The dreams came—the sandy-blond young boy holding her close on the mossy bank beneath the draping shroud of a weeping willow tree, a soft, warm wind blowing across the flat land of the North Carolina countryside. “I love you, Kitty,” he’d said. “Marry me…be my wife.” And gentle hands had touched her body, caressing her, but moved away before the stormy sea of passion had engulfed them. “I want everything to be perfect for us always,” he’d said. And she, so young and foolish, had dared to believe life could be just as anyone desired it to be.
But then the dream became distorted, and there were dark eyes fringed with thick lashes, eyes the color of a steel-blue gun barrel; a firm, set look to the gaze that devoured her; a thickly bearded face; lean, hard muscles that rippled as he reached for her, smothering her with his massive body, taking her body to pinnacles of joy she had never dared dream existed. Mocking lips, gentle lips, teasing eyes, and dancing fingertips; two hearts in unison, thundering with the wild river of hot blood flowing between the two—man and woman, fire and passion, love and desire, and hatred and loathing. He was kind, he was gentle, he was cruel, and he was ruthless. And there was the pain of seeing his leg gouged open with a wound; the panic of having to argue down a field surgeon and insist that amputation was not necessary; the pounding of her heart as he thanked her later—memories, washed away by the sands, the winds, of time.
And finally, that one heart-shattering moment with two men grappling for one gun, an explosion, a body falling to earth, blood unseen but somehow she knew it was gushing forth. It ended there, in the dirt, in the soil, in the sand and nothingness from whence it all began.
Someone was crying, sobbing, and then her name was being called and her body shaken.
“Kitty, wake up. You’re having a bad dream. Wake up, please.”
She opened heavy eyelids to the early cold light of morning. A raspberry-colored sky streaked the edges of the longleaf pines. David was staring down at her anxiously. “Are you all right? You woke me up, screaming…”
“I’m sorry.” She was contrite and scrambled to her feet, anxious to be on her way. “Let’s go to Nathan quickly, David. Let’s be on our way.” She was fighting to hold back the tears; her insides churned with emotions—confusing, distorted emotions that she could not understand.
As they gathered the blankets and prepared to mount the horses, Kitty felt David staring at her. Unable to contain her annoyance, she asked rather waspishly, “What is it, David? Why are you looking at me like that?”
He smiled, a sad, secretive little smile. “Remember what I said about how I figured out you loved Nathan long before you did?”
She nodded.
“I think I’ve always understood you better than you understand yourself, Kitty.”
“What are you getting at, David?”
“Well, I can’t help wondering, are you running toward Nathan or away from Travis Coltrane?”
She had been about to mount her horse,, but now she turned to stare at him incredulously. “Are you crazy? I love Nathan. I want to marry him. And Travis Coltrane is probably dead for all I know, and he never meant anything to me anyway. I told you—he held me his prisoner.”
“I know that,” he agreed with her. “But I also know that you sometimes don’t admit your true feelings, Kitty, and I kind of think this Coltrane fellow meant more to you than you let on. You can’t be sure he’s dead, you know. You could still go back there.”
“That’s silly!” She mounted her horse, more than a little annoyed at this point. She was almost ready to explode in anger against her lifelong friend. “Let’s ride, David. We have to find food and shelter before the night. We have to talk and plan this trip. We’ve no time for any of your foolish notions.”
“Maybe you should turn back.” He had not mounted his horse but was standing there holding the reins and looking up at her with a very sad expression on his handsome face. “It has been a long time, Kitty.”
“David, you do exasperate me! What’s wrong with you? I told you, I want to find Nathan.”
“Maybe you do, maybe you don’t.” He got on his horse, turning in the saddle to look directly at her. “Kitty, you can’t ever go back to the way things were. Nathan has changed. You’ve changed. This blasted war has changed the whole country. If you think you found anything back there with that Yankee at all—anything——then you’re never going to know a moment’s peace until you go back and find out just what it is you think you want to leave—or maybe you don’t want to leave at all.”
