Johnny Reb

Johnny Reb

by Ann Douglas

(ann_douglas@hotmail.com)

Part Two

About eleven o'clock in the morning on the second day since John had left, Ashley said a prayer over the graves of her parents. As was her habit, she laid what wildflowers she could find by their small stones.

She missed them terribly, her father most of all. She could still hear his voice when she closed her eyes at night, telling her the stories he told her as a little girl. Stories of the old country that his own parents had told him when he was young. Her favorites were his tales of the little people, and how he always promised her that some day she might find one of their treasures and live happily ever after.

"This land is my treasure, Papa," she said to the empty air. "And I'll never let anyone take it from me."

The sudden sound of a horse at the front of the house caused Ashley to jump to her feet, interrupting her prayer and vow. It seemed these days, horses usually meant Yankees.

Having learned her lesson in a way that would never again be far from her mind, Ashley now made sure her daddy's rifle was never far from her side. Making sure it was set and loaded, she rushed back to the house around to the front entrance.

To her relief, there was but a single horseman. More so, the coat he wore was far from Union Blue. Her face filled with joy as she saw the face of the rider.

"John!" she cried out as she lowered the gun and ran around to the side of the horse.

She stopped cold for a second when she saw the ripped leg of his trousers and the dark red bloodstains on the dirty material.

"Oh God," she cried even louder, "you're hurt!"

"They just nicked me a little," he said as tried to dismount, only to practically fall into her arms.

Thankfully, John was small enough for Ashley to carry him into the house. She doubted that he would've been able to make it on his own. Carefully, she led him to the small bed she'd made up in the living room.

"Let me look at this," she said as she grabbed the bowl of water she had poured earlier and dipped a clean rag into it.

John's assessment that they had only nicked him turned out to be true. The wound in his lower calf had been bloody for a while, but was already clotted. Carefully she washed it and then wrapped his leg in a bandaged she had boiled clean.

"What happened?" she asked, now that she was sure he wasn't badly injured.

"It's over," he replied, a touch of deep sadness in his voice.

"What's over?" Ashley asked, clearing away the bowl and washrag.

"Lee surrendered to Grant two days ago," John explained, "At some place up by the Appomattox River."

"Two days ago," Ashley said, wondering if Sergeant Rourke and Private Butler had known that. Not that it really mattered. "But how did you get shot?"

"After I got rid of the bodies, I started back along the Wilshire Road," John began, sitting up on the edge of the bed. " I came across some more dead Federals. From the look of it, they'd only been dead an hour or so. Old habits die hard, I guess, so I checked them for anything I could use."

Ashley recalled him doing the same with the two soldiers the day before. He had left whatever food he had found in their sacks with her.

"I found this bag on a Yankee Major," he said, indicating the worn pouch he'd strapped to his body, "and I guess I was so tired by that point that I didn't hear the patrol that came up behind me."

He handed the bag to Ashley who was surprised to find it very heavy. More concerned about her new friend that some war booty, she put in down alongside the bed.

"Two of the dead men were in civilian clothes. I don't know if they were Southerners or Yankee scouts. One of their horses was still there, and it didn't carry no Yankee Army brand. I jumped on the horse and took off, just as that bunch of blue bellies came up on me. I guess they figured I was the one that bushwhacked the dead Major."

"Thank God you managed to get away," Ashley said in relief as she wiped some of the grime from his face.

"Hasn't been a Yankee born that could catch me once I'm on a horse," John said with a touch of pride. "Course they can get lucky once and a while, that's how I got this," he added, indicating his injured leg.

"Well you're safe now," she said as she stood up, a memory of her beloved Stephen boasting of his horsemanship in much the same way. Until the day a lucky shot had ended all of their dreams. "You just rest now."

"But I wanted to tell you ab ..."

"I said you just rest," Ashley repeated in the tone she used to use when she cared for her younger brothers. "There'll be plenty of time to talk later."

On top of the long hike after he'd disposed of the bodies, John had been in the saddle for almost a day, avoiding the Federal Patrols that seemed to be everywhere. Once he finally gave in to the wisdom of her forceful suggestion, he slept for the rest of the day.

The sun had already set by the time John finally stirred. Ashley had made a stew out of vegetables from her garden and a squirrel she had managed to catch. Compared to the hard biscuits he had been living on, John considered the simple fare a feast.

