“Dave,” Bill asked, “would you be upset if I asked to stay by you until you go back? There’s so much I wish to know.”
“No, of course you can stay with me. And,” he added good-naturedly, “I have no problem telling you all as nobody would ever believe you anyway.”
Bill grinned, “You’re right about that, my friend. I look forward to the next bunch of days.”
“As do I,” said Dave.”
Being that Captain Merrill’s group were map-making pathfinders, the group had to sit tight until Atlanta fell before they could go out scouting again. During that time both captains visited the front lines daily and as a time traveler, Dave could not take part in the fighting. He was truly disgusted with what he saw of the war. Even though he was a re-enactor in his own time, it was nothing like the real thing and it was during this period that he decided to quit the re-enacting. He knew that even though they fired blanks and never really used the bayonet, he would always see the horror that the soldiers of both sides really went through.
As the South’s controlled sections of Atlanta receded, the areas that Dave could enter expanded.
It was July 27, five days since the battle began that both captains rode their horses through a still smoking section of the city and Bill knew that his friend from the future was leaving in the morning. He noticed that Dave was talking less these days and he knew it was because of the daily scenes they saw. Most of the city was demolished and wounded Confederate soldiers were lying on the streets waiting for help. The small number of doctors and nurses as well as good-hearted citizens of Atlanta were caring for many. At one corner they came across a wounded Confederate soldier who begged for water. Dave got off his horse as Bill held the reins. The time traveler took his canteen and allowed the man to drink deeply. He took the empty canteen and started to get up when an unexploded cannon ball exploded. Debris flew everywhere and Bill was knocked off his horse with his foot stuck in the stirrup. His horse dragged the unconscious man for blocks before some troopers stopped it. He was carried to a field hospital.
The building that was near the explosion buckled and as some bricks started to fall a woman who witnessed the whole thing from her buckboard across the street, ran to him and the other soldier. She dragged Dave to her buckboard where a small black girl helped put him in the wagon. They then went and carried the Confederate soldier to the rig and got him in as well. Just as they pulled away, the entire building collapsed and landed where the two men were laying and burst into flames. The woman slapped the horse’s rump with the reins and galloped away. Once out of the city she stopped near a pond.
“Miss Ellen”, the small black girl said as the woman climbed down and removed her apron, “Do we really want to stop here? There are soldiers from both sides that would be so happy ta get this here buckboard.”
“I just need to wet this apron and wipe their faces, Cleo. I’ll be fast.” She dipped the balled up apron into the water and went to the rear of the buckboard. Both men were out cold and she wiped the soot off the face of the Confederate soldier. She went back to the pond and seeing her reflection she pushed back a strand of her long black hair. She hoped it was just the poor lighting that made her blue eyes appear black and seeing that the dimple in her right cheek had increased in size she rubbed it with her wet hand and the soot disappeared. Well, aren’t you just the Good Samaritan, Miss Ellen Robillard? she thought as she dipped the cloth into the water and then squeezed out the excess. Two more mouths to feed and one of them is a Union soldier. Maybe you should leave him here? She answered her own question by washing the soot off his face. She suddenly bit her hand as she recoiled at the sight: His left eye was smashed.
“Ohh, you poor man. Let me get you in a bed and see if we can get Doctor Hickles to see to you.” She climbed up into the buckboard’s wooden seat and drove the horse so hard that Cleo had to grip the seat with all her might. Ellen took the back roads that she grew up knowing and the rig shuddered against the potholes, tree stumps and exposed roots while the two women ducked as hanging vegetation threatened to slap them out of their seats. Finally after five miles of back-road driving she pulled the rig up in front of a once beautiful house. The wooden stairs that led up to the porch were intact but many were warped, as they needed paint. The four colonnades that supported the porch roof were chipped and needed another coat of white paint as well. The wooden floor of the porch had a few slats missing as they were used to cover a broken window on the first floor. All of the windows on the first floor had their dark brown wooden shutters closed for security as well as broken glass. The second floor’s windows were not shuttered as the shutters had been used in the fireplace especially since the Union soldiers used all of their firewood. The house’s gray slate roof tiles shifted over time, which allowed rainwater to enter the second floor’s hallway. Two men came out to help the ladies carry the wounded men up to the bedrooms on the second floor.
“He’s in pretty bad shape, Miss Ellen,” said one of them, “My thought is that he’s gonna lose that eye.”
Ellen nodded and said, “I’m going to try and get Doctor Hickles to come and see him.”
“Why not just take him back to his army? He is a northerner, right?”
She nodded and said, “I-I, well, I watched him try to help one of our men. And, well, I just wanted to talk to a Yankee who understands how to be humane . . . that’s all.”
The man shook his head, “I understand.” He looked down at the floor and added, “Me and Dennis are leaving, Miss Ellen.”
“You are?” she asked with a look of shock on her face. “But, why?”
“Any day now the Yankee army will come back and see if they missed anything. Best we slip away.” He couldn’t look her in the eye and said, “Me an’ Dennis are mighty grateful for all that you’ve done for us: Feed an’ bed, nursing us and all, clothes and hiding us out. Best we move on before they accuse ya of hidin’ us.”
