Blue and Gray

Chapter Six – Ghosts on the Ohio

Written by minoan

So God grant me speed and grant me forgiveness 
and carry me all through the night.
Take me through your hills and over your rivers, 
away from this awful fight.

‘Cause I ain’t never known a man who’s ever owned another
and I ain’t ever owned nothing of my own,
so after four long years I just can’t tell you
what the hell I’ve been fighting for.

~ Justin Townes Earle – Lone Pine Hill

Shenandoah County, Virginia
June 11, 1863

Emily trembled as her husband Jonathan held her closely, their vulpine hands gripping each other tightly as they looked up at the wooden baseboards of the cabin floor. In her other hand she clutched the Bible she’d had since she was a pup, the only possession she’d had time to take. They were struggling as hard as they could to remain perfectly still and absolutely quiet. Jonathan was trembling too.

“He’s been here. Not long ago,” the Confederate captain said. “I can smell him.”

The bloodhound in the gray coat took several sniffs before continuing.

“Definitely fox, I’d know that smell anywhere. Even over yours. But since I’m not a fox, and you’re not a fox,” he said, pointing at the elderly skunk woman whose cabin he’d trespassed into, “and he’s not a fox,” he said, pointing at the nearly 9-foot tall Clydesdale soldier he’d brought along as muscle, “that right beggers the question – where’s the fox?”

“I don’t have any inkling of what you’re talking about,” the skunk woman said defiantly.

Jonathan and Emily remained frozen in the cramped crawlspace under the cabin. Lamplight shone in dimly from the room above, knifing through the slits between the floorboards. The shadow of the Confederate captain began moving towards the corner of the room, where the voice of the skunk had come from.

Clop. Ka-Klink.

The enormous shadow of the Clydesdale followed the silent steps of the captain. The wooden floorboards audibly creaked under the strain of his weight with each step. He had to duck under a wooden support beam on the ceiling of the small room.

Clop. Ka-Klink.

One of his hooves was totally bare. The other was shod with a horseshoe, but it was loose. The Confederacy no longer had the resources to ensure that soldiers got any species-specific gear they might need.

Clop. Ka-Klink.

The sound of hoof on metal on wood rang through the small cabin with each step he took.

“Well since you haven’t any inkling… we’re looking for a deserter, a fox by the name of Jonathan Turner. He went on weekend furlough to visit his sweetheart, but wouldn’t you know it? That was three weeks ago,” the bloodhound said to the old woman as she sat in her rocking chair. He put both hands on the lapels of his gray coat and pulled it tight.

“Course, two days does not three weeks make,” he continued. “Seems like Mr. Turner thought it better to run away with his young wife than report back and do his duty to God and to the Confederate States of America. Such a shame, placing her in such danger, making a conspirator of her. Bad things happen to conspirators, you know? Do you know? Because we’ve been tracking him, my friend here and myself.”

The Clydesdale grunted and glowered at the elderly woman.

“And we’ve tracked him here.”

“I don’t have any inkling, I told you! You don’t have no right to come into my house! This is trespass! You’re not welcome here, get out!”

The bloodhound picked up a framed daguerreotype off a table, a treasured and expensive photograph of the skunk woman’s husband dressed in his best suit taken years before he’d passed away. The Confederate looked at it a moment before setting it down again, facing downwards.

“You’ll find that the Confederate Home Guard affords more leeway than you might reckon to sniff out deserters, and to deal with those that aide and abet. You can find that out in any number of unfortunate ways,” 

He turned his head and rudely spit on her floor. It was a form of intimidation, just as surely as the hulking Clydesdale standing behind him was.

“Or you can take my word for it. So I’ll ask again – where is the fox?” he said, leaning in closer, looming over the frail elderly skunk.

“For the third time, I don’t have any inkling. Now get out! Get out of my home!” the skunk said sternly. She refused to be intimidated by the young captain and his hulking bodyguard. It was all too important for that, so much bigger than her own life; she knew what she’d signed up for when she agreed to take this responsibility, to let her home be used as a station.

The bloodhound smiled sinisterly as he leaned back and stood upright again.

“Have it your way then,” he said as he turned and started walking away. The Clydesdale followed, slow-paced metal and hoof steps trailing him heavily to the door. Without a word they walked out into the night.

Several minuted passed. Jonathan didn’t move. Emily didn’t move. The elderly skunk – whose name they didn’t even know but whose cabin the Union sympathizers had told them was the next station on the railroad north for Confederate deserters and escaped slaves alike – didn’t move.

Finally, she leaned down to the floorboards.

“Run, children. They’re coming back. They’ll tear this house apart,” she said in a low but firm voice.

A tense moment passed, the foxes still not daring to move.

“Run!!” the skunk finally screamed, shattering the stillness.

Jonathan and Emily crawled in a panic to the secret, hidden entrance on the side of the cabin they’d entered from and ran out into the night, north towards the forest and the hills. Behind them a line of torches was snaking through the night towards the skunk’s cabin.

- -

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
July 4, 1863

“Ain’t pushin’ off ‘til we get two more passengers. Told you that yesterday, told you that the day before. I’ll tell it to you the same tomorrow if’n we ain’t got ‘em,” Cletus said without turning to Jonathan. He was sitting on a rough chair next to the door to the interior of the flatboat.

“We can’t wait forever, captain! Don’t you understand? We’re in danger here, please!” Jonathan pleaded to the boat’s owner from the interior cabin, too scared of being seen by bounty hunters or Union soldiers to venture out. He’d called Cletus captain mostly out of flattery, for to call anyone the “captain” of such a small and crude vessel was almost laughable in itself.

“I know you are, you ain’t gotta tell me. That’s why you paid so dear,” Cletus said, chuckling.

