My name is Jenny Wade. Mary Virginia Wade really…friends called me "Ginnie"….but names are a funny thing.

A long time ago some newspaper printed my name as being "Jenny" Wade….and once your name is in the newspaper….well…forget it. After that even my family started calling me "Jenny".

The same thing happened to General Hiram Ulysses Grant….when somebody incorrectly wrote his name as being "Ulysses S Grant"…..he just shrugged and lived with it. 

And thinking on it, it was much easier for me to live with an incorrect name than General Grant, because it’s easy to live with a lot of slights when you’re dead….like I am. They could’ve called me Mary Lincoln as far as I’m concerned. It doesn’t change anything.

For those of you who don’t know, I have the distinction of being the only civilian killed during the battle of Gettysburg. I’ve become a celebrity because of this…and since that bullet entered my back, I’ve gotten no rest at all. For some reason tourists want to see where I was shot….how I was shot….what I was doing when I was shot…baking bread is what the historians all say…although I don’t recall any historians being in the kitchen at the time so I’m not sure how they have come to this conclusion. To tell you the truth, I can’t remember what I was doing. I may have been dancing with myself. Who knows. It was a long time ago, and being shot in the back has a way of playing tricks with your memory.

I also heard that my mother found me lying there dead….and not wanting the bread I was supposedly baking to go the waste….finished baking it so it could be passed out to Union soldiers. I’m not sure how I feel about this little story. I’d like to think my mother was too busy weeping heartily over me to worry about the damn bread….but those historians swore this was true too. I suspect my mother was just having a bit of fun with the newspaper fellows with this one….but who can tell. Mothers is a strange breed…mine included.

Of course the house that now has my incorrect name on it is not my house at all, but my sister Georgia’s. Our family thought we’d be safer on Baltimore St. on the outskirts of town than in the town itself….which turned out to be a brilliant move for the tourist trade, but not too good for me. And so this is where I spend my time now, right next door to the Holiday Inn, which I can assure you was not here during the time of the battle. I also apparently haunt the cellar of the house….that’s where they laid me out ‘till the battle was over. Truthfully, I never gave a second thought to haunting anything, but when the ghost nuts started printing the stories of how I was breathing heavy down people’s necks and sticking my face on wooden beams in the ceiling….I figured what the hell. It’s not like I have much else to do…..so I started breathing heavy down people’s necks and sticking my face on wooden beams in the ceiling. I try to pick my tourists carefully. You know….go after the type that wear the flowered shorts and eat ice cream cones wherever they go. The real die-hards…..history nuts who think the war was fought between the US and the British, and think the "Confederacy" is some country and western band. It’s easy to pick on them….and it beats hanging out in the lobby of a Holiday Inn. I prefer civil war to that.

Even today….you ask people what the war was about…..you run the risk of starting it up all over again…

This was about the quietest place in the whole world prior to July of 1863. The sun came up, and then it went down. That’s about all I can really remember. We had about 2500 inhabitants in the town….your basic combination of workers and shirkers. We had a college and we had our churches, and you could expect to spend your life within a few mile radius of your front door….or your sisters front door.

The war was some far off thing….Virginia may as well have been London as far as we were concerned. Our grass was still green. Our barns were still full, and our cemetery still had headstones you could probably count without losing your place.

We read about the war in the newspapers….and the men played General in the diamond, dissecting our army’s every move as if they could whip General Lee if only their wives would give them time away from the farm.

We felt as safe as baby’s wrapped in a warm blanket.

Even rumors had a hard time penetrating the hills outside of town. War had been raging for a while, and people were getting used to the rumors. You know…..

"extra, extra…….General Lee now sitting in Lincoln’s office smoking a pipe playing chess with Tad"

…we heard those rumors since the early days of Stonewall…..who although we were Christian folk we were glad was killed at Chancellorsville….miserable rebel that he was…even his own troops hated him….subconsciously at least.

So word was coming that Lee had crossed the river into Maryland…..and that now he was in Pennsylvania. And that Harrisburg was about to be burned to the ground. And that Washington was going to become Jefferson Davis’ new home. You know…more of the same. And then the reports that he was in Cashtown……that he was in Harrisburg. That he was 10 miles away. That he was 5 miles away. That he was coming to Gettysburg. 

