by Aileen Fish
“He is probably more worried than angry. I am glad that you consented to send him the telegram.”
Anna nodded.
“Please avoid recapture, George. I am afraid they will not throw you into prison this time.”
“I will,” he assured her.
George took her to the train station and held her close until the train arrived. He saw her into a compartment and shut the door behind her.
Tears streamed down Anna’s face as the train pulled away. She waved and prayed she would see her husband again.
The trip took five days, and Anna returned to Anamosa, where her father awaited her at the train station.
He folded her into his arms, and Anna cried on his shoulder. She was so much tearier than she had ever been in her life, and it embarrassed her.
“I am sorry, Father,” she sobbed. “I do not know why I am crying so much.”
“I suspect it is because you are with child,” her father said. “Either that, or you have been eating a great deal.”
Anna broke into a renewed round of sobs.
“Now, now, dear, is that it? Hopefully, I have not insulted you.”
“No, you are right, Father. Am I growing plump?”
“You are glowing, my dear. I am so pleased, so very pleased.”
“But I want my husband to be with me at this time,” she wailed.
Her father looked up. The station was now empty.
“Come, my dear. Perhaps we could do all this crying at home?”
Anna gave him a watery smile and allowed him to lead her off the platform and to the wagon.
“I am sorry, Father.”
“For sneaking off in the middle of the night, or sobbing like a child upon your return?”
She heard the censure in his voice and had fully expected it. While they drove home, she regaled him with tales of her escapades, leaving nothing unsaid. She had thought to withhold the more frightening moments but then decided he should know.
Her father was at times horrified, shocked, angered and appalled.
“I think we must be considered very lucky to have you back in one piece. For too long, you have been endangering yourself, daughter. Now there is a child to think of. No more, Anna. No more. Do not think to undertake acting as a conductor again.”
She shook her head.
“No, not with the baby coming. And what do you think of the news of Suzy?” she asked.
They talked of Suzy on the way home.
In the coming months, Anna worked at the store often, relieving her father of his duties and allowing him to devote more time to the newspaper. Her stepmother came to the store as well to give Anna a reprieve when she needed to rest. The child grew, and Anna rested and ate well. She relished the renewed letters from George, reading each one over and over again.
Georgianna was born on a cold winter’s night in January. Anna had told George she wished to name the baby after him, and he insisted they name the baby after her, although they were not certain how to masculinize the name Anna. Fortunately, they were blessed with a girl, and Anna named her after both of her parents.
The new conductor, a young Quaker man named Mr. Barber, brought freedom seekers to them, and Mr. Hanshaw continued to pick them up and deliver them to Dubuque. The Underground Railroad remained shrouded in secrecy, but Mr. O’Reilly and his ilk never came to town again chasing any of them. Anna supposed the South had much better things to do as the course of the war turned against them.
She read the papers avidly, searching for any good news relating to the end of the war.
One frosty day the following December, while her parents were both in town at the store and baby Georgie slept upstairs, Anna heard a noise coming from the barn behind the house.
Thinking her parents must have come home early for some reason, she opened the door with a greeting, only to jump back with a shriek.
A wretchedly bedraggled Confederate soldier stood on the steps, aiming his rifle at her. Icicles hung off the visor of his gray cap. Anna thought of the baby upstairs and determined that this fellow, whoever he might be, would not harm her or her child. She forced herself to remain calm.
“What do you want?” she asked. “I can give you food and drink, but then you must go.”
Little more than a teenage boy, he looked her up and down, and Anna’s heart pounded.
“Maybe I’ll take more,” he said, attempting a leering look, which fell flat. She had seen Mr. Red O’Reilly’s expressions. This young man could not come close to one of that man’s leers.
“Do not be silly,” Anna said with false bravado. “You are skinny as a rail and look to be as weak as a kitten.” With a courage she did not know she possessed, she grabbed the rifle from him by the barrel and aimed it back at him.
Startled, he fell down the steps but scrambled to his feet.
“You are starving,” Anna said. “Have some food, take some water and then be on your way.”
The boy climbed the stairs again and paused on the landing for a moment before reaching for the rifle, but she thrust it against his scrawny chest.
“I promise you, I will shoot!”
“It ain’t loaded,” he said with a cough. He rubbed filthy hands across his face.
“I am still capable of clobbering you with this thing. Are you deserting?” Anna said, lowering the gun.
“I can’t do this anymore,” the boy said with a nod, tears filling his blue eyes.
“Come inside,” Anna said briskly. “You are letting all the cold air in.” She ushered him in with the butt of the rifle and shut the door behind him.
“In there,” she pointed to the kitchen. “Sit down at the table. I will make you a cup of tea and some food.”
The boy sat down, hunched his shoulders and thrust his hands under his arms to warm them.
“What are you going to do?” he said with narrowed eyes. “Are you really going to let me go?”
“Yes, after you eat. Though I think you might freeze to death out there. Have you no money?”
“No, haven’t been paid in months.”