He turned his head slightly, his long beak stretching far in front of him moving an inordinate amount for such a slight gesture. On the road approaching the docks he saw a lone horse approaching. On it were two men, a wolf in front and a much smaller blue deer riding in the saddle behind him. They looked tired, disheveled, scared and more than a little desperate. The deer only had one antler. This’ll be the two, Cletus thought. Has to be. There’s no mistaking deserters.

The heron planted his avian feet on the wooden logs that constituted the deck of his flatboat and rose up on skinny legs. As a bird man he had no hands, no arms – just wings, which he’d tucked flush against his body. His feet served as his hands, articulated talons and toes that were just as dexterous as the paws of any mammal. Many pitied birds for their lack of arms and hands, but anyone who’d spent time with them knew they got along just fine with their feet.

Cletus stared at the deer and the wolf as they came closer. He was getting old, but like most birds his eyesight was still excellent, far better than any mammal even with all the years of use. He could see the wolf was scanning the dock, looking for something. His face betrayed his worry and desperation. Cletus had a good idea what it was he was looking for, and that it was exactly what he was providing. He extended one of his wings up into the air and waved to get the attention of the pair.

“Hail!” The wolf yelled as he approached.

- -

Calvin didn’t know why he hadn’t thought of it sooner, long before Flynn made the comment about floating away from danger to safety. No matter – he knew where they had to go and what they had to do now. He had to get to the docks and find a flatboat.

Flatboats had been traveling from Pittsburgh down the Ohio since 1782, when a clever and adventurous Pennsylvania farmer named Jacob Yoder decided that there had to be a better way to ship his yearly crop of flour to New Orleans than selling it all to a ship’s captain for a fraction of its true worth. His big idea was that if you have plenty of time, there wasn’t any need for sails or crew if you’re traveling one-way down a river. The current can do all the work for you.

Jacob Yoder didn’t know the first thing about shipbuilding. He didn’t need to. He constructed what amounted to a large wooden tub. It floated, it was water-tight, and it could hold his yearly crop of flour, but in almost no other way could it be described as a boat or a ship.

During the summer of 1782 Yoder floated this object nearly 2,000 miles down the river, alone. He traveled from Pittsburgh down the Ohio to where it connected to the Mississippi River, then down the Mississippi to the port of New Orleans. He sold his crop there at an astronomical profit. Even the tub, which he called a “flatboat,” was sold for a profit; the strong old-growth oak timbers he’d constructed it with were worth many times more in New Orleans than they were in Pennsylvania. He returned home a rich man.

Word of the incredible success of his venture spread quickly. In just a few years hundreds of flatboats were making the trip from Pittsburgh down the river to New Orleans every summer, an incredible feat of American pragmatism and independence on the frontier. Even the current American president Abraham Lincoln had taken part in this trade, piloting a flatboat down the Mississippi to New Orleans in 1828 as a young man. It was on this journey that he witnessed the horrors of slavery in the South for the first time, and it was that experience which he credited with forming his opinion on slavery forever.

By 1863 this trade was in its waning years as steamboats became more and more prevalent on the river, but many still set out from Pittsburgh every summer. Calvin knew it was early in the season, that most of them were waiting for the autumn harvest, but with some luck he might be able to find one that would take on two passengers.

There was something Calvin had forgotten as he and Flynn rode into Pittsburgh: the date. It was Independence Day, the nation’s 87th birthday. Not only that, but the news of the total American victory at Gettysburg had made its way to Pittsburgh. The inhabitants knew now that their city was no longer under threat from Lee’s army, and many felt that this victory was the great turning point in the war they’d been waiting years for. The entire city was celebrating.

When they saw all the people in the streets partying and drinking and carousing, Calvin and Flynn didn’t know whether this would be a good thing or a bad thing. As they made their way through the crowd, around the brass band parade and past and happy families picnicking in the park, it was clear that this was a stroke of good fortune. On a normal day they might have looked out of place, but no one looked out of place today. Even if they did, everyone was too preoccupied to care.

The only tense moment in their ride through Pittsburgh came when a group of children – otters, what else – lit a handful of firecrackers and threw it in the street in front of them. The horse was startled, but it affected Calvin more profoundly. The flashes and the loud noise of the fireworks sent his mind spinning backwards, back to the battlefield. It triggered scattered images and gruesome memories. A friend’s arm shredded and mangled by a Minié ball at the Battle of Second Manassas, his horrific screams for his mother as he bled to death. Marching forward, forward as Confederate artillery smashed through an entire column of men just feet away. The stench of the fields filled with rotting corpses. The badger’s face, the man he’d murdered.

“Calvin! Calvin!!” Flynn yelled at him, shaking him roughly. Flynn didn’t know what was wrong with Calvin or what to do, and it terrified him. One second he’d been fine, then when the firecrackers went off he was just... gone. Calvin was shaking, panting, whimpering – he had slumped backwards in the saddle heavily onto Flynn. 

“Calvin!! Please, Calvin!!” Flynn pleaded as he frantically shook the wolf.

Finally Calvin returned to his senses. He shook his head and leaned back up in the saddle. The otter children were staring at him, pointing and laughing.

“Calvin!! What happened?! What’s wrong?! Are you okay?!” Flynn begged.

“It’s… I’m fine. I’ll be fine. It’s my Nostalgia, it’s happened before. We can talk about it later,” Calvin answered as he spurred the horse on past the laughing children, his mind still spinning from the flashback he’d just had.

It was early afternoon by the time they arrived at the dockyards. Calvin scanned left and right looking for a flatboat, a small one without many passengers or a large crew, but all he saw were the big industrial ones next to the steamboats, and most of these were still being built. He began to worry.

What if there aren’t any? Where will we go? We’re in the middle of Pittsburgh now, anyone could see us. Did I lead us straight into danger? Why did I take such a foolish risk? What if we get caught? I’m sorry Flynn, I’m so sorry…

Far, far in the distance Calvin thought he saw a figure on the deck of a very small flatboat waving, but he was too far away for Calvin to see clearly. As he rode closer he could make out that it was a heron man, and that yes, he was waving at him.

