Fire by Night

by Lynn Austin

  The children led her to a nondescript pile of junk where a Negro woman sat with a small baby on her lap, poking at the fire she had built in front of the shanty. She watched apprehensively as Julia approached. Julia felt just as nervous.

  “Hello …I’m Julia Hoffman,” she said. A mound of rags behind the woman shifted at the sound of Julia’s voice, and a second woman sat up, clutching another infant. There was a strong resemblance between the two women, and Julia guessed that they were sisters. Neither one looked much older than she was.

  “I have some work that needs to be done,” Julia said, “and I was wondering if you would like to have a job …to earn some money?”

  The first woman looked at her through narrowed eyes. “What kind of job?”

  “I work in an army hospital. I’d like to hire you to scrub laundry. The army will pay you good wages. Have you done that sort of work before?”

  “We can wash clothes, sure enough. We used to cook meals, hoe the garden, do all kinds of work.”

  “Good. Would you like the job? I could use both of you.”

  The women glanced at each other, communicating silently, then the first one said, “Me and Loretta always willing to work. Lord knows we don’t want our girls begging. But who gonna mind these young ones while we work? How these babies gonna eat? Our men working for the army, and ain’t nobody to take care these children all day.”

  It took Julia only a moment to decide. “You may bring the children, too. As long as all the laundry gets done, I don’t care if you keep them with you.”

  The woman gave a quick, hopeful smile as she scrambled to her feet, shifting the baby from her lap to her shoulder. “This hospital very far? Can we be walking there every day?”

  Julia hadn’t thought about transportation. Fairfield Hospital was too far away for the women to walk, and it would be too expensive for them to hire a carriage every day on laundresses’ wages—if they could even find a driver willing to transport Negroes. Yet Julia knew she had to make this idea of hers work. She needed their help, and these women and their children needed hers. As she edged closer to the fire, warming herself, Julia remembered that the hospital used to be a hotel. Surely there were servants’ quarters somewhere in the building. And even if there weren’t, the laundry room was clean, warm, and dry, a much better alternative than a bed of rags beneath a railway trestle. The only obstacle that she could see was Dr. McGrath. Julia decided she would deal with him when the time came.

  “Pack all your things and bring them with you,” she said. “I’ll let you live at the hospital.”

  The second woman had crawled out of the shanty and risen to her feet, too. She stared at Julia in astonishment. “That true? We ain’t dreaming? You give us a job and a place to live?”

  “It’s true,” Julia assured her. “The job is yours if you’d like it.”

  “I surely would rather work than see my children starve,” the first woman said. Tears shone in her eyes as she hugged one of the little girls to her side.

  “What’s your name?” Julia asked.

  “I’m Belle and this here’s my sister, Loretta.”

  “It’s nice to meet both of you. Listen, I’m going home to change into work clothes. In the meantime, you can pack all your things. I’ll be back in an hour or so with a carriage.”

  Lena was already at the hospital when they arrived and had just finished building a fire in the stove. She looked completely overwhelmed by the mountain of work she faced and greatly relieved to see help arriving. Belle and Loretta didn’t waste a minute. They saw right away what needed to be done and began hauling water, sorting laundry, and setting up the wooden tubs. In no time, they had fearlessly attacked the mound of soiled sheets, working so quickly and efficiently that Lena seemed to be standing still in comparison. The two little girls Julia had found begging now ran errands for their mothers, fetching wood, shaving soap into the tubs, tending the babies when they fussed.

  Julia watched in amazement as the women bustled around. It was as though they’d been working here for years. She hardly dared to move, knowing she was probably more of a hindrance than a help. But when the two women began to sing while they labored, Julia was so astounded she couldn’t speak.

  “My Lord delivered Daniel from the lion’s den, Jonah from the belly of the whale…”

  The joyful sound shivered through Julia, bringing tears to her eyes. She had done the same work they were doing all day yesterday, yet the last thing in the world she had felt like doing was singing. But Belle and Loretta were so grateful for what they had—a warm place to stay, a job that would earn a living for themselves and their children—that they couldn’t help bursting into song.

