Aurie, when she heard about this, enlisted Henrietta to take dictation from Mr. Deverell, whose hands stiffened like an old man’s from working the wheel all day. Aurie could keep painting or play with Bernard and Mr. Deverell could wrap his hands in hot flannel, if Henrietta didn’t mind writing out his responses. Proud to be trusted with this task, she shaped her words carefully and saw how he softened difficult news and circled around his own problems at the pottery without actually lying. Among the letters to which she wrote a response was this, which Izzy sent in the middle of April:

Dear Maurice, This morning it is raining very hard and the wind is rattling our tent so we can hardly hear each other. Thanks for the news about Albert’s sister, which cheered him. I’m glad the girl helping Aurie is working out (hello to you, if you are reading this! Your handwriting is good but you spelled “tonsillitis” wrong. Also furlough is not spelled “ferlow”). Vic has been sick with chills and fever but the doctor claims he’s doing better now—good thing, as we hear rumors that we’ll be moving soon. Ezra, on picket duty last week, says the rebs across the Rappahannock are buzzing about and he thinks we may be marching upriver. Two secesh boys captured; good spirits, no shoes. What news of Hinckley’s arm?

“Hello to you!” An invitation, perhaps; she might ask him some things directly? Until she read his letters he’d been one of those grown boys who, like the others who’d signed up last summer, she knew only by sight: large, loud, unaware of her except as an annoyance. Now she could imagine the way he thought. She looked forward to seeing what he wrote next.

But no news came for several weeks until, at the beginning of May, a short piece in the Crooked Lake Gazette noted that the two armies camped all winter on opposite sides of the river had finally engaged. The following day, an article in the Rochester paper gave a clearer sense of how long the battle had lasted and how bad the fighting had been.

On May 8th, Henrietta came in after school to find a short note from Vic on the kitchen table: I’m alive. In the back bedroom she heard Aurie singing to Bernard, who was insisting she give him some yarn. I have heard from several friends that Izzy was wounded, but so far I can’t find him.

Nothing else, only a line on the outside of the dirty envelope. You must pay postage—I am out of stamps. None to be gotten here.