“Hail!” Calvin yelled.

- -

“A hundred dollars?! Each?! Are you insane?!”

The heron just smiled at the exasperated blue deer. He’s a feisty one, he thought.

“That’s the price for passage, take or leave,” Cletus said.

“We could buy a raft like this for less than that!” Flynn snapped back.

“Ain’t a raft, deer boy. It’s a flatboat. And that’s the price.”

“We’ll leave it then. Come on Calvin, let’s go.”

“Flynn, wait...” Calvin said.

Hidden in the cabin of the flatboat, Jonathan and Emily listened to the argument occurring just outside on the dock. They held hands tightly and tried to remain silent, just as they had a month ago when the Confederate Home Guard had almost found them underneath the skunk’s floorboards. They prayed that these strangers would accept the heron’s toll and come aboard so that they could leave the danger of Pittsburgh and be on their way west, down the river to safety.

“Wait for what? Two-hundred dollars for a ride on this thing? It’s a joke,” Flynn said. “An absolute joke. We don’t have that kind of money anyway. Let’s go!”

Calvin leaned toward Flynn to whisper in his ear as they stood next to the stolen horse that had carried them this far. Cletus watched the deer’s face change as the wolf whispered something. He waited a while before he spoke again. It was time to lay all the cards on the table.

“It’s expensive. Of course I know that the price is obscene and unreasonable, I ain’t dumb. But you’re not paying for the passage. You’re paying for me to not ask questions and not stick my beak in your business,” Cletus said.

Calvin took his muzzle out of Flynn’s ear and looked at the heron. He had their attention.

“Who do you think that I think you are? Listen to me now, because I’m only going to ever say this the one time, and not never again. I know who you are. I sized you up in three seconds before you even saw me – one, two, three. It’s obvious to anyone paying attention or looking for it. Ragged clothes and desperation. A blue deer in Pittsburgh for Christ’s sake, do you even know how bad you stand out? I know where you’re from, ‘Flynn.’ Only one place blue deer come from, and it ain’t in the United States of America no more. Even if I didn’t, I can tell by your accent. Then you stepped off that horse, that stolen horse, and you can’t even walk. Gunshot to the leg? Same as the antler you’re missing. So yeah, I know exactly who you two are and what you are and why you’re even considering paying such a fare for passage on a flatboat. Ain’t no shades of gray about it, if you catch my meaning.”

Flynn’s mouth was agape now, throat dry, heart pounding. Calvin’s mind was racing. They were both transfixed, staring at the heron.

“If I’m wrong, tell me I’m wrong. Tell me I’m a son-of-a-bitch and head straight back into town. But I don’t think I’m wrong. And if an old flatboat captain sized you up in three seconds – one, two, three – how long do you think it’ll take before a bounty hunter sizes you up? Or an army officer? The price is one-hundred dollars a head for passage to New Orleans, or to drop you off anywhere on the river short of New Orleans. One-hundred dollars a head for us to never have this conversation again. You can take or leave.”

“Okay! Yes… okay. We’ll pay it,” Calvin said, out of ideas and out of options. The heron was right and he knew it. “We’ll pay it.”

“I thought you’d come around. Cash up front,” Cletus said.

Calvin pulled out the cigar case he’d carried in his pants pocket for years, the one he used to store the wages he earned as a soldier. For two years while in the army Calvin had not spent a dime. Whenever he was paid, he just tucked the money into the cigar case and forgot about it. There was nothing to spend it on when he was in the army except alcohol, tobacco, gambling or prostitutes, none of which interested Calvin – especially not the latter option. So it just accumulated.

That’s not to say he was able to accumulate much. His pay as a private in the infantry was thirteen dollars a month, upped to eighteen dollars a month when he became a scout. Combined with the one-time bonus of a hundred dollars he’d received for enlisting at the start of the war, the cigar case now contained a total for four-hundred and sixty-eight dollars. Four-hundred and sixty-eight dollars for two years of constant mortal danger, physical strife and untold, lifelong emotional damage. 

This was what he’d whispered to Flynn after Flynn told the captain they didn’t have any money. They did. Not much, but enough for this, enough to spend what they had to so they could get out of Pittsburgh and down the river. They were in great peril every second they spent here.

Calvin opened the case and pulled out bill after bill – ones, fives, a few tens. He counted them slowly, methodically, while the heron watched eagerly. Finally Calvin had a small stack of bills in his hand that had taken him almost a year to earn. Two-hundred dollars.

Flynn didn’t know what to feel as he watched the heron raise his avian foot and grab the cash. He felt like crying and hugging Calvin and kissing his feet all at the same time. He could never thank him adequately, he could never repay Calvin for this, he knew that. No one had ever been this generous to him. No one had ever done something like this for him. That was months and months and months of wages, Flynn thought – hard-earned, blood-earned wages – and he didn’t even think twice about paying it. For me. And he’d used the word “we” when he said he’d pay. “We’ll” pay it, he said, when he paid with his own money. Goddamn it he did, didn’t he.

After he had his talons wrapped around the stack of bills the heron’s demeanor immediately changed.

“Well then, welcome aboard!” the heron said as he tucked the money into a pocket, then extended his articulated foot to shake Calvin’s paw. “The names is Cletus, by the way, Cletus Heron.”

“Your last name is ‘Heron?’” Flynn asked as Calvin shook the heron’s foot.

“It’s as close as I have to one, never knew my parents,” Cletus said. “But that’s neither here nor there. If you’ll excuse me, I have to make a trip to the bank before we head out...”

“Now you wait just a second,” Calvin said, letting go of the heron’s foot and pointing at him. “How do I know you’re not going to just pocket that money and leave us here high and dry?”