After dinner, Ashley had carried enough water from the well to at least half fill the tin bathtub that her husband had sent all the way to Baltimore for as a anniversary gift. She started to help John undress, but he quickly objected to the idea.

"Don't be stubborn," she admonished him. "I was a married woman and I helped raise two younger brothers. I've seem what a man looks like under all that filth. Let me help you, you're hurt."

"I'll manage," John insisted.

"Men!" Ashley said as she threw up her hands in resignation and left him to bathe alone. "Just make sure you don't get that bandage wet," she added.

While John bathed, Ashley had found some of Robert's old clothes. They might not be a perfect fit, but at least they were clean. Averting her eyes in deference to John's silly need for modesty, the twenty-three year old opened the door to the small washroom halfway and pushed the pants and shirt inside.

John emerged a while later, looking cleaner than he'd probably been in weeks. With his blond hair cropped short and his face lacking even the semblance of facial hair, he now looked even more like the teenage boy Ashley had first taken him to be. Robert's clothes were a little loose on him, so he'd use a small piece of rope as a make shift belt.

Despite his earlier rest, he was still a little tired. Ashley insisted he take the bed, and in this case he was too drained to argue. They talked for a while and learned a little more about each other.

Ashley told him of her life and how she had lost her husband and two brothers in the war. When she mentioned her younger brothers who were serving out west, John said he shared her hope that they might have survived. Inwardly, having seen so many of his comrades' fall as much to disease and infection as enemy action, he thought it was more than likely that they hadn't.

John in turn described how he had grown up on a farm that was smaller, but otherwise not too different than this one. His parents had been much poorer than Ashley's, but still they managed to have a fair life. He'd joined up with the militia as had all the other young men in the district. It had made his father so proud when he had first come home in his uniform. A few months later, one of the neighbors had written him to say that both his parents had died of the fever.

When Ashley inquired about any brothers or sisters, since it was unusual for a farm family to have only a single child, John reluctantly explained that his mother had such a hard time with his birth that the local doctor said that another pregnancy might kill her. Something in that answer seemed to increase the fatigue that he felt and he faded off to sleep soon after.

Sitting in her Grandmother's rocker as she watched John sleep, Ashley began to find herself filled with long buried stirrings. Aside from the incident with the Yankee soldiers, which she considered an act of violence rather than passion, it had been almost two lonely years since she'd been with a man. There had been nights she had given in to temptation and pleasured herself, but it really didn't compare with having a warm body pressed against hers.

John was more boy than man in many ways, she said to herself, yet he was already older than she had been on her wedding night. Additionally, if you factored in the life he'd led, and what he had seem in his short years, then he was almost older than Stephen had been the night they'd first made love.

"Listen to me," the twenty-three year old chided herself in response to her thoughts. "Next I'll be telling myself he deserves a reward for saving my life."

Deep down however, Ashley knew that whatever the reason she finally gave herself, she didn't have the strength of will to continue her long abstinence. There had been too many empty nights to let a chance for a brief happiness to pass.

Ashley rose from the chair and undid the ribbon that held back her hair. She shook her hair loose and then used her hands to straighten it as best she could. Reaching behind her back, she undid the few buttons that held her dress together. She laid her dress on the chair, following it a minute later with her undergarments.

The dim light of the remnants of the fire illuminated her nude form as she ran her hands up and down her body, stopping as she cupped her breasts. Her mounds, like the rest of her body, were no longer as firm as they once were. Too many days of hard work and missed meals had taken their toll. Still, she was sure John wouldn't be disappointed.

Lifting the blanket she had draped over him, Ashley climbed into the bed and pressed her body next to his. She wrapped her arms around him, drawing him to her. For the moment, she was content just to share his warmth. With a feeling of comfort she had so missed, Ashley closed her eyes and drifted to sleep.

Ashley awoke hours later, the light of the spring Moon filling the room. John's presence next to her felt so welcome that she was now sure she was doing the right thing. Softly she kissed his cheek, then ran her hand across his body. Silently, she undid his rope belt to give his borrowed pants enough slack to allow her hand to slide inside.

Her fingers reached between his legs as a look of confusion filled her face.

"I'm afraid you're not going to find what you're looking for," a now awake John said.

"What happened to you?" a confused Ashley asked as she quickly withdrew her hand.

"Nothing at all," John said. "I'm as normal as you."

"As normal as ..." Ashley started to say when the obvious suddenly occurred to her.

"That's right," John confirmed the look of understanding on Ashley's face.

"But you were in the Army."

