her. After a quick visual check to ensure all of her charges were settled in their seats, she gave her driver the green light to go.
At first there was plenty of excitement, the kids wound up, chattering back and forth across the aisle. Eventually, they settled down, talking in quieter groups as the drive progressed. Caleb had turned sideways, his back to the window so he could view the children. One or two had already grown attached to him. Lisa Gaines and Trudy Walker, caught at that awkward stage of tween-to-teen, alternated between asking him questions and giggling behind their hands, caught up in a harmless crush. Arianna eventually saved him from constant attention by suggesting the girls “give Mr. DeCardian a break.”
She turned in her seat, facing the window to converse with him. “I’m sorry,” she said as afterthought. “You’re probably used to being addressed as Colonel DeCardian.”
“I haven’t been ‘Colonel’ for several years. I’m retired.”
“Yes.” She was struck again by his young age in comparison to his rank. “You must have joined the Army right out of high school.”
“College. I attended West Point.”
The prestige struck her silent. Behind her, she could hear Danny Tusoni complaining to Scott Albright about the awful taste of the new Monster drink at the Quik Mart. The lament droned into a din and became white noise in the background, snarled with the hum of the van’s fat tires. Caleb was watching her in that manner that made her uncomfortable. She realized there was something magnetic between them, that–God help her–he was magnetic.
“I make you uncomfortable,” he said, and then changed the subject in an effort to ease the tension. “How long have you been doing these trips to Gettysburg?”
After that, they talked easily. She told him about her interest in the Civil War and he listened politely. Sometimes it was hard explaining her connection to a war that had happened over a century before her birth, how she admired the strength and fortitude of the men and women who had lived through such madness, suffering dreadful loss and hardship, emerging to put a nation back together. Self-conscious, she laughed, only then realizing she’d been monopolizing the conversation. It was easy to get carried away discussing something that inspired her.
“I’m sorry. You must think I’m silly.”
“Not at all. You view history with passion.”
“Don’t you do the same?”
He gave a bitter snort. “I have a more fatalistic viewpoint.”
“I’m not romanticizing tragedy,” she protested.
“I know that. That’s why I admire your passion. It’s easy to forget people like Lee, Longstreet and Chamberlain.” His voice grew soft and distant. “Or Hipplewhite.”
“Who?”
He shook his head. “No one.” He glanced around the bus. “I wonder how much they know of history?” He nodded toward the children.
Most did fine in other subjects, but struggled with history. “I think they enjoy running around the battlefield more than listening to facts about dead men.”
Caleb grinned, an amused gleam in his eye. “Then we need to make it interesting for them.”
She’d never had the benefit of a co-tour guide, which was how she came to think of Caleb throughout the day. He added interesting facts and anecdotes about various parts of the battlefield, the men who’d fought there and the Civil War in general. He brought a fresh perspective that kept even her students intrigued, his view of the conflict unlike any she’d encountered. After a while she abandoned her preset curriculum in favor of spontaneity.
Caleb talked about things she’d never stopped to consider: how the temperature had climbed to nearly ninety degrees on July third, the last day of battle, the sweltering intensity of the sun bronzing the sky like brass. The leaves on the trees had crumbled into ash, scorched by the belching black smoke of cannon and musket fire.
Danny Tusoni, who Arianna had expected to be restless and bored, listened raptly as Caleb pointed out the infamous Wheatfield, relaying how a man could walk across the twenty-three-acre plot by stepping on the bodies of the dead at the end of the day, his feet never touching the earth. He spoke of such things as if he’d seen them, lived them. The faint melancholy in his voice left Arianna unbalanced.
“You’ve obviously done a lot of research on Gettysburg.”
Caleb shrugged. “Like you said, it was a tumultuous time.”
In history, she mentally added, disturbed it seemed so real for him. Ten minutes later, the girls were getting hungry as the clock inched closer to noon.
“Ms. Hart, when are we going to stop for lunch?” Beth Regal asked, joined in a chorus of whiney fidgeting by Lisa and Trudy.
“Soon,” Arianna promised. There was a picnic area a short distance down the road. After that, she could let everyone burn off excess energy by hiking up Little Round Top. “I hope everyone packed a good lunch. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m hungry.”
“I brought a sandwich, soda and chips,” Beth piped up. “And I have oatmeal cookies for desert.”
“What about Slim Jims?” Danny wanted to know. “Lunch ain’t squat without a Slim Jim.”
“Don’t say ain’t, Danny,” Arianna corrected. “And I think you need more than a Slim Jim for lunch.”
Caleb looked puzzled. “It’s got to be better than hardtack.”
“What’s that?” Scott Albright asked.
“A type of food soldiers ate during the Civil War. It was made of flour, water and salt. Sort of like a hard cracker. Not very appetizing, especially when weevils laid their larvae inside. Most of the men took to calling them ‘worm castles.’”
“Ewww!” Trudy proclaimed.
Caleb chuckled. “If you think that’s bad…” And he went on to relay how as the war progressed and times grew worse–especially in the South where hardships were more severe–people were sometimes reduced to eating things like snakes, rats, locusts, cats and dogs. The girls shrilled their revulsion while the boys found this new information worthy of intense examination.
“You mean like real rats?” Danny was incredulous.
“You could buy a dressed one in a butcher shop in some cities for about two dollars and fifty cents,” Caleb confirmed.
Arianna shook her head. “Caleb. You could have picked a better topic before lunch.” But she couldn’t stop smiling at how animated the group had become, the boys exuberantly discussing rats hanging in shop windows, the girls indignant that anyone would consider eating a cat or a dog. Somehow, despite the subject matter, everyone managed to down a sandwich when they stopped at a shaded picnic area.
Several times Arianna caught Caleb staring at her bare legs when he thought she wasn’t aware. It brought back the memory of his kiss and the tantalizing heat she’d felt wrapped in his arms. Each time, he averted his eyes, wisely downplaying his attraction with the children so near.
A