“Ha! You’re not as foolish as I thought then! Course, I’m not nearly that unscrupulous – if I’m going to swindle you I’ll at least tell you how before I do it! But if you’d like you can come to the bank with me to make sure I don’t fly away, it’s just a couple blocks,” Cletus said. “You’ll want to pick up some supplies at the general mercantile next door too. This ain’t a pleasure cruise, you’re responsible for your own food and anything else you’ll be needing. I’d suggest at least a few weeks worth of food since we won’t be stopping any more than we have to.”

With long strides and a bobbing his head, Cletus began walking away.

“Well, come on then!”

“Wait!” Calvin said.

“What is it now, you comin’ or aren’t you?” an irritated Cletus replied, turning back to Calvin. He saw Calvin and Flynn looking at each other, with the deer resting all his weight on one leg. “Ah, that’s right, you can’t walk. Well, you’re free to head aboard the boat and wait for us. You can meet the other passengers, too.”

Flynn turned to the heron with a confused look.

“What ‘other passengers?’”

At that moment a small, orange and white-furred head peered around the cabin door to the interior of the flatboat. It was a fox woman, a rather small one.

“Hi! Couldn’t help overhearing… we couldn’t,” she said, pulling another fox by the ear out from the cabin. “Sounds like we’re going to be traveling together, so we should get to know each other. I’m Emily, Emily Turner. And this is my husband, Jonathan.”

Jonathan didn’t speak, he only raised his hand meekly to Flynn and Calvin.

Flynn raised his hand to wave in reply to them.

“Flynn. And he’s Calvin. Nice to meet y’all.”

Now there were three people who knew who they were and why they were running. This could be trouble, Flynn thought.

- -

They’d pushed out late in the afternoon, catching the current west and beginning their long journey down the length of the Ohio River. The excitement that all four of the passengers felt as they left the dockyard quickly dissipated when they realized just how slow their journey would be. During the summer the river current never exceeded one mile per hour. It often flowed at half that speed.

By the time night fell they were still within sight of Pittsburgh. Calvin, Flynn, Jonathan and Emily watched the distant Independence Day fireworks from the stern of the flatboat. Cletus rode on top of the cabin, holding onto a single long oar that stretched out behind the boat. There wasn’t much navigating to do, but it was necessary for a pilot to make sure the boat didn’t drift to close to shore. In practice this meant that Cletus had to work the oar for only a few minutes every hour.

“They ever have fireworks like that in Richmond?” Flynn asked Emily, or Jonathan, whichever of them would answer.

“Not up in the sky like that. Some whirligigs on the ground, some sparklers, but that was mostly for the children,” Emily answered.

“We focused more on the food, we had a big cookout and a celebration every year,” Jonathan added. “Did you?”

“No, not any fireworks of any description back home,” Flynn said, leaving the comment there. It had taken him going out into the big wide world and seeing it for himself to realize just how poor he had been back in the valley in Tennessee. Dirt floors, bare windows without glass panes, holes in all his clothes, these had seemed normal. Cookouts and celebrations? A fantasy. It was a struggle just to find enough food to eat to stay alive half the time back home. The hundred dollars that Calvin had paid for him – that alone was more money than he’d ever physically seen with his own eyes in his life.

“What about you, big guy?” Emily asked Calvin. “Me? Oh, no, we didn’t really have anything like that back in Alabama,” Calvin lied.

Jonathan and Emily had been very open about who they were and why they were riding on the flatboat. Jonathan had been reluctant, but Emily didn’t think it was fair for them to have heard Cletus laying bare Calvin and Flynn’s predicament while lying about their own. The story was familiar: they were from Richmond and had married just before the war. When the war came Jonathan had signed up for the Confederate Army, but years of violence had made him first question why he was there, then decide it was an awful mistake. On a furlough to visit his wife they’d fled, and now they were heading west to the frontier. 

“Well, I think I’ll turn in. It’s been a really long day,” Flynn said after they’d watched the fireworks in silence for a few more minutes.

“Here, let me help you,” Calvin said. Flynn leaned on him, hobbling on one leg as they made their way to the cabin at the fore of the boat. 

Jonathan waited several minutes until he felt sure they were in their bunk.

“What do you make of them?” He whispered to his wife. 

“I don’t know yet. If they were agents or bounty hunters they’d have taken us on the dock. I think they are who they say they are… mostly, anyway,” she said.

Jonathan tended to defer to Emily’s judgment on matters like this. He was strong and brave and dutiful, his devotion to his wife unwavering and absolute, but she was undoubtedly smarter and more clever than him, and they both knew it. That said, they made a good team.

“Something ain’t right about that wolf though, I can’t put my finger on it,” Jonathan said.

“It’s his accent,” Emily replied, whispering in turn. “He’s not from Alabama. I don’t know why he’s lying about that, but he is.”

“What do you think it could be? First best guess, I mean,” Jonathan asked sincerely.

“I really don’t know yet. But we need to figure it out if we’re going to be on this boat with them for the next month.”

Jonathan nodded and slid his hand over his wife’s. She turned to him and smiled before laying her head on his shoulder, watching the fireworks over Pittsburgh receding, slowly.

- -

Even as far as flatboats went, this one was small. The cabin was low, its ceiling no more than four feet high, and the sleeping arrangement consisted only of two coffin-like niches on either side of a narrow, dim hallway. There was one on each side of the corridor, each separated from the central hallway only by a cloth curtain that could be pulled closed. Cletus had his own private sleeping quarter at the stern of the boat, but he had at least been thoughtful enough to provide rough straw mattresses, pillows and blankets in both these sleeping alcoves.

For Flynn and Calvin the arrangement wasn’t as bad as it might have been. They shared their single sleeping niche together. It was a necessity brought on by the narrow dimensions of the boat, but also a stroke of luck for them. If the boat had been larger they wouldn’t have been able to provide any excuse to the fox couple for sleeping in the same bunk; they would have had to spend their nights alone, so close but separated, a necessary precaution to prevent their secret from being discovered. Not the secret that Calvin was actually a Union deserter – their deeper, much more dangerous secret.