"My father was devastated that his only child was born a girl," John explained as if it was the most natural thing in the world. "So to please him, my Mama raised me to be his son."

"And all your time in the Army," a curious Ashley asked, "no one ever suspected?"

"I just kept away from the doctors, what little good some of them were," John went on. "Thankfully I was never hurt bad enough to have anyone examine me too closely."

"None of the other soldiers ever ..."

"I don't exactly have the same sort of body as you do," said the young woman. "The kind that draws men like honey does flies."

Ashley recalled that the uniform John had worn was almost as baggy as the clothes she had lent her. Whatever small bosom it concealed, it was practically unnoticeable.

"With all those men around, you never felt ..." The older woman paused for the right word to describe what she herself had felt at that age "desires."

"Being raised as a boy, I never did feel toward other boys what girls are supposed to feel," John concluded. "And the only man who ever tried to put his hands on me was an old Sergeant a year or so back. And that was because he thought I was a boy. I never gave him the chance to find out otherwise."

Remembering what she, Ashley had to force herself to think of John as that, had done to the two Union soldiers, she shuddered to think what had happened to the sodomite inclined Sergeant.

"It's all so unbelievable," Ashley said.

"I guess that sort of changes your plans for tonight," John apologized. "I'm sorry."

"It doesn't have to," Ashley said, a mischievous gleam in her eye.

Years ago, when Ashley had been at Miss Thompson's School for Young Ladies, she had learned a marvelous secret. Fourteen and filled with the urges that came with emerging womanhood, she had been taught by one of the older girls a lesson in how to deal with those newly discovered drives. It was a lesson that definitely hadn't been part of the school's curriculum.

The girl, whose name she remembered was Leslie Ann Barnes, was two years older than Ashley. One cold winter night, long after Miss Thompson and the rest of the staff had retired for the evening, Leslie had slipped into Ashley's room. With a gentle hand, the older girl had taught her how to satisfy those urges in a way that would allow her to go to her future wedding bed still a virgin.

In the months that had followed, Ashley spent many quiet nights exploring both her body and that of Leslie, learning how to both receive and give pleasure. In time, those sessions grew to also include some of the other girls that Leslie had taught. Only her summons home the following summer to help care for her younger brothers after her Mother's passing ended the sharing aspect of her special education. At least until she married Stephen.

"Do you trust me?" Ashley asked John.

"Yes," she answered.

"Then just relax and let me show you something I learned when I was about your age. Something wondrous."

Ashley unbuttoned her brother's borrowed shirt, discovering a thick bandage wrapped around John's chest, an important part of her male identity. Carefully she undid the covering until John's small breasts were exposed to the warm night air. Ashley thought they were so much nicer than her own, firm and compact with bright pink nipples at the center. She ran her fingers over both nipples, feeling them grow hard at her touch.

"Mmmm," John moaned at the first touch of a hand not her own. "That feels nice."

"I know things that feel even nicer," Ashley smiled, remembering the nights spent with Leslie.

An expression long absent appeared on John's face and an emotion thought dead filled her breast. An emotion called Joy.

Ashley kissed the tips of John's small breasts, tickling them with her tongue. All the while her fingers massaged the soft flesh around them, sending a tingling sensation across the younger girl's chest.

John was wrong, Ashley decided, when she insinuated that the she had an unattractive body. True, she hadn't been gifted with those attributes that men so prized, but out of her filthy uniform and cleaned of all the grime, she was very cute.

As she continued to play with John's breasts, Ashley became aware of John's hands on her own. The smaller girl began hesitantly touching the larger mounds.

"It's all right if you want to play with them," Ashley laughed. "In fact I'd like it if you did. I'd like it even more if you kissed them."

John's eyes lit up as she brought her head down to Ashley's bosom and began licking and kissing the warm flesh. If anything, Ashley thought, she resembled an even younger girl suddenly playing with a new toy.

"You're doing very well," Ashley complimented. "Just kiss them like you were kissing someone's lips."

"I've never done that," John said as she suddenly stopped what she was doing.

"You've never kissed anyone?" a surprised Ashley asked.

"Just my Mama and Papa," John answered, "but I don't think that really counts, does it?"

"No dear, it doesn't," Ashley said, thinking that she had kissed her first boy at thirteen.

Yet when she thought about it, Ashley shouldn't had been surprised at John's admission. After all, growing up masquerading as a boy, who would she have had the chance to kiss.

