Homeland

by Barbara Hambly

  I long for Justin’s books, up in Skull Cave. I’ve been up there three times, to make sure they’re safe, and it’s hard not to bring them back. I’m so desperate to read something—anything. So desperate to have company other than Julia, who goes cheerfully about her housework, singing. Sometimes I’ll go in and talk to Tom, but between the pain and the moonshine the boys trade for him—it’s the only painkiller he has—he has little to say. Alone in the dark of my room these moonless nights, I listen to the voices of the men downstairs. I know any book I brought would end up kindling the fires. I’m sure they’d read it first—but it would end up in the fire in the end.

  What are you reading now? Do you still take Miss Mercy across to Isle au Haut? Kiss her for me.

  Love always,

  Susie

  Cora Poole, Deer Isle, Maine

  To

  Susanna Ashford

  [not sent]

  TUESDAY, AUGUST 25, 1863

  Dearest Susanna,

  If I can not take comfort in reading these days—and how sorely I miss the disreputable Becky’s quest for gentility!—at least all the simple summer labors have the effect of quieting my heart. And, too, I find—set into my grief like jewels in sand—moments of beauty and peace: two yellow-winged butterflies playing over the long grass at the pond’s edge; the taste of perfect blackberry jam. Peggie is still listless, and of little help to Papa, when Mother has one of her head aches. But, at least both are able—and Mother, too, often—to cut apples to dry, to thread miles of beans, to braid onion-tops, and churn butter. Like squirrels, we line our nest. All of my salary has gone to paying a man to cut the winter’s wood, and now he is gone.

  A hundred and seven men crossed to Belfast last week. Draftees—to be examined for entry into the Army: one island man in five. A further forty were drafted, but vanished into the woods or took refuge on the myriad hundreds of islands that dot our Bay. Every man owns a boat, even if just a little pea-pod for trapping lobsters. Almost thirty men were able to raise the three hundred dollars needed to buy their way out, including Mother’s friend Jem Duffy, who mortgaged his house and farm to do so.

  TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 8

  Papa returned to New Haven yesterday. I wish I could have crossed with him, and not simply walked him down to Green’s Landing. But every dollar counts now, and I could not spare the days from my work, nor he from his. He has lost flesh this summer, and looked so tired, bidding good-by to Peggie and Mother in the dark kitchen. Will has said he will make sure the rest of the wood gets in and stacked.

  FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 11

  Home with the twilight, which falls earlier now, to find the laundry yet needing to be soaked for tomorrow’s washing, and the butter needing to be churned. It is midnight now, the kitchen full of softly-steaming wash-tubs, and this dark will not have passed when I must wake again for the milking.

  MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 14

  A curious circumstance. Coming to the Town Landing this afternoon, and finding Will absent, I went aboard the Lady Anne, to put Mercy in the little pen Will made for her out of two lobster-traps. My daughter seems determined to grow up to be the heroine of a Shakespeare play, or of a novel by Fenimore Cooper—or if possible, the heroine’s intrepid companion, who actually does all the firing of pistols and climbing down ivy and riding sixty miles à l’Amazone in a night—rather than the more demure maiden of Miss Emily St. Aubert’s cut! Thus, she requires confinement while on-board, to her great disgruntlement.

  In quest of the water-jar, I looked into the little “cabin,” a sort of rabbit-hutch on the deck, and saw, among the packages that Will takes for delivery, one wrapped in a shirt made of faded red calico, as if someone had cut up a worn dress. I knew the dress. I’ve seen its wearer about Green’s Landing all summer, and only last week saw her two children in shirts of the identical cloth. Wrapped in that shirt were two loaves of bread, a paper screw containing salt and another of bird-shot, a chunk of cheese and a package of fish-hooks; information which I put together with my knowledge that this woman’s husband was one of those who had disappeared after being drafted. There was no address at all in the package—few packages that Will delivers contain them, for he knows everyone on the islands, even as he knows every islet and rock-ledge of Merchant Row and the Bay beyond. By which I cleverly deduce that Will is the one taking provision to the forty-some men who have chosen to leave their families and go into hiding, rather than be drafted.

