Bring the Boys Home Read Free

good Confederate underwear, so I want you to behave yourselves like good Confederates. Do you hear me?”
    “What in the world are you doing?”
    Leah whirled, feeling red coming to her cheeks. “Oh, nothing, Eileen!”
    “Did I hear you talking to those clothes?” Eileen asked curiously. But she smiled, and a dimple touched her cheek.
    “I was just having a little fun.” Leah picked up a petticoat. “See—they’re all stiff as boards.”
    “They’re clean anyway. I’m glad for that.” Eileen touched a shirtwaist that was beginning to lose its stiffness. “It’s hard enough to wash in the summertime, but in the winter it’s terrible. I just hope the soap holds out.”
    “They didn’t have any anywhere in town that I could find,” Leah said. “All the stores are out of just about everything.” She gave the older woman a close look and said, “Eileen, what’ll we do when there’s no more soap?”
    “I don’t know, Leah. I just don’t know.”
    There was a tinge of hopelessness in Eileen’s voice, and in that she was like most Southerners. The Army of Northern Virginia was now trapped in Richmond, encircled by 100,000 Union soldiers. Every day the ring grew tighter, and everyone knew that things could not go on much longer. The South would have to surrender.
    Eileen bit her lip suddenly and dropped the shirtwaist. She went to a chair and sat down.
    Leah looked at her with surprise and crossed to stand beside the chair. “What’s wrong, Eileen? Don’t you feel well?”
    “Not really.”
    “What is it? I hope it’s not something serious.”
    Eileen looked up with a smile. “I’m afraid it is.”
    “Not
smallpox?”
Leah gasped.
    “No, not smallpox.” Eileen was pale, but she managed another smile. “I’m going to have a baby, Leah.”
    “A baby? You don’t mean it!”
    “Yes, I do.” She took Leah’s hand and squeezed it. “It’s an awful time for having a baby, isn’t it? Here in the middle of a war with our side about to be demolished.”
    Seeing the trouble in Eileen’s eyes, Leah leaned over and kissed her on the cheek, then gave her a quick hug. “I think it’s a wonderful time to have a baby, and it’ll be a beautiful baby too. It’ll either be beautiful like you are or be handsome like his father. Either way, it will be wonderful.”
    That seemed to cheer Eileen. She got up, saying, “I’m all right now. I just seem to get a little dizzy from time to time. Come along, and we’ll see what we’ve got for supper tonight.”
    The two women went into the kitchen, and as they began to put together a meal, Leah said quietly, “I get lonesome for home sometimes.”
    Home for Leah was Kentucky. It had been home for her family, the Carters, and for the Majors family too, until the war had separated them. Leah had brought Colonel Majors’s little girl to Richmond, but now that he was married again she felt in the way.
    She turned suddenly to Eileen. “I think I’d better be going home soon.”
    “Perhaps you should. Not that we’re not glad to have you, but with the war going the way it is, it’s not safe for you here.”
    There was a pause, and Leah had another thought. “But if you’re going to have a baby, you’ll probably need help.”
    “You can’t stay around here for that long!” Eileen exclaimed.
    “I can stay as long as you need help,” Leah said. “Let’s talk about it later.”
    Jeff mounted the skinny army horse and sat looking down at the animal’s bony shoulders. “I think I’m about as able to carry you as you are me,” he muttered.
    But a horse was a horse. In Petersburg there were few animals—there was no feed for them. He had obtained this mount only because his father had put in a word with the quartermaster.
    “Go on into Richmond and see if you can find anything for us to eat, Corporal,” the colonel had said.
    Jeff dug his heels into the bony sides of the horse, who obliged by moving forward at a slowwalk. Jeff did not urge him. He