They could still vaguely hear the thud of fireworks far behind them as they lay together in their bunk. Calvin had brought a burlap sack full of food back from the general store when he returned with Cletus, and he used it as a kind of wall next to the curtain to afford them a little more privacy. Flynn didn’t want to ask how much he’d spent.

“Calvin...” Flynn said after they’d settled in. “Thank you. For… everything. I don’t know how I can repay you for...”

“You don’t. Don’t think about that. We’re in this together now, you know?” Calvin replied, rubbing his hand over Flynn’s bare, furry back. “You’re all I have on my side right now. You’re the only one I’ve got.”

Flynn squeezed Calvin tighter. He shut his eyes tight, trying to stave off the tears he felt welling up, but he couldn’t contain it.

“Hey, hey, Flynn… it’s okay, I’m here...” Calvin said as he felt Flynn begin to cry softly.

It was many emotions. It was the gratitude he felt to Calvin, it was the feeling of warmth and being wanted that he’d never felt from anyone before. But it was also Calvin’s words just now, telling him he was all he had. It brought memories flooding back to Flynn, memories of his best friend.

It had less than a week since Edward had died. Things had been moving so fast that Flynn hadn’t really had time to process it. He hadn’t had time to grieve. But now, floating down the Ohio at a snail’s pace with the distant sound of fireworks, the realization finally settled in for Flynn that his old world was gone, truly gone, and his best friend was gone with it.

“I know, Calvin, I… I don’t know why but something made me think about Edward just now, and I thought about when he... what I saw when he...”

“Don’t think about what you saw, it’s no good thinking about that. Forget that. Think about the time you spent together, who he was, not the end,” Calvin interrupted. He knew how damaging it could be, replaying violence and death over and over in your head. Flynn hadn’t told him how Edward died, but he didn’t need to. It was enough to know that Edward had been killed in battle. Everyone in this war who died in battle died a gruesome, horrific death. Everyone. Whatever Flynn saw, the actual moment of Edward’s death – it was best forgotten. 

“I know. I try not to. I just still can’t believe he’s dead. It doesn’t seem real, you know? It feels like I’ll wake up tomorrow and he’ll be waiting at the door, and you’ll meet him and you’ll like each other and we can all pretend this war never happened and go home together, you and me and Edward and Penelope,” Flynn said quietly through his sniffling, head buried in the wolf’s strong chest. “But I know that’s never going to happen. I know he’s gone, in my head I do, I just… It just doesn’t seem real yet in my heart. But I miss him. I already miss him.”

Calvin didn’t respond with words. What could he say? It was clear to him now that the memory of Edward was what made Flynn break down when they first spoke after he woke up; Flynn had talked about him a lot that first day, but not much since. He knew why, now. It was too painful, too fresh, too raw. Edward was that memory that creeps in during moments of stillness and sends you reeling for what you once had but lost, sends you retreating into the recesses your own mind, stumbling blind and scared through foggy gray corridors. Edward was Flynn’s Nostalgia. He was Flynn’s badger.

Someday they’d both have to work through the scars they each carried with them from the war, accepting what happened and letting go of the blame and the regret and the guilt. That time would come. For tonight, it was enough for both of them for Calvin to just hold Flynn as the blue deer gently cried himself to sleep.

- -

July 18, 1863
Ohio River, Wayne County, West Virginia

“His leg’s getting better. That’s good,” Emily said to her husband as they sat on the edge of the flatboat with their feet in the water.

Over their shoulder dark storm clouds were billowing and thunder rolled distantly. Cletus had stopped the flatboat on south bank of the river, lodging it up on a sandbar to ride out the early evening storm that was rolling in. By the time it had passed it would be dark, so Cletus decided it would be better to stop here until morning to get some sleep and a fresh start.

They’d been traveling for two weeks. In that time they'd floated a little more than 300 miles down the river averaging less than a mile an hour. As far as flatboats went it was a good pace. It helped that Cletus didn’t seem to need to sleep for days at a time. This was only the third time they’d stopped in fourteen days – most nights he evidently spent navigating, since they always seemed to wake up on course in the middle of the river. He’d said all kinds of things: it was his avian physiology, that he could sleep standing up, that he only needed to pay attention for a few minutes so half his brain could sleep most of the time, that he was just too old to need to sleep. Like most of what he said it was impossible to tell what was true and what wasn’t.

The foxes watched Flynn and Calvin disappear into the darkening woods from the boat. Jonathan and Emily preferred staying on the boat whenever they stopped, nervous that they might be seen or left behind if they wandered too far, but their fellow travelers seemed to enjoy stretching their legs when they could. It was good for Flynn, at any rate – he hadn’t been able to walk a step when they started in Pittsburgh, but now he was able to put weight on his injured leg and hobble somewhat, though he still leaned on Calvin if he had to walk more than a few steps.

“Yeah, it’s good I reckon. Him walking,” Jonathan said after some time. He dipped his paw in the placid waters and ran his paw through it idly. “There’s something not right about them though. Not right. You know what we heard...”

“We’ve talked about this before Jona--”

“Coming from their bunk. More than one night. Sounds two men ought not to be making in a bunk at night.”

Emily didn’t respond. Jonathan lifted his paw from the water, watching droplets coalesce on the tip of his claw. One by one they fell back into the river. Tiny ripples expanded outward as they ceased being finite drops and rejoined the whole, becoming a part of the boundless river.

“They're sodomites.”

“Who cares, even if they are?” Emily asked Jonathan angrily. This wasn’t the first time he’d brought it up. “I heard it too, but it’s not our business. We have our own problems to worry about, so do they. You’ve all got bounties on you for desertion.”