"Well that's something we'll have to change right now."

Ashley sat John up on the bed and pressed their lips gently together. It was a brief kiss, the kind John had seen her parents give each other hundreds of times.

"That was nice," John said as their lips parted. "Can we do it again?"

"Of course," Ashley promised, "but this time, I want you to open your lips. You're going to feel my tongue in your mouth. When you do, I want you to tickle it with your tongue. Do you understand?"

"I think so," said John, now eager to try anything Ashley suggested. As their lips touched, then opened to allow their tongues entry, Ashley remembered the first time she had tried this with Leslie. Back then, she had been the one in John's position. To her delight, the excitement of the moment was no less with the situation reversed.

They kissed three more times, each embrace longer than the last. A world never imagined was opening for John, one that she wanted to explore to the fullest.

They kissed a fourth time as Ashley totally undid John's belt and help her out of her pants. The girl wore no underwear. Ashley didn't remember seeing any when she had earlier taken away her dirty clothes. The question of how John handled her time of the month came to mind, but she quickly dismissed it as a question she could always ask later.

Ashley's hand, now much rougher than she would've liked it because of all the labor she did daily, moved between John's legs. No longer surprised by what she found there, she quickly found that most sensitive of spots and began rubbing it with her fingers.

"Oh, that is wonderful," John gushed, remembering Ashley's earlier promise.

"Is it better like this?" Ashley asked as she moved her fingers in a different way. "Or do you like to do it like this instead?"

"I've never done this either," John said.

This, Ashley found harder to believe than the fact that John had never kissed before. How could a woman, even a hidden one, not even accidentally discovered the pleasures her own body was capable of. Even before her first night with Leslie, Ashley had know that it felt good when she touched herself there.

Yet John insisted that it was true. She knew that men could pleasure themselves. Many times, late at night she had heard fellow soldiers moaning in pleasure as they played with their cocks. The first time she had heard it, she had quietly crept close enough to actually see what her fellow soldier was doing to produce such a reaction. Knowing that she lacked the equipment to do that to herself, she wrongly assumed that only men could do it. In her sheltered life, she had never known a woman who could tell her different.

"You actually watched a man play with himself?" Ashley asked, thinking that she had not even seen her husband do that. He would've been too embarrassed to have let her watch.

John replied that she had watched it a few times. It had fascinated her. Even more shocking to Ashley, but seemingly just part of army life to John, the young woman described watching men perform on each other the same unspeakable act that Sergeant Rourke had threatened Ashley with.

Once, John added, she had even seen an older soldier couple with a younger one in the way men normally joined with a woman. It was from that example that John had immediately understood what the older man had in mind when he tried to lure her into a similar secluded spot.

The thought that men might orally please each other brought a totally new thought to Ashley. Could a woman do that to another woman? The idea of doing that to any man, even her late husband made Ashley ill. Yet the prospect of trying it on the young woman sharing her bed filled her with excitement.

"John," she asked softly, "what those men did to each other with their mouths, would it bother you if I tried that with you?"

John immediately agreed. In her simple way of thinking, she reasoned that if women could please each other with their hands the same way she had seen men do, they use their mouths as well.

Ashley parted John's legs over the side of the bed and got down on her own knees. She bushed the thick bush of hair covering the smaller girls mound, then moved her face close enough to kiss it. Following her own earlier advice to John, she kissed it as if she was kissing a lover on the lips, pressings her tongue deep between the folds of the teen's womanhood.

The effect on both of them was immediate and electric as they shared a bond deeper than either had ever known. Not even Leslie in their most passionate embrace had ever suggested anything like this.

Using her fingers in conjunction with her tongue, Ashley brought pleasures to the girl on the bed that John had never imagined. Pleasures that Ashley joined in as the nectars of John's excitement filled her mouth.

Time passed and the strength of those pleasures grew until the smaller girl felt her body convulse with an intensity she had only seen in men dying on the battlefield. Only in this case, the joy of life rather than the despair of death now consumed her body.

"What happened to me?" John asked breathlessly as her body stopped quaking.

"You had a climax," Ashley said as she sat next to John, her own heart beating almost as rapidly.

"A climax?" John repeated, unsure of the meaning of the new word. "Is that the same as those men playing with themselves had?"

"Yes, my dear, it was."

"Then I think a climax is the most wondrous thing of all."

Ashley just smiled, she wasn't going to contest that point. Nor was she going to argue a few moments later when John asked if she could try and do the same thing to her.

