"It would be nice," he said slowly, his voice—wistful? "Or it might be, if you could make states get along with each other like you say. I don't know how you'd do that, though. They couldn't figure it out three hundred years ago, and we are what we are now on account of they couldn't. Maybe you ought to write a book about what things would be like if we still had united states here."
Had he said that in a different tone of voice—and not a very different tone, either—he would have been mocking her. But he meant it. She could tell. "I never thought about writing anything longer than e-mail and school papers," she said.
"I bet you could if you set your mind to it," he said, and he still sounded serious. "You've got a way with words."
Beckie suspected a way with words wasn't enough to get her a book. The idea might be worth thinking about, though. Writing was a better job than plenty of others she could think of.
"I don't reckon we want any writers in the family," Gran said. Beckie didn't know she'd been listening. Her grandmother went on, "We go in for things that are a lot more ordinary, a lot more reputable."
If anything could make Beckie bound and determined to try to write a book, a crack like that was it. But before she could give Gran the hot answer she deserved, somebody rang the doorbell. "Who's that?" Mr. Snodgrass said. He went off to take a look. Beckie followed him so she wouldn't have to talk to Gran. Her grandmother followed, too, so she could go on giving Beckie what she imagined was good advice.
"Hello, Ted," Mr. Brooks said when Mr. Snodgrass opened the door. "And good-bye, too, I'm afraid."
"What's up?" Mr. Snodgrass asked. "Why do you think you can get out of here? Why do you want to try?"
"Because Ohio soldiers are coming up the road from Park-ersburg," Mr. Brooks answered. "They're not coming very fast. I think the Virginians mined the road before they pulled out. But I don't want to get occupied, thank you very much. I'm going to try to get back to Charleston. I have a chance, I think."
"Take me with you," Gran said.
"What? Why? I can't do that!" Mr. Brooks yelped.
"Because I'm not about to let my sister lord it over me on account of her state's stolen the part of my state where I'm staying," Gran said. That probably made perfect sense to her. It didn't make much to Beckie, and she would have bet it didn't make any to Mr. Brooks.
She would have won her bet, too. He said, "I'm sorry, Mrs., uh, Bentley, but I don't see how I can take you."
But then Beckie said, "Maybe you'll need help finding Justin."
Mr. Brooks looked at Mr. Snodgrass. "Will you tell them they're crazy, Ted? I don't think they're paying any attention to me."
"Well, maybe they are and maybe they aren't," Mr. Snodgrass said. Mr. Brooks looked as if he'd been stabbed. Mr. Snodgrass went on, "When the Virginians come back—and they will—there's liable to be a big old fight around these parts. Can't blame a couple of furriners 'cause they don't care to get stuck in the gears."
"I'm no furriner!" Gran said indignantly. Beckie stepped on her foot. Gran was too dumb to see Mr. Snodgrass was doing their work for them.
"I suppose you want to come along, too," Mr. Brooks said sarcastically.
"Nope—not me. Don't want anything to do with the big city," Mr. Snodgrass said. "If a fight rolls by here, I'll take my chances. Don't mind a bit."
That flummoxed Mr. Brooks. He looked at Gran and Beckie. "You sure? I'll find you a hotel or something when we get there. With Justin and his mother in town, my place is crowded like you wouldn't believe."
Did he think that would stop Gran? "My credit card still works, I expect," she said. And if she ever ran low, Mom and Dad back home would pump more money into her account. Maybe cell phones in Charleston weren't jammed. If they aren't, Beckie thought, / can talk to California again. My folks must be going out of their minds. Then something else occurred to her. Maybe they're worried about Gran, too. That wasn't kind, which didn't mean it wasn't true.
Mr. Brooks opened and closed his mouth several times. He looked like a freshly caught fish. He didn't want to take them— that was as plain as the nose on his face. But he wasn't rude enough to say no. "How soon can you be ready?" he asked. "I want to get out of here, and I'm not kidding."
"Twenty minutes?" Gran said.
"Be at my motel at"—Mr. Brooks looked at his watch— "half past, then."
Most of the time, you could count on Gran to take too long to get ready to go wherever she was going—and to complain that everyone else was making her late. Here, she seemed to see that Mr. Brooks wasn't kidding and would leave if she didn't show up on time. She threw things into her suitcase as fast as she could. Beckie didn't pay a whole lot of attention to her, because she was busy doing the same thing.
"Thank you for taking care of us and putting up with us for so long," she told Mr. Snodgrass. Gran might have waltzed out the door without saying good-bye.
"I was glad to have you here, especially after. . . ." He didn't finish that, but Beckie knew what he meant. He went on, "Are you sure you're doing the right thing?" He answered the question himself before she could: "But you want to find out about your young man, don't you?"
"He's not exactly mine," Beckie said, which wasn't exactly a denial. She added, "Besides, I've got to keep an eye on Gran." That was all too true. Mr. Snodgrass nodded, understanding as much.
Gran had already started trudging up the walk to the street. Pulling her wheeled suitcase along by the handle, Beckie hurried after her. Mr. Snodgrass closed the door behind them. It seemed very final, like the end of a chapter. What lay ahead?
Eleven
Justin wore a dead man's uniform. He ate from a dead man's ration cans, plus whatever else he could scrounge. The real soldiers called it liberating or foraging, depending on whether they smiled when they said it or not. A lot of it was just plain stealing. They didn't seem to care. Once Justin's belly started growling, neither did he.
The real soldiers . . . Justin grimaced. If he wasn't a real soldier himself by now, he never would be. He'd helped a wounded buddy. He'd shot somebody. He'd killed somebody. He might have killed other people, too, but he was sure of that one kid. He expected to have nightmares about it, maybe for the rest of his life. The only thing he'd missed was getting shot himself. Even if the Negro rebels had a better cause than the Commonwealth of Virginia, he couldn't make himself sorry about that.
"Smitty," the sergeant said.
"Yeah, Sarge?" said Justin's newfound friend—comrade, anyway.
"Take the new guy here and go on over to that sandbag revetment on the corner for first watch. Cal and Sam will relieve you in three hours."
"Right, Sarge," Smitty said, which was the kind of thing you said when a sergeant told you to do something. He nudged Justin. "C'mon, man. If they couldn't shoot us out in the open, they won't shoot us when we got sandbags in front of us, right?"
"I guess," Justin said. "I hope." Smitty laughed, for all the world as if he were joking. He'd proved himself, so Smitty must have thought he was. Oh, joy.
"Safer here than back there," Smitty said when they got to the revetment. He kicked a sandbag. "Bulletproof as anything."
He was bound to be right about that. The sandbags were two and three deep, and piled up to shoulder height—a little less on Justin, because he was tall. "Yeah, it'd take a rocket to punch through this stuff," he said, and then, "Have they got rockets?" He wondered if Beckie's uncle had smuggled in some along with the rifles she'd had her feet on.
"I reckon they do," Smitty answered, and then said something rude about Ohioans' personal habits. "But they've got a lot more small arms. We came up against everything from the stuff we carry down to .22s and shotguns. Must give them nightmares about keeping everybody in cartridges."