“It’s a sin against God and it’s a sin against nature and it--”

“It doesn’t matter, Jonathan! What difference does it make?! It doesn’t matter! Worry about us, let them worry about them! Remember what Pastor Bunyan said about crosses to bear? We have ours and they have theirs. Remember what he said about casting the first stone? Judgment? That's not your place, Jonathan Turner! That’s the place of the Almighty.”

“But what I heard...”

“What about what they probably hear from us at night?”

“That's not the same thing, Emily.”

“Yes it is! It is the same thing, it’s exactly the same! What they do at night in their bunk isn’t our business any more than what we do in ours is their business. And if you want anyone to hear those noises from our bunk tonight you’ll drop it.”

Jonathan shook his paw dry. She’s right, he knew. She’s always right. There were a thousand things he should be worried about ahead of whether the fellow Confederate deserters on the flatboat were lovers. Why did it bother him so much?

“If that wolf tries anything with me, I’ll...” he said.

“Please, Jonathan, just drop it! They don’t care about us. You need to care about us. You’re the last thing he’s thinking of, I guarantee it,” Emily chided him.

Emily sighed heavily and looked towards the oncoming storm clouds. They strobed with light from the lighting deep within.

“Please don’t make it an issue,” she continued in a calmer voice. “Please? I mean that, Jonathan. We have enough to worry about, please don’t make it an issue. You don’t know how they’d react. You don’t corner a wounded animal, you don’t know what it will do to survive. That wolf could tear you apart.”

“I’m not so...” Jonathan began to protest.

“Don’t. I'm asking you, please don’t. It’s not our cross, Jonathan. Remember when Pastor Bunyan talked about that in that sermon in Richmond before we ran? It’s just like that. We have our own cross and we have to carry it. They have theirs to carry, but we have to worry about ours first. Don’t get us crucified on their cross.”

Jonathan felt himself blush under his fur and clench his fist. He felt embarrassed and angry and foolish all at the same time, and he didn't know why.

- -

Calvin couldn’t stop smiling. There was something about just being with Flynn that made it impossible for him to not be happy.

He and Flynn made their way into the woods of Wayne County, West Virginia near the shore of the Ohio River, not far from the flatboat. They didn’t mind their fellow travelers – the foxes seemed nice enough – but there was almost no privacy on the flatboat, and it was too dangerous to have their private conversations within earshot of them. Or to do other things.

Flynn was trying hard not to lean on Calvin as he attempted to walk, but he still had to every few steps. That was fine; he was making progress quickly, they could both see it. Even more importantly, the time in which infection might have been an issue had long passed. Traveling by flatboat was slow, but the endless rest and time it seemed to provide were perfect for Flynn’s leg to heal. In retrospect it would have been almost impossible for them to not have been caught if they were traveling any other way with Flynn unable to walk. The flatboat really was the perfect solution for them.

They found a nice secluded space between a boulder and a trio of trees that seemed to be growing out of the same roots. Below them was a nice view of the river, with the flatboat tucked away on the shore. It wasn’t too far, but it was far enough. As they sat they saw the same clouds beyond the river that Jonathan and Emily did, pulsating with lightning and rolling with thunder as twilight faded.

“We’re gonna get rained on...” Flynn said as he put his hand on Calvin’s thigh, intentionally stating the obvious to get a response.

“That’s fine, let it rain...” Calvin said as he trailed his own hand down Flynn’s arm. “We have a good history with rain, you and me.”

“Speak for yourself. I stayed dry, thank you very much,” Flynn said.

Calvin loved it when he heard Flynn say that phrase, ‘thank you very much.’ He wasn’t even sure Flynn realized it, but that was his tell, a little teasing remark he’d make when he wanted you to press his buttons.

“Did you now? That’s not how I remember it,” Calvin said. He had a line ready for this one. “I seem to remember you getting pretty soaked, but... not from the rain. And you did thank me. Very much...”

Flynn let his hand wander up Calvin’s thigh and onto the rapidly swelling bulge in his pants.

“Hmmm...” Flynn said, sliding his hand up to Calvin’s US belt buckle and starting to unlatch it. “Maybe I remember it a little like that. But it was such a nice thing, keeping me out of the rain, and maybe I didn’t thank you enough… for such a nice thing.”

“Show me how you’re gonna thank me Flynn…” Calvin said. He was out of witty lines.

Flynn looked at him and stifled a chuckle at his complete failure at sexual banter. He lifted his leg over Calvin’s and rolled over so that he was on his stomach between Calvin’s legs. He reached his other arm up and finished unclasping Calvin’s belt buckle, then began untying the wolf’s pants.

Before Flynn had untied half the laces he saw the tip of Calvin’s canine shaft. When he’d untied most of the laces but not all, Calvin lifted his hips off the ground, which Flynn knew was to help him take off his pants completely. Flynn peeled them off and was suddenly right where he wanted to be, his snout inches away from what he wanted most: Calvin’s sheath, balls, and most of all, his quickly enlarging wolf cock.

Calvin slid his hands over the back of Flynn’s head, his left grabbing firmly onto Flynn’s antler, his right rubbing the deer’s ear momentarily before sliding over the nub of an antler he’d shot off just the month before. He looked down at Flynn, watching hungrily as he opened his mouth and brought it to his pointed tip…

And kissed it.

Flynn leaned back again and looked at Calvin mischievously, pursing his lips to try as hard as he could not to laugh. There was something fun about watching Calvin squirm, something about the power reversal that Flynn enjoyed immensely.

“Wh… what the heck was that?” Calvin blurted.

“That was me thanking you for such a nice thing, Calvin!” Flynn squealed. 

Calvin was clearly confused to the point of being dumbfounded. Flynn was having too much fun.

“But this,” Flynn said, switching back into the flirty, sultry, sexy mode he didn’t even know he had until recently, “this is me sucking your fat wolf cock.”

Without an instant of hesitation Flynn leaned forward and wrapped his lips around Calvin’s manhood. He closed his eyes and slid his lips down to the base of Calvin’s sheath, his long cervine jaw allowing him to take the entirety of the wolf’s length into his mouth despite his relative lack of experience.