That he was gonna stay at the Holiday Inn. Just kidding.

Well, this is not the "show-me" state but it could have been then. It wasn’t until our state militia soldiers came riding into town on horseback that people started thinking…."well…that’s odd…I wonder what they’re in such a hurry about?"

Of course, they were running away from getting shot by the Rebels, who were right behind them. I’m not sure if that’s how militia are supposed to act when the enemy approaches, but I suppose I would have done the same thing….all things considered.

All you had to do was look at the rebels. These men were disgusting really. Many shoeless. Beards so unkempt that it looked like their horses might trip over them….uniforms that looked like they may been made from a grandmother’s shoal. And the smell. God forgive me but they smelled like something I’ve never smelled before or since. They looked like a pack of wolves…but they smiled nice at us girls and asked the men of the town if this is what they had in mind in saying they should come back to the union.

But they sure did look mighty sure of themselves, and they had ridden through our Militia boys like a hot knife through butter.

And though it took more time to sink in…..this was war. The enemy was here…..and nobody was really ready for what lay ahead. Myself included….as you can probably guess. 

If I had not died that day you would not be here now. Isn’t that peculiar?

Sometimes when you’re dead you’ll find yourself wondering how things mighta been better if you stayed alive. There’s lots of time to think, so you think big.

You know…..you like to think that something insignificant like you dying could somehow change history. Like what if on the last day of the battle I walked out into the middle of that field….and refused to move. Would they have charged right over me? Would the shelling have stopped? When I got killed it was by someone who never saw me. It was so impersonal that I can’t even be bitter about it.

But what if I was standing right in front of them? Would they kill me in plain sight? Would they really do that? I can’t imagine anyone hating somebody else that much that they’d kill a woman to get at ‘em. But I’m supposed to have come from a simpler age. More chivalrous. But I died just the same. So I guess dead is dead….no matter how they write about it in the paper.

I was tied to this place….after my father left my mother needed me.

My father used to be a touchy subject around here. Small town…everybody knows everybody’s business…..and people are completely incapable of not immersing themselves into other people’s affairs.

Father was a tailor, and when his health began to waver, his income started to waver as well. And when that happens….well….money makes men do strange things.

So it was that somebody in town dropped a wad of cash to the tune of $300, my father found it and picked it up and put it in his pocket….totally acceptable behavior today mind you……after you people leave I can usually make a few dollars checking on or under your seats.

But back then…..the gentlemanly thing to do was to place an ad in the paper saying you’ve found the money….in a search for the poor soul who lost it. Now that may sound incredibly quaint to you today…..but no more so than this dress I’m wearing eh? Times change…..though not always for the better. 

But with that kind of money in his pocket…..he went…..lets see how shall I put this? Well, he went nuts.

Off to Maryland on some type of spending spree, the particulars of which I neither know nor seek to know. Apparently the spree itself was so well known that it aroused the suspicion of the rightful owner of the $300, who went there and found his money…or what was left of his money. So my father was arrested.

And with that we could no longer walk down the street without hearing what sounded like short blasts of cold wind coming through the side streets and alley ways…..but was actually the whispers of our neighbors.

This continued for a time, but after it became apparent to everyone that we were now fatherless and nearly penniless, things got back to normal. It’s fun to gossip, but much more so if the people you are gossiping about dress better than you do. If they don’t it becomes mere drudgery.

Father was put away for 2 years…and when he did return was not the same man. It didn’t take long to realize that the crack in him that appeared when he grabbed that money just grew bigger in the interim.

And so when he did come home Mother took one look at him and asked to court to declare him "very insane" and to take him away. I always liked that. "Very insane". If you’re gonna do something you should do it right.

Apparently Mother knew a crackpot when she saw one because the court agreed and off to the asylum went Father. Only a few miles outside of town as it turned out, but the Poor House was not someplace that any of us wanted to visit, even if our father was in there. 

And so now all we had was each other….and Father’s debts….so you can say that we were in no hurry to visit the Adams County Poor House because we felt like we already lived there.

I looked into my Mother’s eyes and saw that not only was she never going to find the things she was looking for….but that she had stopped looking altogether. 

That was never going to happen to me. Even with war waging…..I wasn’t gonna keep my dreams to myself. What good are they then? Like a novel in a drawer.