She nodded and Cleo joined her. “The boys are leaving us, Cleo.”
“But why?” she asked wide-eyed.
Ellen patted her shoulder, “It’s best they do, Cleo. The army will come back and find them and maybe punish us too.”
“Maybe burn down the house, too!” added Cleo nodding vigorously.
“Yes. Then what would we do?”
“Cleo, I need you to go to Doctor Hickles house and bring him here.”
“Yes, m’am.” She said as she left the room.
A moan came from the man and she sat and held his hand.
Three hours later Cleo led the doctor up to the room their patient was in. Doctor George Hickles fit the typical doctor mold: small, slim, gray hair and mustache, dressed in a three piece tweed suit and carrying his black bag in one hand and his gray hat in the other.
While Cleo was gone, Ellen had cut the uniform off of her patient and burned it in the yard.
“Good day, Miss Ellen,” the doctor said as he sat on the bed and took the man’s pulse. “Weak,” he said as he shook his head. “He’s a Yankee, right?”
“Yes, but how could you tell?”
“He’s been fed well . . . unlike our boys.” He looked at her and added in a hushed voice, “Best you leave him where he might be found by his own kind.”
“How bad is he, doctor?”
The doctor sat back, sighed and said, “Pretty sure that he’ll be blind in that eye. Two broken ribs and maybe a fractured shin bone. I can’t tell if his hearing is good or bad until he wakes.” He stood and closed his black bag. “Afraid I need ta run, Ellen. I’ll try and get back tomorrow. Meanwhile keep the lamplight low and when he wakes, feed him soup.”
The doctor left and Ellen wiped Dave’s brow.
“He sure is pretty, Miss Ellen.”
Ellen turned to see Cleo standing in the doorway and for the first time in a long time she had a soft smile on her pretty face. Ellen shrugged, “Just another hurt soul from this dammed war, Cleo. That’s all.”
“Miss Ellen,” Cleo said as sh
e wrung her hands in front of her small apron, “That other soldier took one of our canteens and run off.”
Ellen wiped a few strands of hair away from her cheek and said, “I don’t blame him, Cleo. Sooner or later the soldiers will be back and heaven knows what his fate might be.”
Cleo perked up and said gleefully, “I looked at the bales of cotton we hid in that ol’ bear cave and so far they ain’t been found.”
Ellen smiled as she stood with a groan, “That’s good news. When the war is finished the ships from England will return and we can sell them all we have. That’ll give us money to start up again.”
Both women left the dark room and went downstairs to the kitchen to eat.
TWO DAYS LATER
It was almost noon and Captain Bill Merrill limped as he got off his horse near the building where he and Dave were when the shell exploded. The building was flattened and the wooden supports were black from the fire. He had his team of men move the rubble around as they searched for Dave’s body. After three hours of digging Lieutenant Higgens reported to him, “Sir, there’s no body under that rubble, but that’s probably because he was standing where the shell exploded. Most likely anything that remained of him was finished by the fire.”
Bill hung his head and said, “Thank you, lieutenant. Have the men return to camp for a late lunch.” He followed the group and thought, He’s gone. That was my worst thought. What now? Send a telegram to his family? He shrugged, If there is a family they are waiting for him way up in 2015.
The captain dismounted and winced as his foot hit the ground. He went to the tent he had assigned Dave and sat on his bunk. He looked around and seeing Dave’s grip in the corner placed it on the cot. It was natural for the group commander to go through one of his men’s possessions when they were reported killed or missing as it often gave the address of their loved ones. Not this time, he thought as he spread everything out on the cot. He spotted the hairbrush and after five minutes of trying to open it, he succeeded. He poked at the keyboard not knowing what to expect and when nothing happened, he was sort of relieved. The captain closed the communicator and after repacking the grip decided to hold onto the hairbrush for a bit.
SAME DAY
Cleo cooked up a soup of chicken, carrots, potatoes and peas. “We’re low on peas, Miss Ellen,” she said as she put a dollop of the thick soup in her bowl.
“Maybe I can swap some horse manure with the Gleason’s. They got a nice plot of greens growing down by the creek.” She took a sip of the hot soup and rolled her eyes, which always made Cleo laugh. “Excellent, Cleo. I wonder if we can get our boarder to sip some lunch.”
Cleo turned and with one hand on her slim hip waved a wooden spoon in the air with the other as she said, “You eat right now, Miss Ellen. Don’t go trotten’ back up them stairs until you had your fill.”
Ellen feigned fear as she took another spoonful of her soup.
“Now, that’s better, Miss . . . Miss . . .”
Ellen looked up and said, “Ellen, Ellen Robillard.”
Cleo shook her head as she sat opposite Ellen at the table. “Tell me again the reason we got ta use our momma’s names, Miss Ellen.”
“We both are using our mother’s names until we have the house and fields back to their original shape. Where we can have visitors and feel proud of it once again. Back when our mothers were scratching dirt to grow cotton they held their heads high. They were proud to be working the fields and us using their names makes us both work hard until all is back to normal. That’s why, Cleo Zahanna.”