“I think,” she said sharply, “that you’re the one who’s changed, David. I told you, I want to get to Nathan as quickly as possible.”
And she did. Travis could mean nothing to her. And if he had taken that bullet rather than see her shot, well, that was his choice. Then why am I fighting to hold back the tears? She cursed herself silently. Why do I feel like a part of me is dead, gone, amputated like David’s arm—a part of me that will never, ever grow hack?
David dug his heels into the horse’s flanks and started forward with Kitty following right behind. “Just remember,” he called over his shoulder, “I’ve always been able to figure you out, Kitty, whether you like it or not. And this is one trip you may very well wish you’d never made.”
“I can’t appreciate your saying that and neither will Nathan.” She was getting more and more annoyed with David’s attitude. “You know that I love Nathan. You said you knew it long before I did. Now you’re behaving as though you don’t want me to find him.”
“Folks can’t ever go back to what they leave behind.” He kept riding forward, not looking back, and she had to strain to hear his words. “And what you think you’re running toward, you might just be running from.”
Jutting her chin upward, Kitty dug her heels in her own mount to move him faster. David didn’t know what he was talking about. She was riding toward the one thing she did want out of life and escaping the man who’d kept her from it. Since that horrible day in the late summer of 1861, life had been one continuous hell. And now, God willing, the worst was over.
Life was cold, harsh, cruel, and in living it she was becoming the same. At that moment, pushing ahead into the wilderness of the mountains of Tennessee, toward Virginia, and, with luck, Nathan, Kitty felt that the snow and wind that whipped about her body could be no colder than the chill that enshrouded her very soul.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Kitty soon realized that David had been right in his prediction: a one-armed man riding with a woman at his side would arouse no suspicion. Husband and wife. Seeking a new life together, not knowing exactly where they were going, but keeping on the move, trying to put the horrors of war behind them.
But the ride itself was hard, and the weather was against them from the beginning. Sometimes they were able to ride only a few miles a day before they were forced to seek shelter from the cold. Sometimes they would find refuge with kindly settlers along the way. At other times they were forced to camp in the woods, in a cave if they had the good fortune to find one. Food was scarce, and both of them grew weak and weary.
It was toward the end of March when Kitty felt the fever creeping upon her. She tried to move onward, but one day she felt herself falling from her horse and when she awoke, she found herself looking into the face of a kindly, concerned mountain woman who, much to Kitty’s astonishment, told her that between the fever and diarrhea and just plain being nearly starved to death, it was a wonder she was even alive, But the “wonder” to Kitty was the fact that it was then mid-April.
David seemed in no hurry to move on, saying that she needed to regain her strength. “We were pushing too hard. That’s why you fell ill. We’re just blessed that we were near folks as kind as the Gentrys. I’ve gotten to know Lucille and Mark, and they’re good, Christian people. You just don’t know how many hours they’ve taken turns sitting by your bed, spooning broth into your mouth when you were so sick you didn’t even know you were even swallowing!”
“I am
grateful,” Kitty assured him, “but David, we’ve got to get to Nathan. I told you, I have news that the Confederates need to hear!”
“You’re too weak to travel just yet,” he said sharply.
“True, I am weak,” she conceded. “But David, when I’m strong enough to travel, if you don’t go with me, so help me, I’m going alone.”
He nodded, eyes dark with anger. But why, she wondered, did he hate the thought of reuniting her with Nathan? It was certainly obvious that she loved no one else, and whether David was happy about the situation or not, he was married to Nancy Warren. Something was not quite right, something she could not put her finger on.
The cabin sat on the side of a gently sloping hill. The mountains were bursting into fragrant blooms of laurel and honeysuckle, and Kitty, sitting on the front porch, inhaled the sweetness. She liked the nighttime best, when the others were asleep, and she would sit alone and listen to the night noises—the crickets, the owls, and the frogs in the pond below. And these were the times when the memories would come flooding back—Travis, always Travis, who could make her wild with fury one moment and delirious with passion the next. She thought of the strength of his powerful arms when he held her close, the way he would lie on top of her, resting his weight on his elbows as he smiled down, eyes misty with the warmth of passion spent, and whispering that he wanted her again and again and again.
