Homeland

by Barbara Hambly

  Sometimes, when I’m prowling the woods with my bags and satchels, gathering berries and nuts, checking my trap-lines and fish-lines, passing the ruins of farms that I’ve picked clean even of the rag-rugs (that’s what the satchels are made of) where people I used to know, used to live … sometimes it feels like I’m the last person on the face of the earth. That everyone else is dead, and I’m alone. And I’m happy that it’s that way.

  LATER. NEAR DAWN

  Shooting. I don’t know whether it was bandits come to steal the troop’s horses and food, or Lincolnites. I had my rifle up here but the moon was down, and not enough ammunition to waste on shadows. From the window now, by starlight, I can just barely make out the militiaman walking patrol through the wasted ruin of Henriette’s garden, waiting for daylight when they’ll go after them. Julia is crying again—I hear Emory’s voice, comforting her—and, closer, poor tiny Adam wailing in Tom’s room.

  Don’t ask me what I’m feeling, Cora, because I can’t even say.

  Cora Poole, Deer Isle, Maine

  To

  Susanna Ashford, General Delivery

  Greeneville, Tennessee

  TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 1864

  Dearest,

  What on earth is a “ramp”? And, what you can “do” for me, to make my life easier, you are doing. Every letter I get from you raises my spirits, and scatters the shadows that sometimes threaten to swallow me. My ability to “keep cheerful” I learned from you, my friend, and from those dear unfailing friends to whom you introduced me: the Dashwood Sisters, and Miss Esther Summerson, and Eliza Bennet, and even the disreputable but indefatigable Becky Sharp, who never seems to let anything get her down.

  I blush to remember, when first we came to know each other, that I had the temerity to regard novel-reading as a “childish flaw” in your character that you would one day outgrow! Now I see myself as having been one of those truculent illiterates who takes pride in “not knowin’ nuthin’ about book-learnin’,” or perhaps more accurately, a bleak impenetrable soul like Claud Frollo or Miss Havisham, who boast to themselves that they are impervious to love.

  Mr. Poole may have set before me the medicines that heal the heart, but it was you who convinced me to drink them. They remind me, too, that no condition lasts forever. That change comes.

  Papa has returned to New Haven. Peggie and I work like squirrels, to store up what we can for the winter. She spends as many days as she can with Elinor, sewing and accompanying her to visit other Daughters of the Union, and various church groups and Ladies Aid Societies about the island. She leaves Nollie with Elinor’s young sister Katie, along with Elinor’s children, and I am certain that at every one of these meetings my character and conduct are subject for discussion.

  FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 23

  I begin to feel quite wealthy, as provisions accumulate. All summer I have been making butter, trading some to Mr. Lufkin for necessaries like sugar and salt and wax to make candles, now that kerosene is so costly, and the rest, salting and caching in the coldest corner of the cellar. Today Jabel Dow delivered the barrels of cider and vinegar that Aunt Hester was so good as to have pressed with her own. For weeks now, after all the other tasks of the day are done, I have been peeling and slicing apples, and threading them to dry; a task done by others turn and turn about, with neighbors to help. While working, alone in the stillness of the summer kitchen by the light of the long twilights, I have adopted your method of “reading” while I work; seeing how closely I can recall every incident of Emma, or Hard Times, or Heaven help me! The Monk, starting with Chapter One, while Miss Mercy makes strange designs from the discarded peelings until she falls quite abruptly asleep on her cot. Mother, thank Heavens, has had a good week, but she sleeps a great deal these days. Mercy seems to accept that this is how Grandmother is—as I accepted, at her age, that all winters were spent by everyone buried in the dark, and as Emory once accepted that a father was someone who goes out and sleeps on the ground in the woods with his dogs.

  How wonderful and how terrible are the things that children accept as the unavoidable nature of the world!