Cleo stirred her bowl of soup. She smiled, “Thank you, Miss Ellen.”
“Now,” said Ellen as she rose and poured some of the soup into a bowl, “let me see if our boarder is up yet.”
She went up the wide set of stairs and slowly opened the door to the bedroom. The room was dark with the drapes pulled closed, as she was afraid the sunlight might hurt his eyes. She sat next to him and listened to his breathing and thought, The doctor said he might sleep for a long, long time with such a bad head injury. She touched his forehead and was happy to find it cool. Ellen got up to leave when he groaned. She quickly sat again and took his hand.
She whispered, “Are you feeling better?” There was another groan and she said, “Sir, are you feeling better? Can you talk?”
“W-What happened?” he moaned.
“You got caught in an explosion.”
“Where am I?”
“You are in my home. I brought you here or else you would have died in the street.”
“W-What street? Where?”
“Shhhh. Go easy, sir. It was on Cranshaw Street. You were offering a Confederate soldier some water from your canteen when a cannonball exploded near you both.”
He tried to touch his head, “M-My head hurts.”
“Please don’t. You were wounded and your eye is swollen shut.” She guided his arm back to his side.
“Who are you? Who-Who am I?”
“I’m Ellen. And you are . . . well, I don’t know who you are. Your had no papers that I could find. I know that you are a Union officer and when you are well enough to walk, I’ll get you back to your camp.”
“A-An officer?”
“Yes, a captain.”
“Yes.! No, wait! I’m a private. I think I remember being from a New York Regiment.”
“Can you eat?”
He started to nod and the pain shot through his head, “Ahhh, my head hurts.”
She bit her lip. “What is your name?”
He closed his other eye tightly. “I-m, I’m, Private . . . “ He moaned once and said, “I-I can’t remember.”
Ellen sat close and wiped his now damp brow, “I do believe that you are a captain.”
“No, I’m a private . . . I’m pretty sure.”
“Let’s try some soup, all right?” She held his head up and brought the spoon up to his dry, cracked lips. He sipped and coughed most back up.
She got half of the bowl of soup in him before he closed his eye and drifted off again.
Cleo heard Ellen humming as she came down the stairs. “Oh, Miss Ellen, you sound like the old Miss . . . ah, Ellen. I ain’t heard you humming in years. I think you are sweet on that Yankee.”
“Hush up, silly! I am merely happy to be helping out another person in need. That’s all.” She looked in the kitchen window that served as a mirror as she tucked back her hair and pinched her cheeks. The small transformation rubbed off on Cleo as she too started humming.
For the next two days Dave slept more than he was awake. On the third morning he woke up covered in sweat as he saw a Confederate soldier coming at him with his bayonet aimed at his stomach. Dave felt his own rifle kick back as he fired it only to see the man still coming at him. It was the same dream that he had over and over again in his fevered mind.
That evening the two ladies were having tea and sweet cakes when he suddenly appeared in the doorway. He stood holding both sides of the doorway as he swayed slightly. Both ladies jumped up and helped him to a seat at the table.
He tried to grin but even that hurt as he said, “M-May I join you two ladies for tea?”
Both Ladies whooped and jumped up to pour him a cup.
“I just knew,” said Cleo, “that you would get better.”
“We both knew it,” added a smiling Ellen as she pushed back her hair. “Would you like a sweet cake as well?”
“I sure would, Miss Ellen.” He took a bite and nodded.
“I made them,” said a proud Cleo.
“Well you did a fine job, Cleo.”
“Ohhh, you remember my name,” she said with a giggle.
“How could I not know the names of the two beautiful women that saved my life?” He hesitated and then went on, “It’s just my name that I don’t know.”
“Oh, I’m sure it’ll come to you,” added Ellen.
He nodded and asked, “Does my face scare anyone? I mean, my eye just doesn’t open.”
Both sho
ok their heads no and Ellen said, “I’m sure that once the swelling goes down, it’ll be fine. Maybe the doctors at your camp can fix it?”
Dave shook his head no, “Something tells me to stay away from them. All they know is how to amputate. No, something tells me to keep away for a bit.”
“Well,” said Ellen as she tried to use the glass in the breakfront as a mirror without him knowing, “You may stay here for as long as you want . . . ”
Cleo piped in, “We have to give you a name, though. Pick one for us.”
He shrugged, “Why don’t you two do that. I’m too spent to think.”
“What about Samson?” asked Ellen. “You mentioned that name a few times while you were sleeping.”
He tried to grin, “Samson? That’s as good a name as any and somehow it does sound right.”
“Then,” said Ellen holding up her cup of tea, “here’s to Samson.” The three raised their teacups. “To Samson!”
For the next five days Dave built up his strength and started to help the ladies with simple chores. They were surprised one morning to find that he made a batch of scrambled eggs.
“You went into the chicken coop and them chickens never said a word? Lord,” said Cleo, “when I go in there it sounds like I’m tryin’ ta kill them all.”
TimeTravel Adventures of The 1800 Club [Book 12] Page 26