Prayers for Sale Read Online Free PDF Page B

arm or who’d gone queer in the head from the noise of the guns and the cannons, and the fear. But there were local boys in the guard, too, single men who ought to have joined up themselves. Ila Mae didn’t understand why they weren’t made to be soldiers. The guard was supposed to protect the women whose husbands were fighting the Yankees. But instead, they strutted around, threatening to arrest anyone they didn’t like for not being patriotic. They stole guns and crops, saying such was for the army, but the home guard sold it all and kept the money. Folks around White Pigeon knew to stay away from them. Ila Mae knew that, too, because Abram Fletcher was one of the guards.
    One morning, Ila Mae came in from cutting Christmas greens and found the home guard in her yard. The men had dragged Billy out of the house without his shoes on and tied him up in a wagon. He was bruised and had one eye nearly swollen shut from fighting with the guards. Abram Fletcher was there. “So you married a feather-legged man, Ila Mae,” he said.
    “That’s a black lie! If there’s any cowards about, it’s you, Abram Fletcher. You tied up Billy because you’re afraid he’ll fist you. How come you haven’t joined up? Are you too lazy or just too scared?”
    Abram didn’t like that, but with the other men around, some of the older ones once friends of Ila Mae’s father, Abram didn’t dare strike her. Instead, he punched Billy, saying, “Your wife would make a better soldier than you.” Billy kicked at Abram, who dodged and laughed.
    Ila Mae knew that if she said more, Billy’d get the worstof it, maybe get beat up a ways down the road. So she bit her tongue and said, “I’ll get Billy’s shoes.” There was frost on the ground, and she didn’t want Billy’s feet to freeze.
    Ila Mae went into the house and came back with the shoes, but just as she reached the wagon, Abram, who was seated on the bench, larruped up the horses. The wagon lurched, knocking Billy onto his side. The men started up after Abram. Ila Mae threw the shoes at Billy, but only one of them landed in the wagon. She picked up the other from the ground and ran after that wagon as long as she could, but she never caught up to it, and the farther it went, the farther behind she got. Finally, Ila Mae just stopped and waved and called, “I love you, Billy.”
    “I’ll be back. I promise. I’ll come home,” he yelled, as the wagon went around a bend in the Buttermilk Road. She didn’t see Billy after that. She would have followed him all the way into town then, but she couldn’t leave Sarah alone in the cabin. So Ila Mae picked up the shoe and went back to the house and fed Sarah, then walked into White Pigeon with the baby, but she was too late. Billy’d already been taken off to the Tennessee volunteers—him wearing one shoe. Ila Mae never saw him again, never knew where he went. He wrote her—one letter anyway. There might have been more, but one was all she received. Billy wrote that if he ever got the chance, he’d come home, and Abram Fletcher and anybody else who tried to make him go back had better watch out.
    Two or three months later, folks in the neighborhood spotted a soldier hiding out in the woods. They knew he was a Confederate because he was dressed in gray. Talk was thatthe soldier was Billy, but Ila Mae knew he wasn’t, because by the time Billy was in the army, there weren’t any uniforms left. Besides, the man had on two shoes. But most important, if he were Billy, he’d have come to see his family right off.
    Whoever he was, he didn’t come to the farm. Instead, while Ila Mae was sitting at her quilt frame one afternoon, Abram and some of his fellows rode up. They’d been drinking. She could tell that right off, and she was scared, because they were all young. None of the old men who might have calmed them down were with them.
    “Where’s your man?” one of the guards called out to Ila Mae.
    “He’s in the army, least he ought