Homeland

by Barbara Hambly

  Cora Poole, Deer Isle, Maine

  To

  Susanna Ashford, Vicksburg, Mississippi

  [not sent]

  TUESDAY, MARCH 24, 1863

  My dearest,

  Troubling news in the papers, of fighting all around Vicksburg. I hope your Aunt has removed you from that town, since it now seems there will be a determined assault upon it. My heart hurts me, at this link with you severed: that I do not even know where you are now, or under what circumstances.

  I refuse to believe that it is the last link. Wherever you are, I know that when it becomes possible, you will write to me again.

  Love,

  Cora

  Cora Poole, Deer Isle, Maine

  To

  Susanna Ashford, Vicksburg, Mississippi

  [not sent]

  TUESDAY, APRIL 7, 1863

  Dearest Susie,

  Mother seems much better! Thank you for the kind note that I knew you would have sent, had you received my letters containing my concerns for her. And thank you for the sketches that would have been enclosed, of your errant Pa’s adventures in Richmond. The snow is almost off the ground, reduced to three or four inches in the cold shadows of the woods, and in the brown, dispirited boughs that still heap the sides of our house and barn. We sugared off last week—twelve pounds of maple sugar, plus syrup! Men are readying the cod-fleet to go out, though Uncle M says the cost of rigging-line has quadrupled and the government is no longer paying bounties on fish. Although enlistments are at a standstill, with so many men gone—more than one man in three!—it is difficult for him to raise full crews, much less find a man to hire for the farm-work. He may only send out one boat this year.

  For weeks I have not quit the farm, though I have received word that I will indeed teach this summer. This is a great relief, for those things that we can not raise, such as salt, lamp-oil, and garden-twine, are almost more than we can afford.

  I have begun to re-read The Iliad—not one of Mr. Poole’s, but my old copy Papa gave me—and having read Don Quixote, it has begun to occur to me to wonder: Was Homer being sarcastic, about his bronze-greaved Achaean heroes before the walls of Troy? Or have I had too many conversations with Will?

  Three more men have come home disabled.

  THURSDAY, APRIL 23

  Spring Cleaning. The Iliad must be set aside. All Saturday Papa and I—and Mercy, who can now toddle and get herself unutterably filthy—dug in the new garden, while Mother and Peggie scrubbed floors, scrubbed walls, swept and black-leaded grates. The woods are a fairyland of early wildflowers: fragile trilliums and gaudy Devil’s paintbrush, meadowsweet and steeplebush, each color like a note of music. I opened windows to let the wind blow through, carried furniture and mattress outdoors to air, beat carpets. The moon being a single day into its first quarter, Papa would not hear of planting potatoes, rhubarb, beets, or any other thing that grows beneath the ground. He left me with instructions for getting in the corn, pumpkins, squashes, etc. next week, as soon as the moon has waxed sufficiently not to have any danger of being termed New or Dark. Aunt Hester follows a still more Babylonian regimen: not only must crops that grow downward be planted in the waning of the moon, but they must be planted on the day of the month dominated by the proper Zodiacal sign as determined by the almanac. Papa shakes his head at this. Yet if word reached him that I planted the potatoes before the second of May, I’m certain it would give him sleepless nights!!!

  Do these customs hold in Tennessee? Are they the same among the white farmers in the mountains like Mr. Poole, as among your Pa’s Negroes? Or is there some African system that differs entirely? I know the fishermen have their own set of customs, which include casting silver overside when becalmed: “buying wind,” it is called. Uncle M tells me of a man in the cod-fleet, who carries a dime wrapped in a rag and tied on the end of a cable, which he will throw into the sea in times of stillness, and haul back again if the desired result is not forthcoming. I suspect that the gods of Homer would have something to say about that!

  The fleet has gone out. The nights are cold, but it is such a blessing, to go out to the milking in the flush of new light, when the world smells of pine and sea.

  FRIDAY, MAY 1

  I have not mentioned it before, but Mother has been sleeping later in the mornings, which is unlike her. I have told myself, she is fifty, and has not the energy of a girl. Yet this morning it was only with the greatest difficulty that I waked her at all, and for some minutes she seemed confused, as if she did not know me. When I spoke to her of it later, after we had set the milk-pans to separate, she did not remember the incident at all.

