Redfield Farm

by Judith Redline Coopey

  “Down Prospect Street.”

  We made our way down the crowded street amid chaos. Adam pulled up by a house with a flag in front and several military horses standing by. I went in.

  “Could you help me?” I asked a mustached man seated in a chair and writing a letter on a field desk. “I’m looking for my brother. He’s with the 37th Pennsylvania.”

  The man shook his head. “Ma’am, I’d be lucky if I could find my own regiment, and they’re camped out back.” He looked worn out, exhausted. “Men from Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Ohio, Wisconsin . . . share whatever space and care there is. They’ll be burying the dead down in Sharpsburg for weeks.”

  My instincts told me Nate wasn’t down there. He was somewhere else, his life ebbing away.

  “I doubt anybody can help you. The units left behind to pick up the pieces, we’re tryin’ to keep track of who’s who and who’s where, but it’s beyond us. Just go around town, askin’. That’s the best I can tell you.”

  Back in the street, the sweet, foul smell of rotting flesh hung in the air, so strong it made me want to vomit. The hope of professional medical care was ludicrous. Townspeople gave what care they could, often simply holding a hand, wiping a brow, while nature took its course. Dressing wounds, providing nourishment, the lowest, meanest bed or shelter was most often the extent of it.

  Into this morass of wounded and dying men, Adam and I plunged, frantically searching for Nathaniel. Adam’s young face sobered at the sight of so many boys no older than he, broken and desperate for home. Our task was hopeless from the start. We wandered from one field hospital to another, asking, sometimes calling out, for Pennsylvania men who could tell us of the 37th. We spent three days, passed back and forth on the tiniest shred of hope, driving, exhausted, back to Matthew Poole’s farm each night. Then, early on the fourth day, as we wandered disheartened between the rows of cots in the sickening air of a school-turned-hospital, I heard my name.

  “Ann Redfield!”

  I turned and saw Charles Conley, a Bedford County boy from Cessna, not far from home. I knew his sister, Emma—had visited their home more than once. His head was bandaged over his left eye, and his left arm was in a sling, but compared to many others, he looked almost healthy.

  “Charles Conley! How good to see a familiar face! Are you badly hurt?”

  “Some, but I’ll be all right,” he replied.

  “Have you seen my brother Nathaniel?”

  He shook his head. “Ain’t seen anyone I knew,” he said. “What’re you doin’ here?”

  “Looking for Nate.”

  “I heard they took a bunch of Pennsylvania boys up to Chambersburg, but I wouldn’t know where to start lookin.’”

  Chambersburg! Something in Charlie’s account rang true. I felt an almost magnetic pull north. I touched the boy’s thin shoulder.

  “I’ll tell your mother I saw you.”

  “Yeah. Tell her I’m fine,” he said, with a sadness that touched my heart. I knew with tragic certainty that he would never be fine again.

  Three days of walking among the dead and semi-dead made Adam Poole physically sick. Boys his own age, mortally wounded, waiting with haunted eyes for the end of a too short life. Piles of amputated limbs, their former owners staring vacantly into an uncertain future. Any romantic notions he harbored about war evaporated in the foul air. Once, he left my side and bolted for the door of a makeshift, inadequate hospital. He returned, wiping his mouth on his sleeve, his young face pale. “I’ll be more than glad to be gone from this place. I just hope I don’t dream about it forever.”

  He turned the buggy north to Chambersburg, and after five hours of bumping and jolting along rough roads, we reached the town around three in the afternoon. On the southern edge, we came to a farm where increased traffic told us something was going on. Turning in at the lane, we passed a wagon carrying three partially uniformed corpses.

  “Are those Pennsylvania men?” I asked the driver, deliberately avoiding looking at the faces of the dead.

  “Yes’m, they are. Thirty-seventh Pennsylvania Volunteers. A proud regiment,” he replied.

  My heart jumped. “Are there more men from the 37th here?”

  “Yes’m. Most of ’em is in the barn,” he nodded over his shoulder.