Anna had read the Confederacy was struggling for food, money and supplies, but seeing the consequences was heartbreaking.
She kept the rifle with her, awkwardly making the tea and heating up some soup for the boy while keeping one eye on him over her shoulder. He laid his head down on the table and appeared to fall asleep. The redness in his face from the cold faded to a pale pink. Anna watched him, wondering how she could possibly toss him out of the door into the frigid day. Wherever he was headed, his tattered uniform marked him as an easy target for anyone who cared to arrest him...or worse.
She set the soup and some bread on the table before him and poured out two cups of tea, taking one for herself. She touched his shoulder tentatively, and he jumped up from his seat, startling her.
“Sorry, I must have fallen asleep,” he said. He settled back down onto his chair, and Anna moved around the table and sat across from him. She laid the rifle across her lap.
The boy pulled his hat off his head and proceeded to eat voraciously. She did not know how long it had been since he had eaten, but she assumed it had been some time. Unkempt wavy brown hair hung to his shoulders.
“What is your name?” she asked.
“Tom,” he said.
“Just Tom?” she asked.
“Just Tom,” he said, keeping his eyes on his food. Anna thought she understood his concern for anonymity as a deserter
“Where are you from, Tom?” She waited while he swallowed.
“Missouri.”
“Oh!” she said. He seemed particularly monosyllabic. “What county?”
“Lafayette,” he said.
Anna drew in a sharp breath, and Tom looked up.
“Shouldn’t have said. No one’s business where I’m from,” he muttered. He seemed to try to eat faster, and Anna suspected she had pushed him too far and that he might run. Lafayette—the same county where George was from. What a coinc
idence!
Anna stopped asking questions and drank her tea, glad she had just settled the baby down for her nap. Georgie would sleep for several hours.
But Anna could not contain her curiosity for long.
“I know someone from Lafayette County,” she began.
Tom, who was sopping the last of his soup with his bread, looked up. His blue eyes widened, and he wiped his chin with his sleeve.
“Oh?”
Anna nodded, unsure whether she ought to mention George or not. George was a spy for the Federal government. The young man was a Confederate soldier. It was plausible that he had come here to discover George’s whereabouts—unlikely given his emaciated condition, but possible.
Anna set the rifle on the table. She was not about to let him run away until she knew more.
“Where did you desert from?”
“Franklin, Tennessee, Forty-Fourth Missouri,” he said. “Big battle there.”
Anna nodded. She had read about the battle and the resounding Confederate defeat there. Thousands of casualties had been reported.
“You have come a long way. You must have passed through Missouri to come here to Jones County. Are you going to Canada?”
Tom shook his head but did not answer.
“To the west then? Could you not have crossed through Arkansas to reach Kansas or even Nebraska? Why did you not return to Lafayette County?”
“No, ma’am, I can’t ever go home again, not as a deserter. They’ll shoot me.”
“If you cannot go back to Missouri and you are not going north, then where are you going?” she asked, trying a new opening.
“West,” he said briefly.
“But if you are heading west, why did you come to Anamosa? We are not on the way to anything really, so it would not make sense for you to leave the battlefield to come to Anamosa.”
Tom stiffened and stirred restlessly in his chair.
“Got family in the area,” he said. “Hoping I could look him up.”
Anna’s heart pounded. She studied him more closely. The same wavy brown hair. The same blue eyes.
“May I ask whom?” she said breathlessly.
“Don’t want to say. I don’t want to cause trouble for him.”
“Do you know who I am?”
Tom’s dark brows narrowed, and he looked confused.
“A lady in Iowa?”
“My name is Anna Damon, Mrs. George Damon.”
Tom’s blue eyes widened, and he jumped up from his seat.
“No!” he said hoarsely. “George married a Northerner?”
Anna thought she might be insulted by the fact that all Tom could focus on was that she was from the North, but she chose not to.
“Are you one of George’s brothers?” she asked.
Tom nodded and retook his seat.
“Youngest,” he said. “I haven’t seen him in five years. Was thirteen when he left for good.”
Anna pulled the rifle from the table and stood up to settle it against the doorway. She did not think she would need the gun. She turned back to look at the slight young man, so different from George and yet so similar, if one knew they were related.
“You must stay with us. No one will be looking for a Confederate deserter here in Iowa. George would want you to stay.”
“Where is he? I knew he had a farm hereabouts, but I didn’t think it was this one.”
“It is not. This is my father’s house. Before the war, George leased my father’s land to grow corn. George’s farm is down the road about half a mile.”
“So why are you here? If you’re married?”
“George is away,” Anna said quietly. “He has been away for a while. I do not know when he will return.”
“Away? You mean, in the war?”
Anna sighed. This could become problematical.
“Yes.”
“Is he fighting for the Union?” Tom asked with bulging eyes.
“Yes.”
“Well, of all the—” Tom did not finish his sentence, but Anna understood that he disapproved.