Jack Skelly was his name…..and we were to be married, at least that was the unspoken assumption. We fell in love when we were children…playing in the streets and the woods around town. You can fall in love as children. It sounds funny, but it happens. Me and Jack knew we would be together…and we had the kind of relationship where the map of our future was drawn separately inside both of our heads at the exact same time. It wasn’t something we talked about a lot. It was just something that was pre-ordained….like the changing of the seasons.

Before I told you that the war felt distant to us…..but I have a habit of saying that without really thinking about what I mean by it. Jack was in the Army of the Potomac…and though my thoughts of war reaching into our town were far off….my thoughts of war itself….and the men in it…..came and stayed when Jack marched off.

I see what kids today are like. I watch them. There is no doubt who is doing what to whom. All you have to do is look at them. Hands all over each other as though they were Siamese twins joined at the face. For me and Jack….our relationship was such that none of that was needed. Don’t get me wrong……we did the Siamese twin thing when alone…but felt no need to advertise our feeling for each other to the rest of the town…or to our Mother’s for that matter. Jack’s mom was always a little guarded when I was around. She had no real hard evidence to go on……and may have only spied a glance or two between me and her son….but in a way this is even worse for Mother’s. 

The suspense was killing her….that’s what I’m trying to say.

I can’t be sure of this….but I’ve heard that Jack’s Mom even started the rumors that I was stepping out late with other boys while he was off to war….even writing letters to Jack to that effect. Truth is that for me Jack was the only one, and the thought of spending time with somebody else never entered my mind…..but innuendo travels faster than the ball that struck me down….and so I’ve got bit of a public relations issue on my hands these days.

I’m known in some circles as a Tart….or Slut as the word has revolved into these days. According to some, I wasn’t baking bread when I was shot but rather….shall we say, raising morale for a group of Union soldiers.

Now, the truth be told is that I’d been raising Jack’s morale for a few years before the war, and lets just say that there very well could be monuments of a different nature dotting the battlefield you’ve been tramping…..but my bout’s of physical patriotism always focused on Jack Skelly alone. He was my soldier boy….and the fear that true love between kids spreads among the misinformed can lead to people to say things they would not normally say. So if you’re going to call me a tart for the things I’ve done with Jack, then I’ll gladly wear the scarlet letter. Take a deep breath, however, if you’re going to visit the death house thinking you are entering some sort of pleasure palace. If you so much as smirk I will haunt you till you have to change your undergarments.

Nights were long….and so quiet my breathing could sound like a scream. I’d wake up some nights and just know he was thinking about me……wanting to hold me again. To come home more than ever.

If your love is true…..and you’re alone….sleep won’t come. If you’re sleeping good….then it’s not real.

Well….as the war waged all around us in those days….all I could think about was Jack…and whether he had come back home. Every time a soldier came to the door asking for water…or bread…..I opened the door thinking that this time it would be him. I asked every boy that came to the door….."do you know Jack Skelly"….but nobody did. Sometimes a soldier would come, and covered as they all were with the dirt and smoke of battle, I’d stare for a minute or two, no doubt unnerving the poor boy waiting for a response. I’d stare at the eyes….looking for that glimmer that still came to me in dreams. But it was never there.

Instead I saw terror….soldiers running for the very arms of death, nearly dead already from exhaustion and fright….and in thinking of Jack…how on earth could I shut my door to these men? War seemed to bring all to the door in a search for some type of cleansing, some type of recognition. Some type of glimpse home before standing and dying on the hills. Dying for things that none of us could really understand at the time….but with hindsight have become clear…at least to historians. And it’s easy for historians…and even tourists…who have lost no friends….to find a meaning in War that just seemed to me to be piles of dead men laying on top of one another…..about as far from home as they could possibly be.

But lets leave the Lincolnian stuff to others shall we? To me, Jack Skelly was the Union. And I didn’t know until after that rebel bullet brought me down that he too….was dead.

He died a few weeks earlier in Virginia…..called upon to surrender, he did what he did whenever his Mom or anybody else would crowd him…..like when they quizzed him on his relationship with me for example. He turned tail and ran.