  Adam cracked the reins over the horses’ rumps and drove away without even a thank you or a goodbye. He stopped the buggy by the barn and helped me climb down. I hiked up my skirts and hurried into the dark, cavernous building. In the dim light, I saw rows and rows of the most hideous and pathetic victims of man’s worst endeavor. I leaned on Adam’s arm as we wended our way among the wretched souls, some silent, others moaning, sobbing, a few reaching out to touch my skirt as I walked by. Most of their wounds had been treated and bandaged, but a nauseating smell oppressed us as soon as we entered.

  It was futile to ask the orderlies to identify anyone. These hollow-eyed men didn’t know who they were themselves, so Adam resorted to the only way he knew of finding Nate. “Nathaniel Redfield!” he shouted as he walked. I joined him. “Nathaniel Redfield!”

  “Over here.” The first reply was weak. I shouted again.

  “Ann! Is that you?”

  There he lay on a soiled blanket, his left arm gone just below the shoulder. He wore a tattered, dirty uniform, the left sleeve ripped out, his face ashen, his brow wet with sweat, mud encrusted boots beside him.

  “Nate, I’ve come to take you home.”

  He looked at me with dazed eyes, struggling between delirium and reality. “I’m ready,” he whispered.

  I sent Adam to make a pallet on the floor of the buggy and searched for someone in charge to complete the formalities. The attending physician, weary from overwork and lack of sleep, took a look at Nate and signed the paper releasing him.

  “He’ll never make it, you know. He’s lost so much blood, and I suspect infection has set in. But he’d die here, anyway, so take him,” he mumbled, and turned back to his ghastly tasks.

  I did not respond, refusing to give in to despair. Looking around, I spied an orderly staggering up the crowded aisle, carrying a bucket.

  “Young man! Could you please help my nephew carry my brother outside?”

  He looked at me as though I were talking out of a dream. He put down the bucket of offal and wiped his hands on grimy blue pants, once part of a proud uniform. “Yes, Ma’am. I’d be honored.”

  He and Adam picked Nathaniel up by the bloody blanket and carried him to the buggy. I followed, leaving the muddy boots behind. The army could have them. I climbed up beside Adam as he slowly guided the horses back down the lane. It was late, after four o’clock, but I was determined to get my brother out of there—away from the war—as far and as fast as possible.

  Sometime after seven we drove into the hamlet of Fort Loudon, looking for a place to stay the night. We didn’t know anyone, so I directed Adam to drive up to a neat looking cottage, got down from the buggy and knocked at the door.

  “Do you have any place you could put us up for the night? I’m taking my brother home. He was wounded at Antietam.”

  Without a word the woman, round-faced and full of energy, swung the door wide and hurried out to see what Nate needed.

  “We can make a stretcher out of the blanket.” She peered in at Nate’s face and struggled to hide her dismay. He was slipping in and out of consciousness, unaware of what was happening.

  The woman turned to me, her face grave. “Let’s get him inside.” We carried him into the dining room, and laid him on the table. Our hostess, Mrs. Eckhart, bustled around the kitchen, placed bowls of stew in front of Adam and me and tried to spoon some broth into Nathaniel. We spent the night under Mrs. Eckhart’s watchful eye. In the morning, she tried to persuade us to stay for a few days to let Nathaniel mend a little, but, haunted by the possibility that he would die before we got home, I chose to press on. I couldn’t tell her how afraid I was. Speaking the words might somehow make my fears a reality.

  T
he next night, we stopped at a Friend’s house in Breezewood, more or less repeating the rituals of the night before. People were curious to see the wounded soldier, but once they looked at him, their faces betrayed their lack of hope. Nathaniel’s breathing was shallow, his face gray. He looked like death.

  That night I bent near his ear and spoke to him. “Don’t leave me, Nate. One more day and we’ll be home. You can hold on till then. Once we’re home, you’ll be all right. Just stay with me.”

  He slept more soundly that night. The next evening, as we drove slowly up the road from Fishertown into our dooryard, Nate seemed to know he was home. He stopped thrashing about and moaning. His breathing calmed.