  Tell me what you think of this, my friend. How I wish that you could!

  Your friend,

  Cora

  Susanna Ashford, Vicksburg, Mississippi

  To

  Cora Poole, Deer Isle, Maine

  [not sent]

  TUESDAY, APRIL 28, 1863

  NIGHT

  Dear Cora,

  I should be sleeping; I’m so tired I feel like I fell down a flight of stairs. Wounded coming in every hour, and in the heat the hospital is frightful. It’s the old Washington Hotel; flies everywhere, and blood soaked into the lobby carpet so that it stinks. Sometimes they need help there, sometimes they don’t, but there’s constant laundry: bandages. Zed cuts wood and hauls water for it, first thing in the morning, then goes to the hospital to work himself.

  Emory, in town with dispatches, told me Captain F was killed in a skirmish. I felt stricken with guilt—Why? He was boring and had no manners. Just now Nellie came up, saw my candle, asked me, What was wrong? I told her. And she said, “He used to grab at my pussy every time he pass me on the stairs.” Maybe he still doesn’t deserve to be dead, but suddenly I don’t feel so bad.

  WEDNESDAY, APRIL 29

  People are fleeing town for Jackson. Emory to dinner. I asked him, Would we (meaning, little Tommy, really) be safer back at Bayberry? He said No, the whole section is in flames: militia of both sides, deserters of both sides, stripping the countryside bare. Even Seceshes are refugeeing to Nashville, where there’s food. I wondered if Justin’s books are all right, deep down in Skull Cave. Only later, did I wonder: Is Bayberry still standing? Did the Romans feel like this, when the bloodthirsty Goths came through?

  [sketches]

  THURSDAY, APRIL 30

  Floods of wounded. They say Grant is crossing the river. Sound of Union guns carries like thunder over the water.

  SATURDAY, MAY 9

  LATE NIGHT

  Emory came to the hospital. He brought word that Tom had both legs shattered by a minié ball. Julia there—too many wounded for anyone to stay home now—and fainted. He took her home. He is here still, and bids me send you his love.

  MONDAY, MAY 11

  Tom brought in—finally—today. Doc Driscoll said, “I wish I could spare you, Susie, but I can’t,” and I had to help him cut off Tom’s legs. After two nights of no sleep, staying up with Julia, I didn’t feel anything more than if I was helping Cook thigh a chicken. But I now know how kind God was, to Gaius and Payne.

  Yours,

  Susie

  Cora Poole, Deer Isle, Maine

  To

  Susanna Ashford, Vicksburg, Mississippi

  [not sent]

  TUESDAY, MAY 5, 1863

  Dearest Susanna,

  Newspapers—terrible fighting in Virginia, where I know Oliver is now. Nearly as bad is the account of the fighting all around Vicksburg, where I fear—despite my efforts at optimism—that you still might be. I remind myself that your Aunt Sally did not appear to me to be a woman who would put up with seige conditions. I tell myself that it is foolish to torment myself over what I can not know, and can not help.

  Sadness as well as fear: a letter from Mrs. Johnson, with news of the death of her son Charley, who once paid money from his own pocket to rent a buggy, to take you back to Bayberry. A fall from a horse, his mother wrote. God forgive me, my first thought—from my sl
im acquaintance with the man—was to wonder if he were sober.

  WEDNESDAY, MAY 13

  Great worries and small. Blackfly season: swarming, pestiferous vermin. Do you have blackflies in Tennessee? When I read the tale of the Plagues of Egypt, that is what I see as the Plague of Flies. The days lengthen and warm, endless sweet twilights made hideous by the first mosquitoes. God created all living beings, including the mice that have returned to my dresser drawer.