  Your fellow Spy,

  Cora Susanna Ashford, Bayberry Run Plantation

  Greene County, Tennessee

  To

  Cora Poole

  [not sent]

  SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 1863

  Dear Cora,

  Sometimes I pretend I’ve just gotten a letter from you! Sometimes I pretend that one day I will, or could. Thank you for the kind words you would have sent, and that long list of books you’ve read. When I go to bed at night now, I’ll take one down off that imaginary list, and start to read it through, starting with Chapter One. Last night I got up to Mr. Collins asking Elizabeth Bennet to marry him, and her father telling her, “I’m afraid you must inevitably lose one of your parents; for if you do not marry him, your mother says she will never speak to you again, and if you do marry him, I will never speak to you …” Or words to that effect. Looking back, I realize how much Mr. Bennet is like Pa: funny and charming. And never there when you really need him.

  Pa is gone again. I could see it coming, ever since Regal was killed, two weeks ago. Even before Regal’s death, I could see Pa was getting bored. But of course he said that “Someone has to represent this section where his voice will be heard, and if I do say so myself, I’m a sort of unofficial advisor to old Jeff …” Which is not what Aunt Sally wrote, back in July. Julia fainted (need I say it?) and there was tumult, as you can see from my sketch. I hope you like the other sketches. I still try to keep up with Mr. Cameron’s instruction, and your own urging, to keep myself prepared to go to the art academy, though it seems very far away now. I can’t see how I’ll manage—though once the War is over, I know I’ll be able to figure something out. Right now I simply feel trapped in a box, and waiting, and praying I don’t starve to death before everyone gets tired of fighting.

  In the meantime, berries are ripe all through the woods, and I gather nuts to beat any squirrel in the county. I have about six places in the woods—cabins and farmhouses mostly, where people have been driven out, and tiny clearings in the laurel hells where I’ve got the berries laid out to dry—where with luck the bush-whackers won’t stumble across them. They know the houses are empty, so don’t go through them again. I’ve been watching for chickens and pigs, too, that got away from foragers on both sides. I’ve seen tracks, and have found several nests, but haven’t caught anything yet.

  Sometimes it’s pretty frightening. Last week I found a man hanging in the woods, Union or Secesh I couldn’t tell, but he’d been there awhile. But to tell you the truth, I’d rather forage than do housework. In addition to the food situation, all those things we kept stores of are pretty much gone, too, like scouring-sand and soap: we have plenty of ashes, but no fat, and if we had any, we’d eat it rather than make soap with it. It also means even if I had books I couldn’t read them. I’ve cut pine-knots to burn at night, but the light they give isn’t good, and I’m always terrified someone’s going to knock one over, and burn down the house. The men sleep on the porch, and burn pine-knot torches to play cards in the evening. (Drunk, of course: Pappy Weevil’s still seems to be the only going business left in the county. I think the boys provide him with grain taken from the Federals, as part payment for the resulting liquor.) When the weather turns—if the fighting isn’t over by then—I don’t know what we’ll do.

  [sketches]

  MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 7

  It’s funny: I still miss Payne terribly (I wear his clothes, when I go foraging), but barely think about my brother Regal at all. I never really knew him, even in good times. Then when he
rode with the militia he changed even more. He hated our neighbors for becoming Pa’s enemies, and hated the world, I think, for no longer being what it was. I try to think of any book that talks about this change in the heart: in Sense and Sensibility, the Dashwood Sisters are just too brave and good to turn sour that way, when they lose their home. Can you think of one?

  Julia has cut one of Gaius’s coats into a uniform jacket for Emory, and dyed it. (You can make a pretty good dye out of walnut-shells.) Sometimes I’ll go into the nursery, and wonder, about Henriette and Tristan and Leonella. I try to think of some giant Mr. Thackeray in the sky, the Author who’s chronicling their adventures, wherever they are, so they’ll return unexpectedly in Chapter LVII, and we’ll all cry, “Oh, my gosh, that’s where they were!” and have Tristan fall in love with Mercy (they both being sixteen by then).