  Papa stepped out on the porch when we arrived. Adam jumped down to help me carry Nate inside. Papa took one look at Nate and hurried ahead to clear the way. He stood silent as we laid Nate down on the bed, his gnarled hands helpless at his sides. He didn’t ask any questions. He stood, head bowed, as Adam and I tried to make Nate comfortable.

  “Adam, run and get Ben and Rebecca. Papa, you unhitch the team,” I directed.

  Ben and Rebecca arrived within minutes, their eyes answering most of their questions for them.

  “I’ll ride for the doctor.” Ben was down the steps and out the door before anyone could respond. I suspected he wanted to be alone when his stomach gave up its contents. Men had a hard time with these things. Rebecca and I stripped Nate and bathed him. He was unconscious all the time now, and I tried not to look at his face; it was so gray.

  When the doctor arrived, he examined Nate’s arm, his face grave. The dressing was soaked and foul-smelling. I took it downstairs and burned it in the stove while the doctor was still there. He shook his head.

  “I don’t think there’s much hope,” he said as he redressed the ugly amputation. “If he rallies, I’ll try to make that look a little better, but I don’t think it’ll matter.”

  I sat by my brother’s bedside for three days, leaving only for the direst necessity. I spooned broth into him, wiped his brow, changed his dressing, held his hand, sang to him, read to him, prayed for him, all with no response. I stayed stubbornly, willing him to get better, aware that hope was futile but hoping just the same. I kept telling myself that at least he wasn’t dead. On the fourth morning, he opened his eyes, looked around the room and whispered, “I’m going to make it.”

  And he did. Slowly, steadily, the fever and chills subsided. By mid-October, he was sitting up. By the end of the month, he could walk. His frame was nothing but skin and bone, but his color came back, and, along with it his appetite.

  Nathaniel Redfield would not die in 1862, but another of our own did. Two weeks before Christmas, Amos brought a letter from Altoona.

  “Oh, good. Open it and read it to me. She’s probably had her baby.” I was heartened to hear from Rachel.

  Amos began to read and stopped. His hands shook, holding the letter. His eyes sought mine. “She’s gone,” he said. “Baby was a girl. She died, too.”

  “When?” I asked.

  “Last Saturday.”

  Jacob Schilling named the baby Rachel and buried her in the same coffin with her mother.

  The weather was bad. Amos, beaten down by our travails with Nate and grieving for the daughter he’d lost, wasn’t up to the trip, nor was Nate. So Rachel was buried on a hillside lot in a cemetery called Fairview with no one from her family in attendance.

  Chapter 32

  1863 – Spring/Summer

  One morning in April I heard a wagon pull into the dooryard. I looked out and saw Jacob Schilling get down and lift his three children, one by one, to the ground. Much as I disliked him and blamed him, however irrationally, for my sister’s death, I felt sorry for him standing there with three motherless children in tow.

  He came to the door. “Mornin’ Ann.”

  “Morning, Jacob.” Uncomfortable silence. I looked past him. “Morning, children. Come on in. It’s cold out there.”

  I poured coffee. Jacob sat at the table, sipping, looking around. “Where is everybody?”

  “Everybody—that’s Papa and Nate. There’s not so many of us anymore. They went over to help Ben this morning.”

  The children stood in a row near the door, watching. “What I come for, Ann, is this. Can you—would you—take care of them until I can make arrangements?” He jerked his head toward the children. “I can’t do for them and run my business, too.”

  I smiled at Rachel’s babies, lest they think themselves unwelcome. “Of course, Jacob. I’d be glad to.”

  Jacob fairly jumped up and went to unload the children’s trunks. He struggled up the stairs with them, reminding me of the day years ago when he and Rachel had struggled down the stairs with her trunk. Life has a way of coming round to where it started. Once the trunks were put away, Jacob drank up his coffee, still standing, wiped his mouth and turned to me. “I’d best be going. Can’t afford to take much time off work.” He was gone within the hour, and I knew I’d never see him again. Sympathy misplaced.