  I am beginning to be very uneasy about Mother, despite Dr. Ferguson’s assurance that these symptoms are normal, in one who had what was almost certainly a mild concussion. Her fall was over two months ago. Surely the spells of forgetfulness, the abnormal clumsiness, should abate? Or at least, not become more frequent? For the most part I can not even speak to Peggie of my concern. As her friendship with Elinor has grown—she regularly attends the meetings of the Daughters of the Union—she avoids me with an air of uneasiness, as if she has been warned even against conversation. This room where I sit tonight has taken on something of the aspect of a sanctuary. It is the only place where I can feel safe, with the only company I can trust: yourself, Miss Mercy (who can now say Mama, G’amma, Eggie, Nollie, and One), and those dear fictional friends who meet perils and tribulations unknown to me, with courage, tenderness, and fortitude likewise worlds away from my own vexed strivings.

  Every time I close the book—whatever book it be—I ask them, to give you my love, when they should meet you next.

  Your friend,

  Cora

  Susanna Ashford, Vicksburg, Mississippi

  To

  Cora Poole, Deer Isle, Maine

  [not sent]

  FRIDAY, MAY 15, 1863

  LATE NIGHT

  Dear Cora,

  This morning General Pemberton issued an order for all non-combatants to leave Vicksburg, while he still holds some part of the railroad. Jackson is in Union hands. Aunt Sally said that if the Army thought it could run her hospital without mere women cluttering things up, they certainly had her permission to try. She said she was taking me, Julia, and Tommy to Richmond. Julia clung on to Tom’s hand (we were at the hospital—we finally got Tom a cot yesterday) and begged me not to leave her: “You can’t take her from me, and you can’t make me go!” And to me, “Susie, if you go I’ll die!”

  So I said I’d stay. Aunt Sally left this afternoon. She took Zed, Ruben the butler, and the nursemaid, leaving us with only Nellie and Cook. The house echoes queerly. I feel very strange, probably from lack of sleep, or not eating enough (there’s no time, at the hospital). It’s as if the Real Susanna—that little girl sitting on Justin’s porch reading, who forged letters home for my roommate in the Nashville Academy—is sitting in a little room at the back of my brain, watching things and making drawings that I’ll one day be able to put on paper. I don’t think anyone would want to see them, tho’.

  At the hospital I take care of Julia more than Tom, who hasn’t really regained his senses since the amputation. I change the dressings on his stumps, and keep him as clean as I can, and give him water or broth if I can get it, and chase the rats away. I think every rat in town knows where the pile of amputated limbs is, and from there they swarm the rooms and the stairways where the men lie. Sometimes at night I’ll hear a man screaming curses if vermin run across him or chew on his bandages. In between all that I help Doc Driscoll in the operating room (which was the dining-room—they had to get rid of the carpet there, too, because of maggots), and take water around to the men. Julia isn’t much good for any of that, but won’t leave Tom’s side, like a sort of demented Mrs. Micawber. With hardly anybody to keep the men clean, I can’t even tell you what it smells like. That’s another reason I haven’t eaten in days. When more men get brought in, Doc says, “Cut the arms and legs first. Head and belly, they won’t live anyway.” Part of my job in the operating room is just to keep the flies away from the open wounds long enough to clean and stitch.

  I will confess to you, back when I got your letters, about first being on Deer Isle, and everyone hating you because of Emory, I was angry at Emory, angry that he’d do that to you, by making the choice he did. Cora, Emory has been like a brother to me and Julia, like a brother to poor Tom. He comes to the hospital whenever he’s in town—muddy and tired and powder-burned—to sit beside Tom. You have married a good man, dearest Cora.

  With love,

  Susanna

  Susanna Ashford, Vicksburg, Mississipp

  To

  Cora Poole, Deer Isle, Maine

  [not sent]

  SUNDAY, MAY 17, 1863

  Dearest Cora,

  Doc sent me home this morning, after I fell asleep in a corner of the operating room (which I don’t remember, just being waked up by one of the orderlies). He said, “You go on home now, honey: that’s not a request, that’s an order. Grant’s going to hit us with everything he’s got, soon as he gets his men up. I’ll need you then and I’ll need you fresh. If you’re not out of this building in five minutes I’ll detail two men to take you home in handcuffs.” I saluted and said, “Yes, sir,” but instead of going home I walked to the top of Sky Parlor. The streets are filled with retreating soldiers, with wagons and ambulances. For a long time I stood at the top looking east and down, where Grant’s men were coming up through the ravines, and the Confederates streaming back into town. It was like looking down on a very bright orange-and-green chessboard. Last night Pemberton ordered all the houses on those hills outside of town burned, to clear the line of fire.