  Until then, as Don Quixote says, “Patience, and shuffle the cards!”

  Love always,

  Susanna

  [sketches]

  Cora Poole, Deer Isle, Maine

  To

  Susanna Ashford

  [not sent]

  TUESDAY, OCTOBER 20, 1863

  Dearest Susanna

  President Lincoln has called for three hundred thousand more volunteers! Will is disgusted: “The man has frittered away the greatest gift—the greatest weapon—ever laid in the hand of a ruler: an army of volunteers who fight, not for booty, but for a cause they believe to be just. And what does he put to command it? Political hacks who can get his party votes, like Burnside and Sickles. And when they get their men butchered through sheer stupidity, and no one wants to play anymore, what right does he have, to continue the slaughter with men who have families to feed, and their lives to live?”

  The fleet has returned. Uncle M and Papa will slaughter our bull-calf Saturday, so that we can begin with the cheese-making, while there is yet enough milk coming to do so.

  MONDAY, OCTOBER 26

  Too tired, to write more than a line. But that line is, I miss you, my friend.

  TUESDAY, OCTOBER 27

  Last Friday the moon being full, I went with Will, as he sailed among the islands with provisions for the men in hiding. I have done this once before, ten days ago, with less of a moon, and later in the night. On both occasions I left Mercy with Mrs. Barter for the night, telling her that I feared to cross with my daughter by moonlight, which is true. Fig N—from Green’s Landing, hiding on Spoon Island—is cutting wood there, which Will delivers and sells, the money to support Fig’s wife and children.

  Cheese-making all week, and heavy labor, cutting and mixing the curds. Mother no longer asks why we are in mourning, but I see her face puzzled sometimes. I dare not ask what it is that she has forgotten. In the evenings I read to her from the Bible, while Peggie churns butter, neglected in the press of all other work of the day. Always so tired, and it seems, never a moment to myself. The pasture is a glowing lake of goldenrod.

  FRIDAY, OCTOBER 30

  The Grand Recitation: the harvest of my summer’s labors. Small girls hesitantly reciting “The Kitten and the Tiger,” boys parsing long sentences at the blackboard, or identifying State Capitals upon wavery maps that could be Arabia for all the resemblance they bear to the States of the Union. A dinner in my honor by the parents of my flock, which touched me very much. Yet, every cent of the money I made is already gone. Salt is forty cents a box at Lufkin’s store, that was eight cents a box the year before last. The first week I came home, I remember flour was five dollars a barrel; it’s now twenty-two, and thread is almost a dollar a spool. Mother and I both need shoes, and I’ve arranged to trade butter to Mr. Harrod in Southeast Harbor, to have ours re-soled. There are signs all over the island, asking us to donate a portion of our crops to the Army, as well.

  It is cruelly cold tonight, but calm. Coming home across the bay, the stars seemed bright, like diamonds on a curtain, burning clear down to the horizon. Peggie, bless her, had the house spotless for Papa’s homecoming, and together we read the Bible to Mother, who had a headache today, the worst in weeks. Will gave me, as he always does, a great quantity of newspapers, but even the news that Grant’s army has arrived to break the Confederate seige of Chattanooga brought me no comfort. First, because it is so close to Greeneville, to Bayberry —surely you are not there, my rash girl?—to all those people I met and still think of, kindly and with terrible concern. And second … In September’s battles there, when the Confederates trapped the Union forces in the town, twenty-five thousand men were killed or wounded. Twenty-five thousand! Nearly one man in three, of those who left their homes to fight!

  I should read the newspapers, study the War … not turn my face from what is happening to this country, and to my home here on the island. Or as Papa says, I should read the Bible, to reconcile God’s purposes with my doubting heart. I read Vanity Fair instead, and find in it the road-map to get me from day to day, and the laughter that lets me close my eyes at night.