For someone with far less experience than Ashley in matters of the flesh, John proved to be naturally quite skilled at their mutual new discovery. In less time than it had taken Ashley, the just deflowered virgin brought the older woman to a rousing climax of her own. It wasn't as good as some of those she remembered with her husband, but it was far superior than any by her own hand. Still, she reminded herself, this was new to both of them and would undoubtedly get better in the future. That is if there was a future beyond the morning dawn.

That thought brought Ashley back to reality. In less than a few days, she had gone from a deep emptiness to a sudden immersion into the horrors of war. Then, just as quickly, she had found comfort and caring in the arms of someone who had delivered her from that horror.

"John," she said as she held the younger woman's hand, "are you planning to leave here soon?"

The short haired blond seemed to consider the question for the longest time. The longer she took, the more Ashley feared what her answer might be.

"I really have no place to go," John replied. "If you'd let me, I'd really like to stay."

Ashley's heart filled with an elation she had not known in years. Elation cut short when she saw a look of concern on John's face.

"What's wrong?" she said, thinking that John might have misinterpreted the question as a desire by Ashley for her to leave. "Of course I want you to stay."

"I was just thinking that I'll never be a lady like you are," came her reply. "I've spent too much of my life trying to be a man. I don't know how to be anything else."

"That doesn't matter," Ashley said rapidly, her excitement causing her to trip over her words. "I don't care if you live as a man or a woman. Just so long as you live as my lover. We'll sort all of the rest out as we go."

"Then of course I'll stay," John said. "I want to stay with you forever."

"It won't be easy," Ashley said, "there are hard times ahead."

As full as her heart was at this moment, with the excitement of new love, long years of hardship caused Ashley never to forget her practical side. She didn't want John to make a decision in the afterglow of their lust that she would come to regret later.

"I know that you know what it means to be a farmer," she said, "how rough life it can be. But just in case you've forgotten, it's very different than being in the Army. The enemy isn't someone you can shoot back at. It's the rains and the lack of it at times. It's watching your crop die and not having enough to eat, or money to buy what you can't raise or make yourself."

"I haven't forgotten that," John said, remembering the hard times on her parent's farm. She also remembered how the love they shared had gotten them through the worse of times."

"All that I have, what little it is, I want to share with you. However, most of what I have is sorrow and an uncertain future. I want you to consider all of that before you decide."

"All right," John said after a few moments reflection. "I've thought about it. I'll stay under one condition. Just as you want to share all that you have with me, then I want to share all that I have with you."

"Of course," Ashley agreed, knowing that all that John owned was what she carried on her back. It was obvious to her that John had said it just to feel like an equal. "We'll share everything."

"Then this," John said as she picked up off the floor the knapsack she had taken off the Union Officer and dropped it between her and Ashley, "is my contribution."

Ashley had totally forgotten about the bag of which John had been so excited about this morning. Curiosity overwhelmed her as John indicated that she should open the bag.

The straps quickly gave way and Ashley pulled back the thick flap. Her eyes opened wide and a sense of disbelief filled her.

"Mother of God!" Ashley gasped as she looked into the sack.

Filled to the rim of the large bag were Federal twenty-dollar gold pieces.

"Are these real?" she said, realizing that there had to be a small fortune.

"As real as you and I sitting here," John smiled.

"I can't believe it," Ashley said.

They sat there in silence for the longest time. Ashley was too stunned to say anything. Although her family had led a comfortable life before the war, they, like most of their neighbors, had always been cash poor. In the dark times ahead, these coins could be worth twenty times their prewar worth. Used carefully used, they could be the difference between life and death.

"We have to hide these," Ashley finally said. "So that no one else knows we have them."

John smiled at her use of the word "we", a sign that she already thought of them as belonging together. A sign that after all those long months of just surviving to the next day, both John and Ashley had a reason to think about the day beyond tomorrow.

"We can hide them in the morning," the younger girl said as she closed the bag and reset it on the floor. "Right now, I want to try all those things you showed me again."

The two of them fell back into the bed, locked in each other's arms. For the briefest of moments, just before she felt the touch of John's lips against her own, Ashley thought she heard the voice of her father.

"Ashley, my darling," she could hear him say across the years through a little girl's memory. "May you someday find the treasure of the wee people, and with it the love and happiness that I wish for all your days."

And so they did, for all the days that followed. Even long after both Robert and Noah finally came home and met Ashley's new husband.

END