  I have thought much about Emory lately; wondering if he is alive, even. Wondering where he is, and what things have befallen him, in the three years that we’ve been apart. Wondering if he has been wounded, or maimed, as your Tom is, and whether we will—or can—live in Boston again when he returns. Eliza Johnson has written me, very kindly promising that the Senator will find some employment for Emory, but I know now—as I did not before—how profoundly people can change, and have changed, from having been hammered in the forge of war. For this reason, Susie, perhaps more than for any other, I am grateful that our friendship has been resumed. It gives me the hope of other things.

  A walk to Aunt Hester’s tomorrow, who was so good as to take our butter into town to trade for camphor and turpentine, to do the mattresses before the onset of winter again. The air is sharp: frost soon.

  Always your friend,

  Cora

  P.S. Convey my thanks to HIH Marcus Aurelius for the paper. I am grateful for his loan of it to you, beyond what words can express.

  Susanna Ashford, Bayberry Run Plantation

  Greene County, Tennessee

  To

  Cora Poole, Deer Isle, Maine

  MONDAY, OCTOBER 24, 1864

  Dear Cora,

  A ramp is a sort of wild onion, that grows all over the mountains here in Tennessee. They can be cooked or eaten raw, though raw they’re a bit vehement. If the Federal troops pull back to defend against the new Confederate attacks in the west (and take their cornmeal supplies with them!), they’re what we may be eating all winter.

  And, your fish-hooks work like champions!

  We’ve had a sort of Rob Roy existence here lately. The militia lifted somebody’s cattle over from Carter County (I didn’t think anybody in the mountains had cattle anymore! They must have stolen them from someone in North Carolina), and last week about sixteen Carter Countians came to get them back. The house wasn’t burned, so I’m pleased, but goodness knows what poor Tommy is going to accept as the unavoidable nature of the world. Julia, of course, is all ruffled up that those “damned Lincolnites” would dare refuse to contribute to the support of the lawful forces of the Confederacy.

  I’d cheerfully sell one of the militiamen into slavery for a copy of Emma—or even The Monk. (Except it would probably take eight or ten, to make up the value of a book.)

  The days shorten and grow cold. The last of Henriette’s roses, in the overgrown wilderness of the old garden, has withered away. In addition to forage, I’ve made a little laboratory up at the Holler, to make enough ink to last me the winter. Boiling the stuff keeps my hands warm, and hereabouts I have to be careful, at who might see the smoke. Some evenings I don’t get back til after dark. I wish there were a way to get the bugs out of the bedding here, but that’s yet another thing on the list of, What to Do When the War is Done, like poor mad Miss Flite in Bleak House, anticipating Judgement Day. Last week I boiled my mattress-cover and blanket, and put smoke-smudges under my bed, nearly burning up the bed and the house in the process, but as long as we have big houseguests sleeping downstairs (and I will admit, they do keep other bandits away) we’ll have little houseguests as well.

  Your own, in spite of all,

  Susie

  Susanna Ashford, Bayberry Run Plantation

  Greene County, Tennessee

  To

  Cora Poole

  [not sent]

  MONDAY, OCTOBER 24, 1864

  Cora,

  I don’t know how much longer I can continue this. Every letter I get from you, I want to write back … What? I don’t even know. How can I tell you that Emory, as far as I can gather, has not the slightest intention of leaving Julia, who clings to him like an imperiled Princess in a Gothic novel? Which is, I am sure, exactly how she sees herself and how he sees her. And if Emory left, what would we have? Lyle and his robbers? Emory, by the way, was furious
when Lyle and his boys came in with the cattle—and of course, had eaten most of them before their rightful owners showed up. It was only due to Emory’s diplomacy that our house wasn’t burned.

  And it’s only the fact that I pretend that I actually like sleeping with Lyle, that keeps Lyle’s band, which is almost as large as the militia troop, from murderous war with Emory’s.