  “He delivered the Hebrew children from the fiery furnace, then why not every man?”

  The work went smoothly all morning, the little girls helping, the babies napping in empty laundry baskets near the stove. But when the three laundresses went outside to hang the sheets out to dry, one of the babies woke up and began crying loudly for his mother. Julia had no experience with small babies. She picked him up as if he were made of glass and jiggled him in her arms, trying to soothe him.

  “Shhh. It’s all right. Your mama will be back in a minute. Shhh.”He wailed louder still.

  Suddenly the laundry room door burst open and Dr. McGrath filled the doorway. “Why do I hear babies crying?” he thundered.“What is going on out here?” His face was so pale and angrylooking that he might have caught Julia giving aid and comfort to a troop of Rebel soldiers instead of tending a helpless baby.

  “He belongs to one of my laundresses,” she said, trying not to let the doctor see her fear. “He’s crying because he wants his lunch.”

  “Get that thing out of here! Now!” He pointed to the back door as if the baby were a burning stick of dynamite that she needed to toss outside before it exploded. “This is an Army hospital, not a charity.”

  “I will not,” she said bravely. “It’s cold outside. Besides, he has no other place to go while his mother works. Do you want your hospital to have clean sheets or don’t you?”

  “Of course I want clean sheets. And kindly lower your voice. There is no need to shout.”

  “I’m not the one who is shouting.” She gave the baby her knuckle to chew on, and he quieted for a moment. The doctor massaged his temples, looking visibly relieved.

  “Now,” Julia continued, “I believe you made me supervisor of the linen room, Dr. McGrath, and this is how I’ve chosen to run it. If you force my laundresses to quit because they can’t keep their children with them, then I will be forced to quit, as well.”

  “Don’t tempt me. … ” he growled. But Julia sensed that he was backing down. She summoned her courage to continue.

  “I know how to manage servants, Doctor, and I know from experience that they are most productive when their own needs are adequately met. Since it’s impossible to support a family on what the Army pays them, I’ve told my laundresses they may stay here in the servants’ quarters.”

  “You did what?”

  “You put me in charge of this laundry room, didn’t you?” she asked, sounding braver than she felt. “Look, these are probably the best laundresses the hospital has ever had. Your linen room is running smoothly, and the shelves will soon be filled with plenty of clean sheets. Are you sure you want to fire these hard-working women and let everything go back to the way it was before, just because I’m allowing Belle and Loretta to live in the attic?”

  Dr. McGrath glared at her for a long moment, then turned and stomped off. Julia smiled at his retreating back. “I’ll take that as a no,” she said.

  When Julia arrived at the hospital one morning a week later, she was surprised to find Dr. McGrath already at work in his office, seated behind his desk as he had been on the first day they’d met. He had his curtains drawn tightly closed, and he sat in the dark, writing with one hand, supporting his head with the other. His face was pale and pinched with pain. Hangover or not, she had n
o wish to speak with him and was trying to slip quietly past his office without being seen when he called to her.

  “Mrs. Hoffman, would you come here, please?”

  She slowly backed up, stopping in his office doorway. If he felt half as ill as he looked, he was certainly suffering.

  “Yes, Doctor?”

  “Have you ever had the measles?” he asked without looking up.

  His question was so unexpected that for a moment she couldn’t reply. Julia remembered how she and Rosalie had lain sick in bed together, covered with spots. Dr. Lowe had come twice a day to check on them, while their mother had hovered nearby, wringing her hands and ordering compresses and sponge baths. Julia felt her heart wrench with homesickness the way a stomach twists with hunger, and she suddenly longed for her mother, for her room, and even for her prickly sister.

  “Yes,” she said, struggling to compose herself. “I had the measles when I was ten years old.”

  He dipped his pen into the inkwell and continued to write as he talked. There was a trail of ink spots across his blotter from his trembling hand. “Good. Go see the ward matron on the second floor. What’s her name? Nicholson…?”

  “It’s Nichols. Lucy Nichols.”

