Homeland
Page 18
A week ago Saturday, Papa brought one of his Yale colleagues home with him, a Swiss gentleman who specializes in diseases of the brain. He examined Mother carefully, looked in her eyes with a powerful mirror, and tested her reflexes in all sorts of ways. Then he took us quietly aside into the parlor and said, There is nothing that can be done for her. He said had he seen her the very day she fell, it would have been the same. There is a slow effusion of blood into the brain. She will gradually get worse, and sleep more and more, until at last she will die in her sleep.
I feel sad, and very strange. I know not what has befallen you, my friend, in the year since I last heard from you. Nor do I know where Emory is, or if he still lives. All things seem suspended, waiting for this War to end; it’s as if I am indeed stranded on an island of wraiths, unable to leave or to do anything to learn the fate of those I love. Like Lemuel Gulliver, stranded among the Lilliputians—or perhaps like Gulliver’s wife, when her husband returned from his final voyage insane, unable to bear so much as the touch of her hand.
I can only think, that if that silly adventurer had a friend at his side, or access to books, he might not have so slipped his moorings and gone drifting away into the closed circle of madness. This is what they do for us, both books and friends: they remind us what it is to be human. As you wrote to me, they are the window into sunlight, even if we ourselves are shut in the dark.
Your friend,
Cora
Susanna Ashford, Bayberry Run Plantation
Greene County, Tennessee
To
Cora Poole
[not sent]
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 1863
Dear Cora,
I am ready to take a switch to Julia! She kept her mouth shut about the pig when the regular commissary men came through—and stole every atom of the food in our kitchen, not just the ten percent “tax” the Confederacy demands, and searched the grounds and found the hideout cache I’d dug under the burned ruins of the tobacco-barn—but when Emory and his men came back, she told them. She cried when I shouted at her, and hugged little Tommy to her and said, how I shouldn’t be stingy because they were fighting for him. I only looked at her, and said wearily, “I’m fighting for him, Julia.”
The regular Army caught three of Emory’s militia and drafted them last week; it was two days before they could get away. Even Emory, when he has dealings with the regular troops about raids on the Federals, makes sure he leaves a reserve of troops behind him in the woods when he meets with them, and doesn’t let the Confederate regulars get between himself and his line of retreat. “I wouldn’t say so to Julia,” he told me yesterday evening, “but I sure wouldn’t put it past ‘em, to give me a choice of goin’ out to Virginia or gettin’ my head blowed off.” His boys spent the night in our house—it rained again—and he left us with a sack of peas and a half a flitch of United States bacon when they all rode off this morning. And they took all the firewood I’d chopped!
When they were gone we washed clothes—I will not be the camp washerwoman again and I don’t care whose homeland they’re fighting for!—and I waited til Julia was washing Tom, before I cut about a quarter off the bacon, and poured three or four cups of the peas into an old pot, and carried both off to one of my hidey-holes in the woods.
These past three or four weeks, if Tom’s not too drunk, I’ve been “reading” to the family in the evenings—telling the stories out of the books I remember, in as much detail as I can, by the light of a pine-knot up in the room Tom shares with Tommy. When I do that I think of you, and the winter darkness closing in on Deer Isle again. I’m “reading” Bleak House now (you should have seen Tommy’s eyes, when Mr. Krook caught fire!); as I wander down those fog-shrouded streets of Tom’s All-Alone, I look for you, Cora, in the lighted windows. Tho’ I know we can’t ever speak again, it’s good to see your face.
Love,
Susie
[sketches]
Cora Poole, Deer Isle, Maine
To
Susanna Ashford
[not sent]
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 1863
Dearest Susie,
Well, the house is “banked” once more; the shutters closed until spring. I had meant to wait til Papa came on Saturday, but the wind smells of snow, and today Will said that he would do it now. As I hear the howling of the northeast wind from the Bay, my heart tells me that Papa will not be here Saturday. Winter has truly come.
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 11
Heavy snow. I fear Papa will not be able to come tomorrow, either. Nor have any of Mother’s friends visited in these busy days. In a strange way, being so much alone, with only Mother and Mercy, I almost dread any company but Will’s. I fear I would not know what to say to a stranger, should I meet one.
I had meant to re-read The Iliad, yet I find the tale of war, and wrath, and men squabbling among themselves over glory and booty and female “prizes of honor,” turns me cold: who was it who ever said that Achilles and his messmates were the heroes of anything? Mother has a truly fearful headache, and it is the first time that I have seen her frightened. Will brought newspapers as well as a bottle of laudanum, with accounts of bloodshed all over eastern Tennessee. Maybe this is the reason for my anger over Homer: fear that you may be caught up in what is happening there. Yet, when I read anything by Miss Austen, I find myself reflecting on how thin a line divides the Dashwood Sisters from Becky Sharp. Only luck: good connections, benevolent friends. They are themselves powerless to alter their own circumstances without recourse to some man with a little money, to whose arm they can cling.