  Julia keeps asking, When is Lyle going to marry me? It’s very hard to keep my mouth shut. Lately at night—when he’s lying there beside me drunk—it crosses my mind that the only way out of this that makes any sense is for me to die. I know you’ll find out one day, when the War is over … Only, it sometimes seems that the War never will be over. Not here in Tennessee. The people who think a State has the right to leave the Union, still think it. And nothing the Federal government can do will make them say they don’t think what they think. And the men who think Tennessee should be in the Union, are bound and determined to exterminate them, one man at a time.

  And I don’t want to live in that situation, any more than I want to live if you come to hate me for betraying you.

  Cora Poole, Deer Isle, Maine

  To

  Susanna Ashford, General Delivery

  Greeneville, Tennessee

  WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 1864

  Dear Susie,

  News reached the island today, that Abraham Lincoln has been elected for a second term as President.

  So the War will continue. Not, I think, that anyone had any doubt of it, once Atlanta fell. But the conditions that you tell of, with such grim good-humor, appall me. And as you say, there is a vast list, of things (“Gammon and Spinach”) that can not even be contemplated until the fighting is over. Not knowing what will be possible, I can not even plan or imagine. Last month notices went out here for a second draft. Almost two hundred men were called up: nearly half of those remaining on the island. Close to eighty of them simply vanished, joining the fifty or so already in hiding on the tiny islets of this granite coast. Fifty of those remaining hired substitutes. Mother’s poor friend Jem Duffy, having mortgaged his house and farm to buy himself free from the first draft, was drafted in the second, and for the sake of his family—he has seven children, the oldest being eleven—he has sold both farm and house, and works now as a laborer … for those who have the money to hire him. I traded him two cheeses, to cut wood for the winter, and half of one of our pigs, for the labor of his wife, himself, and his oldest son, in butchering out the other two. All over the island, one now sees houses shut up, as those who can not make their livings either fishing or farming move to the mainland.

  I am told, most curiously, that, so many men being in the Army now, in Boston and New York young women who can write a good hand are being taken as clerks, in both offices and shops. I would smile, if I did not know the cost of those victories in blood.

  THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 10

  Why should I not send fish-hooks to one who holds Open House for Secessionist militia, if poor General Grant is supporting the entire Confederate Army in East Tennessee, and their dependents, on his own rations? My local reputation as a Copperhead surely can not suffer more, even if the news were to become generally known.

  I have not yet had the joy of reading Rob Roy, and dare not ask Papa to seek a copy of it for me in New Haven. As you can see, I, too, have been reduced to plundering my poor father-in-law’s volumes of their title-pages and end-papers. Please send me your recipe for ink, as that commodity has risen to a dollar a bottle at Lufkin’s.

  FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 11

  Dear friend, how I wish you were here! After Peggie left, and I had begun to render out the lard from the pig-killing, so that soap-making can commence Monday, Mother began one of her headaches, the worst yet, I think: staggering blindly from room to room, trying to beat her head against the walls. All the laudanum I dared give her seemed to have little effect, and even when she was half-stupefied, the pain remained. I did what I could for her, sitting beside her bed, holding her hand, then retreating into the kitchen to wrestle with wood, vats, stove until her cries brought me back. There was no one I could send for help, nor any way that I could leave her. The day was cold, wind blowing savagely, and though I did not want Mercy to see her Grandmother so, yet I kept remembering the story of how Emory, as a child, left his Father’s cabin and wandered away onto the mountain in a storm. So I kept my daughter, silent and terrified, by my side.

  Mother fell asleep, finally, hours before Peggie came home—and here I sit, with kettles full of cooling grease, in the dark summer kitchen as it grows cold with the howling of the wind outside, and I am so glad that you are there, my dear friend. Sometimes it seems to me that Mother will be in this much pain forever, and will never die. This afternoon, I did wonder, if—I can not write it, and I won’t. But I did wonder.

  I dread her waking up in pain again. By the sound of the storm, Papa will not be able to cross from the mainland tomorrow. And I must clean the summer kitchen yet tonight, and scald the pans from the evening’s milking.

  Tell me about Rob Roy, my friend, or Quentin Durward, or how to find wild sweet potatoes, before we sleep tonight, you and I.