  “Whatever. Go see her. Your services are needed as a nurse.”

  Julia’s heart began to race with excitement. She hoped this wasn’t another one of the doctor’s mean tricks. “Um …what about the linen room?” she asked.

  He looked up at her, rolling his eyes at her stupidity, then spoke in a slow, condescending tone, as if talking to a simpleton. “Can’t they do without you for a few days, Mrs. Hoffman? Are you completely indispensable?”

  “Of course not. My new laundresses are excellent workers.”

  “All right, then. Promote one of them to supervisor and get your dainty little rear end upstairs. We’ve got a measles epidemic on our hands.”

  Chapter Nine

  Fortress Monroe

  March 1862

  Phoebe stood at the ship’s rail beside Ted, gazing at Virginia’s wooded shoreline as they floated downstream. The deck of the river steamer, jam-packed with soldiers, artillery shells, and U.S. Army shipping crates, rose and fell beneath her feet as if it were a living, breathing beast.

  “Feeling any better?” she asked Ted.

  “Yeah,” he sighed. “The sergeant was right about coming out here in the fresh air. It really helps.”

  Phoebe still felt woozy herself, especially when she looked down at the gray, storm-whipped water or watched the deck rise and fall. But if she kept her eye on the land and remembered to take deep gulps of the cold, bracing air, she just might be able to make it to Fortress Monroe without turning green like most of the other soldiers on board.

  She and Ted had hardly been able to contain their excitement as they’d boarded the Lady Delaware and sailed out of the port of Alexandria, Virginia, heading down the Potomac River to Fortress Monroe. The ships that made up the Union fleet seemed to come in every size and shape imaginable: oceangoing vessels with tall masts that stuck up in the air like a forest; river steamers, like the vessel they rode on, with belching smokestacks and thumping paddlewheels; long, flat trains of barges, helped along by wheezing tugboats.

  And the equipment they carried! Thousands and thousands of tents, horses, and artillery pieces. Boxes and barrels of food and supplies and ammunition. Wagons and caissons, and pontoons for building bridges. Roll after roll of telegraph wire. The dock had teemed with contrabands working for the army, loading endless tons of equipment. Phoebe and Ted had watched the spectacle in awe.

  “Would you look at that?” Ted had repeated every second or two. “And look at that over there!” He had pointed to an almost endless row of cannons, lined up wheel to wheel; to a boatload of army mules; to a pyramid of wooden crates. “Did you ever see anything like this in your life?”

  Phoebe had been equally amazed. “No, I sure haven’t. And look at all them cannonballs, Ted. I’ll bet you can’t even count them all.”

  Sergeant Anderson told them that the campaign had begun two weeks ago, with more than four hundred ships shuttling back and forth to the tip of the York-James Peninsula, ferrying the 120,000-man Army of the Potomac and everything they would need to wage war. When Phoebe and Ted’s turn had finally come, they’d boarded this river steamer on a blustery day in March.

  Now they were nearing the end of their two-hundred-mile voyage and entering the choppier waters of Chesapeake Bay. They would land at Fortress Monroe that afternoon—which was hardly soon enough for Phoebe. She was half starved because she had decided to stop eating after seeing where everybody else’s rations had wound up.

  “Do you suppose Johnny Reb knows we’re coming?” Ted asked suddenly.

  “Sure he knows. It’s pretty hard to keep all this a secret.” She gestured to the parade of boats on the river and to their own ship’s deck, which resembled an arsenal. “This is a pretty dumb way to sneak up on somebody.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I spent a lot of time in the woods back home, hunting deer and snaring rabbits, and I learned that it’s best to sneak up on your prey from downwind. You don’t want to let him hear you coming. Or get a whiff of you, either.”

  “This isn’t a deer hunt, Ike,” Ted said stiffly. “It’s war. And General McClellan knows everything there is to know about war.”

  Phoebe didn’t argue with him. Ted would defend his commanding officer no matter what she said.