But, he didn’t get far, and was shot in the upper arm…and after hanging on for a time…..he died…….days before he would have started marching towards home….towards me….towards the house looking for bread and water….and my arms to fold him. And he died before coming home to quite possibly die, and I can’t think of anything worse than dying at home. It shakes folks up, it really does. Trust me on this one. I’m almost glad he never came back. Could you imagine the tourists if he’d managed to crawl to the house all shot up and saw me laying there with flour all over my fingers laying on the floor dead? And him crying over me as the life oozed out of him, and people finding us together at least….albeit dead…which depending on your point of view takes some of the romance out of it.

My God. The drama would have filled up the town coffers even more….and my neighbor the Holiday-Inn would have to expand to handle the overflow. 

But I digress, which dead people have a habit of doing since we’ve got lots of time to get back to the point….but in talking to un-dead folks I have to remember that you may have a plane to catch or something. You’ll know where I’m coming from someday.

Anyway, more rumors have flown that Jack had a note for me….a marriage proposal perhaps, although the thought of Jack proposing via a letter from some army camp seemed highly unlikely. Secretive and paranoid as only shy boys can be, he probably figured Abraham Lincoln was reading all his mail before it went out….and would save something as tender as that for when we were alone. And I have no doubt that we would have been married. If he hadn’t asked me, I would have asked him….in a way befitting my tart-like reputation of course.

But, either because of or enhanced by my reputation, this letter has been the cause of much speculation and titillation over the years. Truth is as soon as I hit the floor dead the entire mystery was revealed to me, but I’m not at liberty to discuss it with you. There are some things that are private, even in Gettysburg. And Jack would kill me if I told you. He’s strange like that.

The war affected a lot more people than me. It’s somewhat unseemly for me to bemoan my bad luck….for that’s what it amounted to really. Dumb, rotten luck.

But because it affected so many…..there are lots of people like me roaming these streets…and the streets of other Northern and Southern towns, looking for things that may no longer exist…except in memory. And memory can be a tricky thing, so after a while you could very well forget what it is you’re after.

And so I’m still searching the rubble of where I roam for Jack Skelly. Thus far I’ve come across a lot of dead soldiers, and even some that have made some pretty tempting offers…but I’m still saving myself one last time for Jack….my husband to be. So there, I just gave away the secret of the note. But I don’t care. Let him get mad. He may be cautious, but I’ve learned a few things over the years around here, and caution is wasted when you’re dead.

But you know….some nights….when I’m doing playing around with the tourists, I swear I can feel hot breath on my neck…and I get goose bumps the way I used to when I was a girl….for, like you….I know exactly who is haunting me. He may not be able to find me just yet, but he will. And from where he is now, he has only to reach out, and I’ll pull him over. But he’s so shy….and maybe by talking to you I’ve scared the wits out of him. But I know he’ll come to me. I just know it.

Times have changed now haven’t they? I don’t need to keep this up anymore (she lets her hair….which was in a bun….down across her shoulders). Darn thing pulled my face behind my ears. Now I look like a tart…right? (laughs)

You get away from where you come from and you do things like letting your hair down. Always worried ‘bout who might see you.

People still come to visit my grave. Funny. There’s 2 kinds of folks. Some will visit your grave….and the rest only visit your gift shop. And both of ‘em are looking for the same thing right?

Everybody has got their own methods. North…South….you…me. Can’t change things. But let me tell you what the war left behind here. Something you may not know about….something the travel agent might not tell you.

A little boy was walking through the fields a year after the battle. Scavaging. Folks was paying money for bullets and shells and things. Still do today. And he picked up a shell…didn’t really know what it was really…..young boys don’t know a shell.

So he strarted to bang it against a rock. Seeing what kind of noise it would make….seeing if it was hollow…or something. And he made a spark…and the thing exploded. Tore through his bowels and left ‘em laying on the grass like a dead bird or something. And he had a friend with him….and folks say that this boy came screaming into town looking for a doctor….and he was pointing to where the explosion was….where his friend was lying dead…..and never noticed that he wasn’t really pointing because he didn’t have any hands left. They was blown off completely.

And that’s what war does. It lingers. The smoke from the cannon is gone…and the soldiers are all buried….but death is still everywhere. And it’s still funny to me that folks from all over the world come to this place to find peace…..on one of the deadliest pieces of ground this country has ever known.

End of Play