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 24
Papa arrived, with little presents for Mercy and Nollie. Other than crying, “Papa, where have you been all day?” Mother was much as she used to be. We read the Christmas story in the Bible, and had a little feast of turkey and spoon-bread. Yesterday Will came to cut wood, and to make sure all was well here, and gave me the present he had bought for me in Portland: a copy of Northanger Abbey. I wept, Susie, thinking of how you enjoyed that book, and that Will would remember how I longed to read it. Will told me, that it being Christmas, the Provost Marshal has men out. They are watching for the deserters and evaders of the draft, who will be sure to be coming to see their families tomorrow. Yet, says Will, the children on Little Deer Isle have organized a warning-system and lookouts, and the Marshals have not caught a man yet!
The moon is nearly full, between the scudding clouds. I suspect—and fear—that Will is playing “Father Christmas” tonight, taking the Lady Anne between those tiny islets, with supplies and good wishes for those in hiding. I try not to picture Ollie on one of those little knobs of granite tufted with trees, living on lobster and sea-birds, until such time as he could come home alive. Did Mr. Dickens forget The Ghost of Christmas Never to Come? Or is its absence a part of his message: that such regrets serve us nothing? Only what actually was, what actually is, can teach us, rather than a sad legion of mighthave-beens.
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 31
Thank you, dear friend, for telling me to tell Will I longed for a copy of Northanger which he saw for sale in Portland: now I think of it as much your gift as his. It has propelled me, I blush to say, back into the sordid wallow of Udolpho, Otrano, Melmoth, and the Monk … an antidote for an anger too near the surface now even to tolerate Don Quixote’s armed lunacy.
I pray 1864 will bring me word from you.
Your own, Cora
Susanna Ashford, Bayberry Run Plantation Greene County, Tennessee
To
Cora Poole
[not sent]
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 25, 1863
Dearest Friend, I miss you.
Gray steady rain for days, with snow on the wind. There isn’t so much as a berry in the woods, my traps have been empty for a week, and I’ve nutted out the trees for miles around. Emory rode in yesterday, with “the boys,” and “for the day’s sake,” as Scrooge’s nephew says, I “caught” the oldest of the hens I’ve been keeping up at Sk
ull Cave, and contributed the poor old dear for Christmas dinner. We—the family—didn’t get so much as a feather. Julia didn’t care—she lives in a state of exaltation at her own self-sacrifice these days—but I did, and I know poor little Tommy is starving. Up in my room tonight I can hear Tom cursing, for of course Lyle Gilkerson brought him some of Pappy Weevil’s finest for Christmas cheer. The men downstairs are quarrelling: they have their Christmas cheer, as well.
“Marley was dead, to begin with. Let there be no doubt about that.” I don’t remember the wording exactly, but I open up the book tonight in my imagination, and read it along with you, under your quilts in your little room behind the stairs, with little Miss Mercy at your side.
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 31
Gen’l Longstreet’s Confederates have retreated into the mountains, and there’s a Federal troop in Greeneville. It doesn’t seem to have changed anything. Monday Jimmy Deakins, who came back in the Federal wake and re-opened his shop, was beaten nearly to death by bush-whackers, half a mile from his own front door. At least now I’ll be able to go into town—or maybe even into the Union camp—and see about a doctor for Julia.
[I think about writing you—heavily crossed out]
The men downstairs are celebrating—again—and I’ve pushed the bed up against the door, as I do every night. It’s far too cold to open the shutters, to look out at the stars as I do in summer, or really even to go anywhere near the window; I can see the last twilight outlining the cracks. It hasn’t snowed yet—and doesn’t, really, not Deer Isle style snow—yet I feel, every night, as if I’m buried, with my invisible books, and the sketches that I hide behind the paneling in the walls, and the packet of your letters tucked under the floor-board. I hear Julia pass my door, and sometimes I hear Tommy, when he cries alone in the night and Tom is too deep asleep to waken and comfort him.
Please think about me.
Always your friend,
Susanna
[sketches]
Susanna Ashford, Bayberry Run Plantation
Greene County, Tennessee
To
Cora Poole
[not sent]
SATURDAY, JANUARY 9, 1864
Dear Cora,
An argument with Julia as I was re-”reading” P&P to the family: “Now, you’re making Mr. Bennet sound so nasty!” She said that about Bleak Houses Mr. Skimpole a few weeks ago—that Mr. Dickens never made him that evil in the Real Book: “Gosh, I’m like an innocent child in matters of the world, I have no idea how my wife and children live, but they manage to … Isn’t that charming?” But at heart, aren’t they both lazy? (And their daughters adore them both.) Is that what Hamlet means, when he says, “Let me make a note of this, that a man can smile, and smile, and be a villain”? Mr. Bennet is just nicer than Mr. Skimpole, that’s all. It’s been four months since Pa left, and there has been (such a surprise renders me faint!) no word from him. Some days I want to kill them all.
Julia, of course, is absolutely convinced that Pa’s going to send us money any day. All I can say is, it better be in Union greenbacks. And then, she’d just spend it on new boots for the militia troop!
Then again, I’m the one who walks miles to comb the attics of empty houses for paper, and burns my fingers making ink, to write a letter I’m never going to send, to a friend who I know I can never see or speak to again. So who is the more insane?