  She could smell the ocean now, and the waves were growing rougher. She turned around to look toward the east. Beyond the last tip of land, gray clouds met the gray horizon with water as far as she could see. She quickly turned back.

  “I sure wouldn’t like to cross that ocean,” she said. “I’ll bet it makes a person feel awful small to be sailing way out there.”

  “Hey,” Ted said a few minutes later. “Maybe the Rebels will see us coming with all of this and figure out it’s a lost cause. I know I’d surrender if I saw all these cannons and soldiers and guns, wouldn’t you?”

  Phoebe thought about the question for a moment before answering. “You know what? If someone came after my land this way, I’d fight like a mother bear protecting her cubs. I mean, what if all these soldiers were marching up to your hometown in Pennsylvania, threatening your ma? Would you give up?”

  “Never thought of it that way.”

  “Don’t plan on the Rebels waving any white flags, Ted. I figure they’ll fight like wildcats to protect what’s theirs.”

  Late that afternoon, the ship landed at Fortress Monroe in the pouring rain. The water was so choppy that Phoebe thought for sure that she would land in the drink as she teetered down the narrow ramp to the landing. The scene on shore looked the same as the one they’d left in Washington—scores of soldiers and ships, and raggedy, dark-faced contrabands stacking endless piles of supplies and equipment.

  Phoebe’s regiment marched inland and camped in the woods near the fort. The low flatlands near the river were heavily wooded, the ground where the soldiers pitched their tents damp and teeming with wood ticks and mosquitoes. When camp was made, the men sat waiting for a long, dreary week. For every warm, sunny day there were two cold, wet ones, until Phoebe was sure she would never feel completely dry again. They were waiting, she learned, for the remainder of the army and for General McClellan himself to arrive and direct the invasion.

  Every morning and evening she and Ted sat on damp logs near the smoldering campfire and picked off wood ticks, a dozen or so of the bloodthirsty critters every day. Ted kept a tally of how many they’d caught, the way he’d once counted stuff in his uncle’s factory. He wasn’t a country boy, so wood ticks were new to him. Phoebe taught him how to pry them off.

  “You gotta dig down with your fingernails and pinch them off, like this,” she said. “They burrow down pretty deep, and you’ll only get the top half of them if you don’t dig. Then the sore will fester. You can’t hardly squash the little
beggars, neither, so you better throw them in the fire.”

  “Ugh! I’ll bet these are Rebel ticks,” Ted said, digging one off his ankle.

  “You got one on your neck that’s dug in real deep,” she told him. “You must’ve missed him yesterday. You’ll have to hold a match or a firebrand to him and heat him up good. Then he’ll come crawling out mighty quick.”

  “I’ll bet the Confederates enlisted these ticks and mosquitoes to fight on their side,” Ted said as he pitched a tick into the flames.“They’re probably breeding them like horses up there in Richmond.”

  “Yeah, and I’ll tell you what else,” she said as it began to drizzle again. “This blasted weather is on their side, too.”

  On the day they finally broke camp and began the twenty-mile march to Yorktown to confront the Rebel army, the sun was shining, the grass was spring green, and the peach trees were in bloom. Phoebe felt on top of the world. With Ted marching beside her all day and snoring beside her in their pup tent at night, she had never felt happier in her life.

  But the next day the rain fell in a downpour. Thousands of tramping feet and horses’ hooves and wagon wheels quickly turned the road into a sticky, sucking mudhole, trapping the heavy wagons up to their axles in gumbo. Phoebe and Ted’s company marched near the rear of the long column of men, and when they weren’t helping the teamsters heave the wagons out of the muck, they were standing in a steady deluge, waiting while the other soldiers took their turns at heaving. They reached Yorktown in the early afternoon and heard the sound of Confederate artillery and rifle fire for the first time. It sobered everyone up right quick. After a wet night sleeping on the marshy ground, Phoebe found out the next day what they were up against.

  The Confederates were hunkered down behind earthworks fifteen feet thick, surrounded by ditches ten feet deep and fifteen feet wide. If she was within sight of their fortifications, she figured she was also within range of their cannons.