  I wondered if Justin were down there, and where he was.

  Emory came up beside me, and walked me home.

  Yours,

  Susie

  [sketch]

  Susanna Ashford, Vicksburg, Mississippi

  To

  Cora Poole, Deer Isle, Maine

  [not sent]

  WEDNESDAY, MAY 27, 1863

  Dear Cora,

  I don’t even know how to write about what’s happened since my last letter to you. I should be sleeping, but I can’t. At least I was able to wash, and rinse my hair. I think about how horrified I was the first time I got a louse in my hair, going down the line in Nashville, and I think, Who was that girl, and did she have nothing greater in her life, to earn her revulsion and alarm?

  Grant attached the fortifications along the east of town a week ago yesterday. I think a week ago Monday night was the last time I slept in a bed. I suppose I ought to be glad the Union finally has two good Generals, but I find I’m not.

  The land in back of town is all wooded gullies and ravines, where people used to pasture their cows. Gen’l Pemberton had rifle-pits and redoubts dug just beyond the last houses. The Federals had to attack up-hill. You don’t have to be Julius Caesar to know that isn’t a good idea. I was on my way to the Washington Hotel Hospital when the shelling started. I can’t really describe the sound a shell makes. It’s a sort of deafening rushing, like a waterfall or a train close-by. The first one hit a block from me, on Clay Street. Before I got to the hospital I could hear the cannons start up, east of town. While still outside the hospital door I could hear Julia screaming upstairs. I ran up, to find Tom awake for the first time since he’d been brought in, holding Julia in his arms. He looked at me as I came into the room and said, “Them’s mortars.” Something ran across my foot and I looked down and saw every rat in the building, high-tailing it for the cellar.

  It’s funny how quickly you learn to distinguish sounds during a shelling. I can tell the difference now between mortar-shells and Parrotts (the kind that explode in the air and shower the street with white-hot fragments of metal), and whether the shell is going to land in the next block, or the one where you’re standing. Most people in town have dug some kind of shelter, like the “cave” at Aunt Sally’s, which is where I am now. Zed worked on it on and off for weeks, in between Aunt Sally renting him out to dig other people’s caves. It’s about sixteen feet deep and has two rooms off it, and opens into China Street, which is a sort of de
ep cut where the land rises on both sides. I think it could not take a direct hit with a Parrott, but it’s plenty of protection against fragments. I don’t know if I’ve quit being scared, or if I’m just too tired to feel anything right now. Sometimes it feels like I was killed that first day, and so got it over with, and I’m fine, now. I wish I could talk to you.

  It’s blazing hot here, and worse inside the cave, which is airless and smells like dirt. Gen’l Pemberton pushed Grant back the first day, but the shelling didn’t stop, and hasn’t stopped: mortars from the river, and Parrotts and mortars from the other side of the ravines in the back of town. Doc and I worked for twenty hours straight in the operating theater that first day, with the whole building shaking and plaster fragments falling from the ceilings like snow. It was my job to hold a towel over the open wounds, to keep the plaster out of them. About three days later Grant brought up his whole army and hit the entire defensive line at once, on a three-mile curve. Emory swore nobody had seen anything like it. Just before that, we got Tom back to the house, Emory and Nellie and I carrying him in a litter and listening for when the shelling seemed to be moving our way. Bombs drop all day and entirely through the night, without stopping. They must be bringing them up via the railroad through Jackson, and working three shifts on the guns.

  When the second attack was finally over, the Federals kept up firing across the battlefield, so no one could collect the wounded, not theirs nor ours. After two days, in heat like an oven, you could smell the battlefield from anywhere in town. I think fear of pestilence finally decided Grant. Monday, he silenced the guns long enough to get the wounded and the dead out of there. Doc said Grant didn’t want to show weakness: that he was afraid of what the Northern newspapers would say about him.