Confederates Don't Wear Couture by Stephanie Kate Strohm Page B

on chewing what I was 99 percent sure was kindergarten paste. But no matter how much I chewed, it didn’t seem to be getting any smaller. “Modern Americans are used to sweeter corn bread. With sugar and flour and stuff. That’s why I got you the molasses.” He pointed to the little sticky puddle. “You wouldn’t have had that back in the 1860s, most likely. Rations were real thin on both sides, but for us especially. Nobody hurt harder than the Southern soldiers. If we were lucky enough to get rations, it would’ve been just cornmeal probably. Maybe some salt, maybe flour, maybe salt pork—dependin’ on how things were goin’. But definitely no sugar. If the troops were lucky enough to run across any sugar or molasses, they would’ve just dipped the johnnycakes into it, to make it last longer. Bakin’ with it thins it out too much.”
    â€œMmm.” I swallowed throatily, then took another bite, this time with the molasses. “That’s much better.”
    â€œLord, you shoulda seen your face,” he said, chuckling. “Hell, I’m givin’ you the rest of my molasses. You need it more’n I do.”
    By this point we’d wandered over to the campfire, where Dev, still in his long underwear, was having a heated discussion with a gaggle of grizzled old men in variations of Confederate uniforms. They were a pretty ragtag bunch. Because the Southern economy was so bad during the war, and the supply lines were so inefficient, soldiers rarely, if ever, received an official Confederate uniform. As the war went on, they were reduced to wearing whatever they could find. Most of the soldiers here were wearing gray pants, albeit in many different shades—some of the pants were more brown than gray, which I remembered learning in a class meant they’d been dyed with butternuts, one of the few things plentifully available in the South. Because of this, “Butternuts” was another nickname for Confederate soldiers. On top, the men wore dirty button-down shirts in all different colors, stripes, and checks. Most of them also had woolen jackets in shades ranging from gray to butternut brown, with the officers’ jackets looking more like standard-issue uniforms; but the men were clearly waiting to put them on until absolutely necessary, because of the heat.
    â€œDon’t yell at me, yell at the damn Yanks!” one of the old men shouted. “There’s no coffee, nor anythin’ else! Damn Union naval blockade means everythin’s in short supply down here. Food, weapons, machinery, medicine, coffee, everything!”
    Beau leaned over to whisper in my ear. “Some of the old-timers like to stay in character the whole time. So to them, there
is
a naval blockade, and that’s why we don’t have coffee. Not that we just chose not to buy it to be more authentic.”
    I nodded in understanding and took a bite that was 80 percent molasses, 20 percent johnnycake.
    â€œBefore the war,” another one said, starting to wax nostalgic, “a pound of beans would have set you back around twenty cents in fed’ral money. But now it’s runnin’ sixty bucks, Confederate notes. You got sixty bucks hidden in them drawers, boy?”
    The rest of the group around the campfire laughed.
    â€œFine,” Dev said tensely. “I get it. There’s no coffee. Then what the hell is this?”
    From all around the campfire, different men tending pots chimed in with their various coffee substitutes: roasted corn, rye, okra seeds, sweet potatoes, acorns, and peanuts.
    â€œDo any of them,” Dev said, rubbing his temples, “contain caffeine?”
    Silence.
    â€œI think Bill’s still got some yaupon leaves left,” one of them eventually piped up. He wore round glasses with thin metal frames and had a bristly brown mustache.
    â€œâ€˜Yaupon’?” Dev asked.
    â€œY’all can make a tea from