THURSDAY, JANUARY 14
All day working on green dress. The blue dress (although it’s so faded it hasn’t been blue for a long time) having finally worn to tissue, Julia helped me pick apart the bodice, and sew it as a lining into the green, with layers of religious tracts (“A Voice from the Flames,” “The Fleshpots of Sin,” and “The Livery of Iniquity”) in between, to cut the wind. It has been raining for nine days. Last night there was a tremendous fight downstairs, and shots fired—wasteful, considering how little ammunition they have. It’s strange, not really knowing what’s going on anywhere but here. Has someone invented a perpetual motion machine? Don’t know. Has the earth opened up and swallowed Mexico City? Could have happened. I have great sympathy now for poor Dr. Manette in the Bastille (whose adventures I hope you’ve become acquainted with by now).
Maybe that’s the reason I keep such careful track of the days, which I do with a stick of charcoal on the wall of my bedroom (see sketch). I feel that if I miss a day, I could suddenly lose a week, or a month.
My hens up in Skull Cave have quit laying, but I feed them what I can, and go check on them—and on Justin’s books—every day, even in the rain. All the streams are high between here and the cave, rushing torrents. There isn’t an acorn between here and the Georgia border, and I am sometimes in terror of meeting bush-whackers (or even some of our own militia boys). Still after the tumult in the house here, the silence and the smell of the trees, are almost as good as food. Yesterday evening I saw the fog moving down the mountain, like an army of silent ghosts. Breath-taking! I hope your winter days pass more quietly than mine.
Love from the Bastille,
Susie
Cora Poole, Deer Isle, Maine
To
Susanna Ashford, Bayberry Run Plantation,
Green County, Tennessee
Please forward
TUESDAY, JANUARY 12, 1864
[lost]
Susanna Ashford, Bayberry Run Plantation
Greene County, Tennessee
To
Cora Poole
[not sent]
TUESDAY, JANUARY 19, 1864
Dear Cora,
Night again, and drunken voices downstairs. Will I dream about this for the rest of my life? It’s been cold enough to snow, but I foraged up to Indian Creek and Spaniard’s Leap, just to see if by chance it had rained hams up there, but it hadn’t. The trap-lines hadn’t even been touched, except one that some bastard bush-whackers had stolen the string out of. It’s so hard to get anything these days, hard to get anything to make anything out of, even. The farms and cabins on the mountains, where people gave up and left when their menfolks were drafted or fled to avoid it, have all been picked clean, even of things like rugs and curtains, let alone traps. Julia and I have been using hairs out of the horses’ tails to sew with. Even the horses are stolen from the U.S. Army.
Yet the winter woods are so peaceful. Streams that were cataracts two weeks ago are down to trickles with ice, murmuring in the stillness. I keep careful watch on tracks, because there are men even worse than the militia boys up there (it’s hard to imagine anyone nastier than Lyle Gilkerson). Only the presence of the militia here has kept Bayberry from attack. But the silence, and being alone to watch the clouds move across the mountains; being able to just sit for a time and sketch a pine-branch—it’s like when I write to you.
THURSDAY, JANUARY 21
Found a dead man up near the Gilkerson place, someone I didn’t know. I’m ashamed to say the first thing I did was search his pockets, but whoever had shot him had thought of that already. I built a blind, and sat there with the rifle Emory gave me, and waited. I shot two foxes before nightfall. Their meat tastes just awful, but the boys haven’t managed to steal anything from the Army in Greeneville for weeks. I hid the carcasses and the skins in a tree in the laurel hell at the Holler. (I hide everything)
FRIDAY, JANUARY 22
Dreamed last night about Mr. Fox-Bait’s wife, sister, and children. As soon as it got light, smuggled the shovel out of its hiding-place, and lost almost a day of foraging, to dig a shallow grave for him. The ground was nearly frozen, and my chilblains hurt like the Devil, but I did what I could. His shirt’s a little big on me, (somebody else had already got his boots) but I don’t care. While I was digging, I remembered Mrs. Willis at the Nashville Female Academy teaching us the proper form for a letter of acceptance to an informal evening party, and how to make facial restorative out of cucumbers, and I don’t know if I should laugh or what.
In spite of all, your friend,
Susie the Grave-Digger
[sketches]
Cora Poole, Deer Isle, Maine
To
Susanna Ashford, Bayberry Run Plantation
Greene County, Tennessee Please forward
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 27, 1864
Dearest Susanna,
Forgive me, if my previous letter reached you, asking all the same questions that I will ask you again in this one, like a child tugging at her mother’s skirt—as my beautiful daughter has begun to do. When I heard that Union forces had taken eastern Tennessee, my first thought was of you and your family. Eliza Johnson has written to me since, that the section is in turmoil, and I know that it is possible that my letter was lost. Such is my hope, rather than that, with the horrific conditions she describes, you have come to hate me as a Yankee.
So I write again: Are you well? Are you safe? If in fact hardship and bitterness have made it impossible for you to greet me as a friend—and if such be the case, please believe that I understand how it would be so—might you at least write me the briefest of notes, informing me that the correspondence is at an end. Thus at least I will be spared the wretchedness of doubt.