  Three big-eyed, sad-faced children stood in my kitchen, watching me in silence. James, six, was tall for his age and what you might call skinny. He spoke with a lisp, unsure of himself, cautious. At four, Ellen was his exact opposite. Short, pudgy, confident, and full of pee and vinegar, according to Amos, who carried on delighted conversations with her. John, only two, was in many ways still a baby. Round, fat, full of giggles, only he of the three was completely unaware that he had lost anything. More rearranging was done to create a nursery in Betsy’s old bedroom, next to mine. Suddenly, the house was full again. Spring was here; there was work to be done.

  The children proved a tonic for us all. James attached himself to Nate, followed him everywhere, asking endless questions, and filling Nate’s need for a ‘right hand man.’ Buoyed up with reflected glory, James was soon regaling his cousins with war stories, mostly made up but nonetheless attributed to Uncle Nate. Ellen was her grandfather’s favorite, with a ready smile and disarmingly forthright observations about the world. John, delighted to be babied again, filled the void in my heart left years ago by Sam. While no one could accuse me of lacking proper grief for my sister, it was clear that these children were a gift.

  One might think that once the war was on, the flow of fugitives would stop, but it didn’t. They came in greater numbers at first, and the flow tapered off to a trickle as the war dragged on. But even after the Emancipation Proclamation, which we cheered so fervently in January, some poor, hapless creatures wandered by. No longer needing to fear slave catchers, they came in daylight, but their plight was sad beyond words.

  I had put baby John and Ellen to bed one night, late in June, a few months after they’d come to live with us. James and Nate were off buying supplies in Bedford when I heard a timid knock at the kitchen door. I went to open it, but no one was there. At first I thought it was James, playing a joke, but after I sat down, there came another knock—very quiet. This time I took a lamp, thinking to catch James at his game, but even when I walked out on the porch, holding the lamp high, I saw no one.

  “James!” I called. “Come, now, boy! It’s past your bedtime!”

  Still no answer, and, looking out at the barn, I saw no sign of either James or Nate. I’d turned to go back in the house when I heard a cry—soft, muffled, like a baby. I stepped off the porch toward the sound, which seemed to come from the spring house. Caution gripped me, but something told me to trust. I moved to the door and pushed it open a few inches.

  “Is anyone there?” I asked. “Come on out. No need to hide. You’re among friends.” I don’t know what made me think it was black folk—maybe years of working with runaways. But now there was no need to run. Still, I knew in my bones that’s what it was.

  Out of the shadows of the cold, damp springhouse stepped a black boy, smaller and looking younger than James. He was barefoot, even though it had been a cold, wet spring and wasn’t yet fit weather for going without shoes. In the lamplight, he looked up
at me with huge eyes, his face full of fear.

  “Well, who are you, young man?” I asked gently. ”What can I do for you?”

  “Gideon.” His reply was so quiet I barely heard him. He was thin, frail, ragged, and shivering.

  “Gideon, is it? Well, Gideon, how did you get here?”

  “With my mama.” He almost whispered it.

  “Where is your mama now?”

  The boy nodded in the direction of the shadows behind the door. I pulled the door to and held up my lantern. There, curled up on the damp floor was a thin black woman not more than twenty-five years old, with two smaller children clinging to her ragged skirts. If Gideon looked afraid, the other two were engulfed in terror, and the woman was barely conscious.

  “Oh, Gideon! Come, let’s bring your mama inside where it’s warm,” I said, softly so as not to add to their fear. I bent down to help the woman up, and a piercing squall rose from the throat of the smallest child. Barely three, I guessed, and terrified of a white face. “Gideon, you take your little brother’s hand and I’ll help your mother and sister.”

  The boy obeyed, tugging the baby along against his will and amid ever louder protests. I looked into the woman’s eyes as I helped her to her feet. “Don’t be afraid. You’ve come to the right place.”

  The middle child, a spindly five-year-old, held onto her mother’s skirt and watched me in dreadful silence, her thumb in her mouth. I led the sad little party across the yard and into the house. Once there, I nearly cried at the sight of them. Gideon told me he was seven, but he was smaller even than six-year-old James. The mother, gravely ill, held fiercely to the two younger children.