Charlie held out his arms to the little girl. "That is all right, Tess." He turned to Jeremiah. "Will you excuse me while I settle this young’un down?"
Jeremiah looked on with wide eyes. Yankee officers were supposed to be devils that ate small children for breakfast. This one was a gentleman who treated him like an honored guest and a grown up, and who comforted little Southern girls who mistook him for their father, not the ogre he had be taught to expect. Still, Yankees killed his father. The boy was getting more and more confused. All the things he had been told did not match his own experience. Duncan was kind, almost like an uncle and the Colonel was a gentleman with an accent more obviously Southern than his own. As he watched, he thought hard about his own father, killed only a couple of months before at the battle of Winchester.
While Jeremiah brooded, Charlie took Em into his arms. "Were you a good girl today?"
"Um huh." One finger went into her mouth and she cuddled against the scratchy blue wool covering his shoulder.
"My good girl. You ate all your supper?"
A little head nodded. Charlie looked inquiringly at Tess who smiled and nodded as well.
"So why were you being naughty when Tess told you it was time to go to bed?"
"Want hugs, Papa. Miss Papa. Em not sweepy." Em yawned and cuddled into his shoulder.
Charlie smiled and held the little girl closer. She wrapped one hand around one of his buttons, sucked on her finger a little, then promptly feel asleep on his shoulder. He held her for a few minutes to make sure she was sound asleep, kissed her on the forehead, and then handed his small bundle back to Tess. "Thank you, Tess. Tuck her in well."
"I will, sir."
"Good night."
The young woman left the room carrying the child. Jeremiah sat in his chair, looking thoroughly confused.
Charlie watched the boy, waiting patiently for him to speak. Since he had arrived, Jeremiah had been sullenly polite, distant, and obviously angry, both at the Union troops because he blamed them for his father’s death and at his mother for demanding that he be a gentleman and mind his manners. Perhaps the boy was finally ready to talk.
"Why does she call you papa? You are not her father, you are just a damned Yankee passing through." Jeremiah had been dying to ask Charlie this very cutting question for a while, but had not found the courage before tonight.
"I think it is because I look something like her own father, and she misses him."
"Why would she want to call a Yankee papa? I would never do a thing like that. It insults the memory of her father."
"Jeremiah, she is just a little girl who does not understand or care about North and South, Yankee and Confederate. She just misses her daddy. I look like him, am kind to her, and make her feel safe. I like to think that if her father were alive, he would appreciate the care I give his daughter in his place."
"Sir. My father would not appreciate it if I called a Yankee ‘‘Papa.’ He would be offended and feel betrayed. My father fell at Winchester, fighting with Jubal Early against your side."
Charlie was a little startled. Jeremiah already had a number of confusing problems to deal with. The possiblity that his father had been killed by one of Charlie’s own troops in the heat of battle was something that he needed to address and quickly or this mercurial and proud boy might find himself in a great deal of trouble very soon.
"So tell me, Jeremiah, do you understand why we are at war?"
The youth gave him a very startled and confused look. "Everybody knows why we are at war."
"Do they really? Why do you think we are at war?"
"Because you Yankees are evil and tried to take our Southern way of life away from us. You tried to free all the nigger slaves and make us work in factories like you make your shanty Irish slaves work in New England."
"If that is true, then how did the war start?"
The boy looked unsure. "Uh, Yankees shot at innocent Southerners down in Charleston, South Carolina?"
"What if I told you that was not why we are at war and that the first shots of the war were fired by Southerners?"
"Jeremiah, men go to war for many reasons. But the fact that we have gone to war does not make one side right and the other wrong, nor does it mean that one side are all devils and the other all angels. It just means that we disagree and have failed to find a peaceful way to resolve our differences."
Charlie stopped for a moment. The confusion on Jeremiah’s face was stumping Charlie. An inspiration came to him.
"Tell me, Jeremiah, have you ever gotten into a fight with someone at school?"
Looking a little abashed as well as startled by the sudden change of topic, Jeremiah responded, "Yes, sir. And I caught the very devil for it, too. The teacher gave me what for, and when I got home, my Da gave me a good licking and sent me to my room without supper. He said I was raised to be a gentleman and a Christian and that I should find a way to settle my differences without fighting like a common street urchin."
"Well, wars are what happen when large groups of grown men do exactly what you did in that school yard. The biggest difference is that when grown men fight, like the Union and the Confederacy troops are doing now, instead of a few bloody noses, hundreds of men are wounded and killed. War is a terrible thing, a time when we fail at being gentleman and good Christians. A time when we cannot find a way to resolve our differences by talking and resort to fighting like common street urchins."
"But you are a soldier. Your job is to fight."
"That is certainly true. And if you ask the career soldiers –– the ones who have devoted their lives to the army, as I have –– you will find that the biggest proponents of finding peaceful settlements to our differences are the very men who are willing to fight if necessary. I think I am a soldier because I know if a fight starts, I can help end it more quickly. That way, I can help keep the damage to a minimum."
"That is not what I heard my father saying. He said we should whip you all back to the North." The boy did not add the rest of his father’s statement ‘‘like dogs to their kennels.’ Somehow, he felt that would be disrespectful of this imposing soldier who said the strangest and most puzzling things.
"Perhaps, Jeremiah, your father was behaving the same way you did when you got in the fight at school."
Charlie let the boy sit and consider that idea for a while. After a long pause, Charlie steeled himself to say what needed to be said. "Jeremiah, I want you to hear this from me, and not overhear it out in the camp. Our troops fought at Winchester with General Sheridan’s troops, against General Early. I do not know, and to be honest, no one will ever know, if your father was killed by one of my soldiers. But I do know that the men who fought –– on both sides –– fought bravely and honorably. Your father was one of the unlucky ones, sacrificed to our inability to find a peaceful resolution to a very difficult problem. I am very sorry."
The boy sat in stunned silence. No tears came to his eyes. Somehow, this was not what he had thought war was about. War was supposed to be noble and glorious, not about grown men who could find no better way to solve their differences than by shooting and killing one another. But as he though about it, he could see how his father sounded just like the boys at school, blustering and threatening and cocky. Before he could say anything or gather himself to react with anything other than a sort of numb confusion, the parlor door opened and the ladies filed in, all still chatting eagerly about the wedding plans. Charlie and Jeremiah looked at each other, and by silent, mutual consent, returned to their quiet games of checkers.