“You and George can discuss the merits of the Union and the Confederacy some day when the war has ended, which will be soon, I hope. I think you need to bathe, and I will see if I can find some clothes of my father’s to fit you. My parents will be home for supper.”
Privately, Anna wondered what she could possibly find in her father’s closet to fit the young man, but she would try.
“No, I can’t stay,” Tom said.
Anna, who had begun pulling out pots to boil water, turned.
“Why ever not?”
“I’m a deserter, ma’am. I wanted to see my brother, but I can’t hold my head up around here once everyone finds out. He would be ashamed of me.”
“No one needs to know,” Anna said. “The Confederacy is losing, Tom. It is only a matter of time before they surrender. Who will call you a deserter then? We do not need to tell anyone. You must at least stay here until George comes home. He misses his family. I know he will want to see you.”
“What about your family?” he asked.
“We are Northerners. We would not look harshly upon a Confederate soldier who has tired of the war.”
“Are you abolitionists like George? Because I don’t know if I can cotton to that kind of thing.”
Anna bit her lip. That did present a problem. Though the numbers of escaping slaves had dwindled as the South lost territory to the Union, they still harbored the occasional freedom seeker.
“We are abolitionists, Tom,” she said with pride. “You will have to learn to live with our beliefs, or you may return home, head west or go north to Canada, where there are many freed slaves.”
Tom pursed his lips.
“Can’t I just stay at George’s farm?”
Anna shook her head.
“No, that is my farm. George and I share the same beliefs. This is Iowa, Tom. What did you think when you came north?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “But they’d hang me or shoot me if I stayed in the South or went home.”
“We will protect you here, Tom. Stay for a while at least. I will write to George and tell him you are here.”
Chapter 16
Tom settled into the household. Cleaned up and dressed in some of her father’s clothes, he bore more of a resemblance to George, though he was smaller. He gained weight, and his face rounded.
He performed chores around the house and often helped Mrs. Douglas at the store, freeing Mr. Douglas to spend more time with the newspaper.
Georgie fell in love with her uncle and toddled about the house after him like a puppy. Tom adored her in return and played with her often.
In the months that followed, Anna could hardly remember that the gentle boy who lived with them had once held a gun on her, albeit an unloaded one.
George had written a joyful letter to Anna, asking her to welcome his brother. She had not described the aggressive circumstances of Tom’s arrival, preferring not to incur George’s ill will toward his brother.
George wrote a private letter to Tom, who carried it with him everywhere.
Her father came home one day in April, full of excitement.
“General Robert E. Lee has surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox. For all intents and purposes, the war is over! Not all of the generals have surrendered, but they must soon! It is inevitable.”
He embraced Anna and Mrs. Douglas, and happy tears flowed throughout the house.
“George will come soon then,” Tom murmured.
Anna wrapped her arms around her young brother-in-law.
“Yes, yes, Tom,” she cried. “That means George will come home soon!”
And George did come home soon. Anna was playing outside in the lovely spring air with Georgie when she heard a familiar voice.
“My wife,” George said. Behind him was Tom, beaming and seated on the wagon.
Anna shrieked and ran toward her husband. George met her halfway across the lawn
and swept her up into his arms.
“George! I did not know you were coming today,” she cried in a mixture of tears and joy. “But Tom knew, did you not?”
Tom waggled his eyebrows and stepped down from the wagon.
“I wanted to surprise you, my love. I am home!” George said. “It is over, and I am home.” He kissed her thoroughly before a small voice caught his attention.
Anna pulled from his arms and looked toward Georgie, now playing with Tom.
“Georgianna,” she said.
“Georgie,” her husband said. Anna had long ago told him of the pet name by which she called their daughter.
Georgie looked up, her cherubic face lighting up in a smile. She loved visitors of all sorts. Blue eyes, so like her father’s, blinked at the tall man in the blue uniform who picked her up. She grabbed his beard and pulled.
George held out an arm, and Anna slipped under it and pressed herself against his side.
“Home at last.” He sighed contentedly.
~*~
In April of the following year, Anna sat in a rocking chair on the porch of her father’s house, heavy with her second child. She watched Georgie play on the lawn with Tom while her father, George and George’s father discussed the merits of Reconstruction. This was Mr. Damon’s first visit to George since the end of the Civil War. On the day that the slaves of Missouri were emancipated, George had written to his father and asked him to visit him, his family and his youngest son at George’s farm in Iowa.
Tom’s older brother, who had also served in the Confederacy, had gone west to search for his fortune there, but Tom had elected to remain with George, working the farm. He had declined to return home to Missouri, perhaps fearing repercussions from his desertion, even after all this time.
Elijah Damon, struggling with his hemp plantation since most of his freed slaves traveled north to be with family, had decided to sell the plantation and join his middle son out west on ranching land he bought with the proceeds. Before he moved west, he had accepted George’s peace offering and had come to visit him in Iowa.
A resolute man but a loving father, Mr. Damon had not blamed his youngest son for desertion, nor did Tom think he would.