  And so we carry forward, my friend.

  Love,

  Your Cora

  Susanna Ashford, Bayberry Run Plantation

  Greene County, Tennessee

  To

  Cora Poole

  [not sent]

  THURSDAY, OCTOBER 22, 1863

  Dearest Cora,

  Still raining! In a way it’s useful, because there’s less chance there’ll be anyone but me tromping around in the woods. I assume the Unionist bush-whackers are also sitting around under shelter somewhere, the same way the militia troop has all moved into the Big House. Some of them are perfectly nice fellows, and Emory—and the nice ones—serve to keep the others in line, but I am very tired of hearing their remarks as I pass them. I barricade the door of my room every night. That’s where I am now, with three pine-knots burning, as much to keep me warm as for light to write by.

  Julia and I spent the day washing. One of our few remaining neighbors, Mrs. Gitting, showed me how to make soap out of “chimney pinks” (I think they’re also called bruisewort), but you can’t preserve it in jars the way you can with regular soap. Still, there was plenty of lye. Every man in the troop came loitering around the kitchen, asking that we do his shirts or socks, as well. Of course Julia said we’d be delighted to, and lectured me about how these men were defending our homeland, and providing food for us, and being washerwomen for them was the least we can do. Mrs. Gitting lives five miles away, at the foot of Scanlon’s Mountain; she told me she and her children sleep in the woods, their house has been raided by bush-whackers so often. I think it’s her son who sometimes robs my traps.

  [sketches]

  SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 8

  Happy birthday, my dearest friend! And, a little relief: the regular Confederate Army is moving north into this section to drive the Federals out of Knoxville if they can, and to draft whoever they can find. Most of the militia has high-tailed it into the woods, which means I can scrape the corn I saved for seed. When I hide portions of the provisions the men bring, Julia chides me, that the fighting will be over soon, and this miserliness of mine, besides being selfish, is foolish.

  How I wish there was some other way of getting news, than what someone says someone said to them the last time they were in Greeneville two weeks ago!

  It is arctic up here in my room, as darkness falls, and the house seems ominously silent. I tore my blue dress—the last one I have—digging a hidey-hole in the cellar of the old Gordon barn, and there is no thread to sew on a patch with (and only the rags of the kitchen towels, to use for patching). Emory tells me, the bush-whackers hanged Case Mitchell outside of Greeneville yesterday.

  TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 10

  I caught a pig!!!

  Yours in triumphant joy,

  Susanna the Mighty Huntress

  Cora Poole, Deer Isle, Maine

  To

  Susanna Ashford

  [not sent]

  WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 1863

  Dearest,

  The first storm of winter. Mother,
Peggie, and I spent all the day in the summer kitchen, now icily cold, putting the last of the pigs into brine, while rendering lard and boiling the heads in the main kitchen. When the head-cheese was done, and all cleaned and mopped and scoured and scalded, Mother made corn-and-milk for dinner, as she used to when we were children. The wind howls, and when I crossed to the barn for the evening milking I could hear the sea running high beyond the woods on the other side of the road. Still, with my child sleeping at my side, I look forward with the greediness of a child myself to the adventures of Glaucus and Arbaces and the Witch of Vesuvius, and all those others destined to meet a thoroughly un-edifying doom in the smoking ruins of Pompeii.

  MONDAY, NOVEMBER 16

  Evening again. Mother is asleep, at last, after a disquieting day. Much of the time she did not seem to know me at all. Soap-making all last week. My shoulders still ache from stirring the kettle. As Mother had an agonizing headache two days running, Peggie and I did not have her expertise to “prove” the soap, which I fear is too strong.

  Peggie, too, is absent this evening, as she is many evenings now. She has begun sewing for money, pieces delivered from a woman in Belfast. This she takes to Elinor’s as soon as the floors are scrubbed in the morning, and I do not see her again, sometimes not even for dinner. In many ways this is a relief to me, yet, her absence heightens the strange Robinson Crusoe quality of my days.