| return to Softer Things The fever had come over him slowly during the retreat southwest from Gettysburg. They had left in the middle of the night, all of them bone-tired from the fighting and the killing. A battle took more from a person than anyone could ever understand. They had marched behind Lee to the Potomac only to find it swollen with the rain that pelted them relentless. Arriving there, they sat in the mud and waited for the general to tell them what to do next. Josh Sikes shivered and collapsed sometime during that wait. He never knew but the hospital tent that held him leaked rain onto his feet. The fever took him home. Sarah Jane moved the supper dishes off the table as he sat at the table smoking his pipe. It was summer, their last summer together, their last supper together, too, and they both knew it but didn’t want to say it. Sarah Jane moved the last plate from the table and came to stand in front of him, her backside leaning on the eating table. "You really going to fight?" she asked him. He just nodded his head, yes, and drew on the pipe. She leaned back to sit on the table as she drew her summer dress up her legs. The dress collected around her middle and exposed the dark triangle of Sikes’ affection. "And you going to leave this?" she asked directly, "You leaving this for that boy staying down on the Palmer place?" She had never had that boy, and they both knew it, but she talked about it a lot. "I ain’t going to be satisfied with no summer corn for this pussy, Josh Sikes," she continued. The fever held him for days. Nobody paid much attention to him. He was one of many, but he had all his limbs. If his fever broke, he’d live and fight again. If it didn’t, he’d die and be buried with the many. Josh stood from his chair and unbuttoned the pants she’d made for him with her own hands. His cock came clear of the cloth and he held it to show her. She grinned a grin that he carried for two long years as she lifted her legs. The fever gave him a glimpse of that grin before it took him. It was still raining as the long column worked across the makeshift bridge on the Potomac.
copyright, 1999 |