Calvin’s tongue lolled out of his own mouth as he watched Flynn begin to bob his head on his lap. He weakly humped into Flynn’s mouth, but Flynn was well and truly in charge.

It was pretty amazing just how good he had gotten at this in such a short amount of time, Calvin thought. The first time they’d done it Flynn had surprised him. They were in their bunk on the flatboat kissing and groping each other, ending the day the way they always seemed to. They were aware that the foxes were in the bunk just feet away, they’d talked every day about how dangerous it was, how the foxes might hear them. But once it started it was impossible to stop. And it always started.

Flynn was stroking Calvin’s length when he broke their kiss and slid down his body, chin dragging along the fur of his chest and stomach. He didn’t speak a word before he took the wolf cock into his mouth and began sucking on it clumsily, though enthusiastically. Calvin still didn’t last long. In his ecstasy he didn’t think to warn Flynn before he started climaxed, but by the time he realized he should have he also realized that Flynn was still vigorously sucking him and swallowing his cum. He kept going until Calvin’s knot began to shrink back into his sheath. God, this boy, how did I get so lucky, Calvin thought again, the same thought he found himself thinking time and again every single day.

Calvin was thinking it now, in the dark woods, with Flynn’s pace quickening. Out of the confines of the bunk and in a place where they didn’t have to worry about noise, Flynn was doing things Calvin had never seen. He varied his pace and how deeply he took the canine member into his mouth, he used his hand to tease Calvin’s sheath and balls, he tilted his head and rolled his tongue over and around Calvin’s shaft. The noises he was making – the sloppy schlorps and schlicks – were arousing in a way Calvin couldn’t explain. 

Flynn, for his part, had discovered in their bunk during the past few weeks that he loved sucking cock. He really loved sucking cock. It was always something he’d fantasized about, but even in his fantasies he’d never thought about blowing another species, let alone a predator species, with a cock so completely different from his own. There was something deeply taboo about it, like he was betraying his prehistoric herbivore ancestors. It was like he was giving himself willingly, eagerly to those that stalked and hunted his kind in the deep, ancient past.

“Oh… fuck, Flynn, that’s so good...” Calvin moaned.

Flynn felt Calvin lean forward, sliding his hand off the nub of Flynn’s antler, down his slim back and onto his firm, shapely ass. He rolled his hand over Flynn’s small, bushy deer tail and squeezed one cheek firmly. He pulled his hand back up to his mouth and sucked his middle finger to coat it with saliva before sliding it back down Flynn’s body, over his tail and between his ass cheeks.

“Mmmmm...” Flynn moaned as he felt Calvin’s finger find and then sink into his tailhole. This was the third time Calvin had done this while Flynn sucked him, and Flynn wanted more. He lifted his ass and spread his legs slightly to give Calvin better access to his hole. He started pressing back against Calvin’s finger needingly as Calvin fingered him. 

God, I want it now, I want to give all of myself to him right now, Flynn thought. It feels so good. And that’s just his finger. How good will it feel when I take the whole thing? Am I ready for that? I don’t know. Is he? I think so. Maybe? Yes. God, I want it. Right here. Right now. Fuck it, I’m going to turn around and tell him to fuck me, give it all to him and…

“Flynn I’m… aahhhh!”

Or maybe next time.

Flynn tasted the faintly salty surge of cum, swallowing as he continued sucking Calvin. He opened his eyes so he could look up and see Calvin’s face as he came, feeling proud that he was able to bring that kind of pleasure to him.

Calvin had stopped fingering Flynn’s tailhole, instead clenching the deer’s ass cheek tightly. One of Flynn’s hands had moved to his own erect cervine shaft at some point. He was stroking it vigorously, nearing his own climax.

“Flynn… wait...” Calvin said, still pumping spurts of cum into Flynn’s muzzle. “Let me thank you now.”

Flynn felt Calvin lifting him up off the wolf cock he was still enjoying. He was confused, and a little disappointed, until Calvin gently guided his hand away from stroking his own cock.

“Oh…” Flynn said as Calvin effortlessly lifted him and set him back down on his back. Calvin hovered over him momentarily, taking in the beauty of the deer, looking the same as he did the first time he took him next to the stream in Pennsylvania. Arms splayed, eyes half-closed, a grin of pure bliss – beautiful.

Flynn shivered as Calvin leaned down, pressing his cold wolf nose against the base of his cervine sheath. Calvin licked it, slowly, teasingly, from its base up, up, up to the tip. He paused for a moment, just to look up at Flynn with a grin, before he slid Flynn’s cock into his mouth.

Flynn placed his hand on the back of Calvin’s head as he watched his long cervine cock slide in and out of the wolf’s mouth. He had enjoyed being on the other end of it so much that he hadn’t really considered what it would be like if Calvin did the same for him, but the feeling was incredible. Calvin’s muzzle was shorter than Flynn’s, and Flynn’s cock was slightly longer than Calvin’s, so Calvin was not able to get all of Flynn into his mouth. Still, with each undulation of his head he was able to get his lips down to Flynn’s medial ring, which was plenty far enough.

Calvin also seemed to be a natural with his tongue. It shouldn’t have surprised Flynn, given how passionate a kisser Calvin was, but he seemed to be able to do things that Flynn had only been trying to do earlier. Maybe it was just his physiology, Flynn thought – all canines have long tongues compared with most other species. Whatever it was, it was working.

Flynn brought his other hand to the back of Calvin’s head, around his pointed ear, urging him on and now openly thrusting into his mouth. He took in the sight – never did he think he, little Flynn Harrison, the blue deer from Tennessee, would have a huge, strong predator like this wolf like sucking him off. If he’d betrayed his ancient, prehistoric ancestors earlier, maybe this was something they could be proud of.

“Calvin… I’m close...”