  Love always,

  Cora

  Susanna Ashford, Bayberry Run Plantation

  Greene County, Tennessee

  To

  Cora Poole, Deer Isle, Maine

  SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 1864

  [lost]

  Susanna Ashford, Bayberry Run

  Plantation

  Greene County, Tennessee

  To

  Cora Poole

  [not sent]

  MONDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 1864

  Dear Cora,

  Adam is sick again, poor little fellow. He wasn’t much bigger than a skinned squirrel when he was born, and at seven months it almost doesn’t seem that he’s grown at all. Usually he’s such a silent baby, but now he cries with fever. Last night some of the men shouted to Shut that little bastard up! and others took umbrage at this (I heard all this through the floor of my room) resulting in a battle royal, that made poor Adam cry all the worse. Emory finally went downstairs and broke some heads. I think there was moonshine involved on all sides. I’ve been dosing Adam with willow-bark, which seems to bring the fever down, and wrapping him in wet cloths. Julia and Tom have taken turns, sitting up with him in the night. One of the men—a stringy old devil with a gray beard down to his waist—care fully gathered nearly a bushel of fresh horse-droppings from the corral and brought it to me, with the earnest advice that his Ma had always buried him up to his neck in it for fever. He assured me—unnecessarily—that they were absolutely fresh and still warm.

  Last night, passing the nursery where Julia sat with her baby in her arms, I am ashamed to say I thought, If Adam dies, maybe Emory will go back to Cora … I wanted to weep, because I’ve become the kind of person who thinks like that, but I can’t. And in any case, I don’t think it’s true. What Emory will do, when the War is over—if the War ever ends—I don’t know. I don’t even know what he thinks, or wants, or thinks is going to happen. There is a look the men have in their eyes, flat and a little glazed, as if none of them thinks beyond the War. As if none expects he will live to see peace, or anything but what he now knows. Sometimes it crosses my mind that they—including Emory and Julia—don’t actually want the War to end, because they no longer know how to live in any other fashion. These days Emory is as careful to avoid being alone with me, as Julia is to keep us from any possibility of speaking unwatched.

  This isn’t difficult. Tho’ winter is closing in and I did secure about a bushel of potatoes, I still go out to forage daily. I shot a woodchuck yesterday, and have seen hog tracks close to the house. Emory and his men hunt, as well as forage. Often, tho’ he is living in the same house, we barely speak for days on end. Tho’ I have heard there is a great thrust of men in the west, to take back Nashville, neither Emory nor Lyle is inclined to join the regular forces. At least Emory—unlike Lyle—makes his men cut wood for
us.

  Forgive me, for praying that Adam lives.

  Yours,

  Susie

  Susanna Ashford, Bayberry Run Plantation

  Greene County, Tennessee

  To

  Cora Poole

  [not sent]

  FRIDAY, DECEMBER 9, 1864

  Dear Cora,

  Bitter cold, rain, and a little snow. Nothing in the traps, and with the Federal troops pulled back to Nashville, the major source of supply for the militia is gone. I must be very careful, bringing the fish I’ve dried down to the house, lest Lyle ask, Where did they come from? Or Julia feel moved to confide to Emory that she thinks I have a hidden store that those poor militiamen really need more desperately than we do. We’ve argued half a dozen times over this, and she’s wept, and called me selfish: “The only thing you’ve ever thought about is yourself,” she says. “You just want to go away and draw or read, and you don’t care about us at all.” And it isn’t true, Cora! Can’t I care about Julia—can’t I love Julia—and not want to be with her twenty-four hours out of every day?

  It’s been nearly two months since your last letter, but I know if I walked to town, there’d be nothing. The Confederates have surrounded Nashville, and no mail is getting through from the North. Even with the Federal camp gone, Julia doesn’t like to see me walk into town: “Full of damn Lincolnites gossipping about what isn’t their business,” she sniffs. Every time one of Lyle’s boys comes back from there, he’s brimming with news about who “came for” whom.