based on dirty CDVs he’d seen, but his brain kind of short-circuited at the mental image, mostly because he just could not imagine Smith with the soft body of a woman. He’d thought nothing much of Smith doing that when he thought he was a boy, but now? Knowing the truth? He was completely and utterly mortified. 

“You’re not going to just shit right there, are you?” 

Henry looked up and over his shoulder at Smith, standing there with his hands on his hips — her hands on her hips — like some sort of disapproving lieutenant. He stood quickly, dusting his hands on his trousers, and resisted the impulse to assume the position of the soldier.

“What’s got you all skittish?” she asked pointedly, lifting a dark eyebrow. “Not having second thoughts about our arrangement, are you?”

Henry shook his head. “No, no, it’s not that.” His cheeks burned and he twisted his mouth up painfully.

“If you’re worried about being bunk-mates, don’t be,” Smith said firmly. “I don’t want you to treat me any different.” 

Henry blinked, grateful for the excuse to not discuss that wayward evening a few nights past. There was no way — none — that Smith hadn’t heard him. He’d actually restrained himself less in an effort to make Smith uncomfortable. He lurked around the fringe of the memory, reluctantly noticing the traces of elevated pleasure he’d experienced, something he’d thought was just due to competitiveness or pique when he’d believed Smith to be a man. He shook his head and forced himself to just forget about that. He was nervous about bunking up with Smith. That was it. No need to mention something as mortifying as the other night. 

“Yeah,” he agreed vaguely. “Should I  … just sleep with my back to you?”

He could not stop blushing. He’d be lying if he said that there was no part of this realization that was arousing, though he would rather jump off the ledge of the Half Moon Battery than let Smith know that. Instead, in a matter of an hour, he’d have to crawl into bed with her. Sheisse. 

Smith crossed his — her — arms. “At the very least. I don’t want anything to do with being bedfellows. This is a forced arrangement. The sooner we muster out and I can get a space of my own, the better.” 

Henry swallowed hard. 

“But I guess,” Smith added, shrugging, “better you than anyone else.”

“…What does that mean?” 

“Well, you already know,” she murmured in a conspiratorial tone. “So I don’t have to worry about you finding out.” 

She flashed her eyebrows at him significantly and headed back into the barracks. Henry’s mouth felt strangely dry. At the doorway, she turned around and leveled a dark brow at him. 

“Weren’t you going to the privy?”

Henry stared back at her blankly. “Huh? Oh, yes.” He turned and stalked unsteadily toward the soldier sinks, his ears burning. 

⸻

Lights out found Henry reluctantly climbing up the scaffold to find a way to wedge himself between the edge of the bunk and Smith, who’d already retired and curled up in the corner where the bunk met the wall. For all intents and purposes, she appeared to be sleeping, but there was a stubborn set of her chin that made Henry think it was more of a willful approximation than actual sleep. Now, to slip into the scant space left for him with the bare minimum amount of contact. (He didn’t care to admit that this was likely the greatest challenge he had faced in the army thus far.)

He crawled forward, the straw mattress sinking noisily under his knees. When he was ready to set himself down on his side, he sort of listed away from Smith to turn and nearly lost his balance, looking five feet down over the edge with some trepidation. Across the way, one of the Hastings fellows sniggered at him.

Henry glowered and tried to remind himself that in the dark, he was nothing more than a shadow. No one could see how embarrassed he was, or that he was sort of half aroused by this entire humiliating experience. He tried to squeeze himself alongside her with careful control, but he ended up awkwardly flopping down, his rear-end nearly on top of hers. 

“Watch it,” Smith snapped and shouldered him off. Henry’s face was already screwed up into an agonized grimace, so he couldn’t very well grimace further, but he sure did blush harder as he scooted himself away from her. Nervous about sharing a bunk indeed — how could any man be stoic in a situation like this? If Smith expected him to calmly forget that she ever told him her secret while he was sharing a bed with a woman for the first time in his adult life, well … she could go jump in a lake.³

There was nothing for it. In order to create the proper distance between his body and hers, he had to perch precariously on the edge of the bunk. He could do it, but as soon as he fell asleep, he’d either relax back into her or fall off the edge. It was untenable. Slowly, in minute increments, he let his body sink back into hers. Perhaps if he did it slow enough, she wouldn’t notice. 

This was ridiculous. None of the men in this room were able to find their own space in their bunks. Everyone was smashed together; there was nothing for it. If Smith didn’t like it, he — she — could keep it to her damn self. 

He let himself relax, his spine unfurling against hers. She didn’t respond; she merely shifted slightly, though he couldn’t say whether it was towards or away, per say. She was warm and firm and her hair tickled at the back of his neck. He could detect the ridges of lacing along her back, just as he had the night before. Only this time, he knew what it was and that knowledge made his skin buzz. Oh Hell, if he was going to be her co-conspirator, he was going to need to get over whatever embarrassing response all this was. 

He had to keep his eyes open because when he closed them, he kept imagining Smith’s face on the nude carte de visite Elias had kept under a loose floorboard in their lodgings on the farm in Faribault. He banished the image resolutely. He was not going to let himself get worked up over that. Smith was nothing like the soft, curvy image from that CDV. From head to toe, she was hard, angular, and unwelcoming. The farthest anyone could possibly be from the velvety embrace of the woman in the CDV. 

It was just because they were in such tight quarters, facing down three years of guard duties and battles and death. It was the kind of environment that stoked the fires of passion, that made a man search for the nearest warm comfort, lest he be marching off to his death. The idea of Henry’s own death felt abstract and slippery, but the vague feeling that he was running out of chances was high. It was high with everyone. 

A chorus of snores bounced around the room. He was exhausted from carrying munitions up the bluff, his face ached where Smith had punched him, and for all intents and purposes, he should have fallen asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow. But his tiny world, encapsulated in and around the walls of the fort, had been turned upside down today. It might have been the longest day he could remember. He had so many questions, and in the absence of answers, he couldn’t resist the temptation to speculate. 

He imagined Smith’s father and brother had enlisted in the First Minnesota and she couldn’t bear to be left behind, so she enlisted too. Maybe she had no family and no means of survival, so she disguised herself as a man to earn a better wage. Or perhaps, she was running away from a cruel, pro-secession family who found her Union loyalty extreme. 

Henry could speculate all he wanted, but he was still no closer to the answer. He didn’t even know her real name. The fact that she lay beside him, her breaths deep and even in sleep, her back warm on his… Her mystery enticed him in a way that he’d never felt when he thought he was ferreting out a spy. 

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Footnotes

1. Though a singular use of “they” as a pronoun was used at this time, the gender binary was so restrictive in mid-19th century settler-colonial culture that the concept of using a pronoun besides “he” or “she” would not have occurred to Henry. ↩︎
2. “Significantly, no soldiers are known to have been detected as women because they were a danger to themselves or others on the parade ground or because they were inept on the battlefield.” Blanton, DeAnne and Lauren M. Cook. They Fought Like Demons: Women Soldiers in the Civil War. Louisiana State University Press: Baton Rouge, 2002. Page 58. ↩︎
3. While bedsharing between people of the same gender was extremely common in the mid-19th century, sharing a bed with a person of the opposite gender outside of wedlock was a condemnation of the moral character of both parties. ↩︎

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