~ Waltz In Time ~

by

Diana Lee Johnson

Ginny couldn’t walk through the lobby with her splotchy red cheeks and puffy eyes, so she passed the building to enter by the side exit Jonathan discreetly used the morning before. As she rounded the corner of the building, she came face to face with the shabbily dressed Confederate who’d been stalking her.

She gasped, but did not scream. It was daylight, there were people within screaming distance, and there were no vehicles into which he could spirit her off. She had to keep a cool head.

“What do you want?” Her voice was sharp and agitated.

“Who are you?” came his raspy response.

“Who am I?” She choked. “Who the hell are you?”

“Are you a spy?” He had a strangle hold on her arm now and she was becoming frightened.

“A spy?” she shouted in disbelief.

“Yes, a spy! I saw you go to the Union camp. You and that, that, turn-coat!”

She had a lunatic on her hands, but what should she do? Should she humor him, scream for help and chance provoking him? She didn’t know, but she had to stay calm. He must be really caught up in this play-acting of the festival.

“Of course I’m not a spy.” Hoping to distract him and escape, she spoke in a calmer tone. “I was invited to visit the Union camp to entertain. We were in a brief period of truce, to exchange coffee for tobacco. I went over to the Union camp with the permission of Captain Childress.”

“Captain Childress?” He ran his fingers through his dirty hair, blinking and sighing as he did. “I don’t know him.”

“He’s the commander of the encampment here.” It was not easy to keep her voice even with her arm in the vice his hand made.

“The boy. Who was he?”

“The young sergeant?”

He nodded.

“He was Sergeant Blackburn.”

“I don’t know him either.” He hung his head and closed his sunken eyes.

It was only now that Ginny’s senses began to function. She became acutely aware of a pungent odor coming from the man and his dirty uniform, or semblance of a uniform. He ran his fingers through his dirty hair again and she could see what looked like dried blood on his head. That must have been why he had what looked like a bandage on his head the first time she saw him on the bridge.

She reached out tentatively toward the wound. It was filthy, infected. “You need to get to a hospital,” she urged.

“No hospital. Not ‘til I figure out what’s goin’ on here.” He pushed her hand away, which didn’t upset her. His hair and the wound could be teeming with varmints.

She almost gagged. “You can’t go around like that. Let me call someone, please.” She spoke softly.

“NO!” he shouted and turned as if to run, but instead he sank onto a stone garden bench near the side door of the inn. Putting his head in his hands, he wept.

“Please, don’t.” She kept her voice calm and reassuring as she reached for his hand with no thought to the smell or filth.

“Nothing is right. Everything is so confused. People look the same for a moment, then they look different. Lights, lights are not from candles and gas, carriages approach the bridge with no horses…” He grabbed great hunks of his hair in both hands and, cowering and rocking as he sobbed, sank from the bench to his knees on the cold ground.

“Are you by any chance trying to tell me that you think it’s eighteen sixty-three?”

He looked up at her. “Is it sixty-three already? I didn’t think Christmas was here yet.” His words were beginning to slur, his eyes becoming glazed.

“Look, I don’t know who you are, or where you came from, but let’s get one thing straight right now. We’re just playing at the nineteenth century here. It’s just a Civil War festival, that’s all. You and I both know it’s nineteen ninety-three.”

He jerked to his feet. “You lie!” He tightly grabbed both her wrists. “You stand there in those clothes and make sport of me. I have been shot, beaten and imprisoned, but I know who I am, and what the century is, even if I am not sure of the exact date.”

She struggled to free her hands, but he was strong; though he looked as if he could not whip a squirrel.

“Let go of me!” She tugged harder. “I’m telling you, you’ve had too much to drink, or the blow to your head has scattered your brains. It is nineteen ninety-three.”

“Do not mock me. He whispered through tightly clenched teeth.

“Look, I’ll try one more time. We are all in costume for a festival.” She pulled her skirt high enough to show her bare knees, covered only by panty hose, over her boots. “Does this look like the underwear of anyone from the Civil War?”

His eyes were wide, then his face reddened.

“Put your skirt down, woman. Have you no dignity? Are you some camp-following harlot, that you should be so brazen? This is mad.”

“You won’t get an argument from me on that.” She flopped her skirt back down. Then her voice softened. “Look, why don’t you go home and sleep it off.”

“Home? I don’t live around here. I’m from Petersburg.”

“Then head for Petersburg. It’s only a couple of hours away. It’s early, you can make it, if you’re in any shape to drive.”

“Two hours? Drive? Drive what?”

“Here we go with the second hundred years bit again,” she grumbled under her breath.