Calvin didn’t slow down. Flynn felt himself edging closer and closer to his climax, but if anything Calvin only went further down on his shaft.

“Calvin… Nnnnhh!!”

Flynn came hard into Calvin’s mouth, a thick jet of cum pouring out of the tip of his tapered penis. Calvin thought he was prepared for it; he had enough experience with deer at this point to know how different their ejaculations were from his own, a singular torrent of cum in seconds rather than a steady flow of pulses for minutes like his own. But the quantity and force of Flynn’s cum as it sprayed into his mouth still more than Calvin expected. He tried swallowing as it his the back of his throat, but instead he gagged, pulling his muzzle away from Flynn’s cock and coughing. Flynn shot a few more powerful bursts of cum into the air as Calvin coughed to the side.

“Calvin! Are you okay?” Flynn said as his orgasm subsided.

Calvin didn’t answer immediately, still coughing.

“Yeah, don’t worry, I’m fine… just went down the wrong way...” he said after a few seconds before coughing again.

When it was clear Calvin would be all right, Flynn struggled to suppress a laugh.

“Sorry if it was too much for you...” he said insincerely, coyly.

“Nah, it was my fault. I should know how you finish, by now,” he said, smile reappearing on his face as he reached over for Flynn’s hand. Even with all they’d done, Calvin still liked the connection of just holding Flynn’s hand whenever they could.

“I didn’t know you were going to do that, kind of caught be off guard,” Flynn said.

“Did you not like it? Was I bad at it?” Calvin asked leaning up, concerned about his performance.

“No, it’s not that, you were great! Really great, with your tongue and… everything. I wasn’t expecting you to do it, that’s all.”

“Well, I just saw you stroking off after I finished I thought, that’s not fair,” Calvin said as he leaned back into the West Virginia earth, putting one hand behind his head. “And you seem to enjoy it a whole lot… so I figured hell, let’s help Flynn out and see what he finds so great about this all at the same time. Plus I was curious.”

“Did you like it?” Flynn asked.

“Except for the part where I choked on your cum, sure!”

- -

It hadn’t rained on them like they thought it might. The clouds had passed, swift black silhouettes against the stars flowing east. Now the forest where Calvin and Flynn rested had the coolness and the paradoxical smell of damp, earthy freshness rainstorms always bring. It must have rained nearby, but not here.

They’d spent at least an hour just talking. Opportunities like this were scarce on the cramped flatboat, so whenever Cletus decided to stop for the night they made full use of whatever privacy they could find. That was great for sex, sure, but it also allowed them to talk freely in a way they were hesitant to if there was even a chance they could be overheard. Not just dangerous topics, like Calvin’s desertion, or Flynn’s treason, or their illegal sexuality. Mundane topics too, like their childhoods, their families, their lives before all this had happened. The lives they could never go back to.

“Me and Edward found this old book in his grandfather’s house when we were maybe ten years old,” Flynn said as he and Calvin laid on their backs next to each other, hand in hand, staring up at the moon. It was just a curved sliver in the sky, but on a cool clear night like tonight it was brighter than it had any right to be.

“It was written by someone named Riccioli, it had all these maps in it. We didn’t recognize any of it so we thought it was someplace far away on the other side of the world, China maybe, or Europe. But then one of us realized the maps were of the moon, and the thing that stuck out to us was that all the dark areas were named seas or oceans.”

The crickets were chirping loudly as a gust of wind blew through the leaves above their head. Branches swayed over the crescent moon, the rustling of leaves drowning the sound of crickets chirping for a moment.

“Sea of Clouds. Ocean of Storms. Sea of Waves. Sea of Tranquility. And if they had names, they were real places. They are real places, real places on another world, as real as Tennessee or Pennsylvania. It’s there, right up there hanging in the sky, you can see it. You could go there.”

Flynn paused briefly, and Calvin thought about saying something – he’d never thought about any of that before. But Flynn continued.

“When we swam in the French Broad that summer we pretended we were space sailors. We’d hop up on logs floating down the river and say we were sailing our great ship through space, escaping the Ocean of Storms, riding the Sea of Waves, trying to get to the Sea of Tranquility. Escaping to a new home.”

Calvin rubbed his thumb over Flynn’s hand as he heard Flynn sigh. He knew it was difficult for Flynn whenever he talked about Edward.

“I thought about that the first night we were leaving Pittsburgh, with all the fireworks going off. The moon was still in the sky and it all came back. Strange how your memory works, right? But it occurred to me that you and me are doing what me and Edward pretended to do when we were kids. We’re escaping our own Ocean of Storms, trying to get to our own Sea of Tranquility.”

Calvin didn’t need to say anything right away. For Flynn, his touch, the squeeze of his hand said more than words could. They both gazed at the moon for another minute, maybe two before Calvin spoke.

“Before I left for the war,” Calvin finally said, “Lizzie told me that if you’re ever far apart from someone you love, you can look up at the moon and be with them again. You might be a thousand miles apart, but if you’re both looking up at the same thing it’s like you have this invisible connection, a shared experience. It’s the same moon no matter where in the world you are. It never changes. So every time I see it I think of her and imagine she’s looking at that same moon at that same moment, thinking about me.”

Flynn continued gazing at the moon, thinking about what Calvin said, thinking about Edward. For the briefest of moments he found himself wondering if Edward might be looking at the moon. But he wasn’t – of course not. He knew it as soon as the thought entered his head. Edward is gone. He’s dead. There’s no one looking up at that moon thinking of me now.

“I don’t know if she is,” Calvin continued, still staring at the moon, “but there is someone else who is very dear to me looking up at it right now. He’s not so far away.”

Flynn could feel tears welling in his eyes, but stifled them back. He rolled over, laying his head on Calvin’s strong chest.

“You’re so good to me Calvin. Why are you so good to me...” Flynn said as Calvin drowned him in his arms.

“Because… I love you...”