Tears would sting her eyes. Travis was dead, and if he weren’t, he hated her. She could not dwell on anything in the past except the love she surely felt for Nathan. That was the importance of her life in the future, not the bittersweet thoughts of splendor in the arms of a wild, reckless, dangerous man.
Sometimes Mark Gentry would sit with her on the porch until he grew sleepy. He was an old man and he’d lost two sons in the war. He recounted to her over and over again what he knew of the war. Some of it she already knew, but she politely listened to the old man’s lament. He told about how Wednesday, September 17th, 1862 was the largest one-day blood bath so far and how from the time the sun came up until it went down again, Federal units made repeated assaults on General Lee’s men. McClellan lost twelve thousand soldiers, they said, and the Rebels lost about nine thousand. Mark Gentry’s son had been one of them.
They had called it the battle of Antietam Creek, and it had ended Lee’s invasion. After the battle, he retired to Virginia. Kitty remembered hearing about it, hating it.
“Now they’ve started cavalry raids, I hear tell,” the old man said. “A Yankee by the name of Grierson is burning and looting and tearing up railroads and supply depots all over.”
Kitty’s heart constricted when she heard the name of “Grierson”—that was the man Travis was to have gone with.
“But we’re a’whooping ‘em right back,” Mark Gentry went on. “We’ve got a General by the name of Forrest, Bedford Forrest, yep, that’s his name, and he’s showing them Yankees a thing or two. Goddamned bastards…”
“Pa, watch your tongue,” Lucille Gentry called from an open window. “Let God punish the Yankees and heap his wrath on them. It’s not your place to use his name in vain to curse them.”
“Yes, Ma,” he sighed wearily. He waited a few moments then went on with more stories about the war, cursing the Federals in a whisper, lest his wife overhear again.
It was the first of May when Kitty told David she was ready to be on her way. He had been preparing to ride to a nearby settlement for supplies, and he merely frowned when she told him to try to get the things they would need to continue their journey.
When he and Mark Gentry returned later that day, David stormed into the cabin and practically screamed, “You can forget about leaving here, Kitty. All hell’s broke loose…”
Lucille looked up from the table where she was cleaning a chicken. “I’ll ask you to watch your tongue, David. You know I don’t hold to no cursing in this house.”
“It’s time to curse,” Mark thundered as he came in behind David, his wrinkled face red, his breath coming in gasps. “We heard all about it down at the store.”
“The Yankees are moving through Virginia and headed straight for Richmond,” David said, eyes shining, staring straight at Kitty. “We’ve got to stay put right here and hope they pass us by. We head for Richmond now, and we’ll be killed or taken prisoners for sure. We’ll be safe here.”
“David, don’t you see?” Kitty wrung her hands, her whole body shaking. “This was why I wanted to get to Nathan, to someone in the Confederate army. I knew that a Federal General named Joseph Hooker was going to march on Richmond. I heard Rosecrans telling Travis about it. I listened outside the door. But you wouldn’t listen to me, and now it’s too late!”
She turned and ran through the cabin and down the front steps, flinging herself into a soft, fragrant bed of periwinkles. But she didn’t care about the flowers or their sweetness. The tears that came were bitter, angry—with herself for being so weak as to fall sick and delay their journey and with David for not caring about any of it anymore.
She felt someone behind her, turned her head to see that it was David, then looked away as she said, “You don’t care anymore what happens to anyone, David, but yourself.”
“Maybe.” He spoke quietly, almost apologetically. “But I do care what happens to one other person, Kitty, and that’s you. That’s what I’d hoped you’d see before now, that I’m only trying to protect you, keep you from danger.”
He sat down, and she turned to stare at him incredulously. “You never meant to take me to Nathan, did you? You only pretended to be taking me there, until you could find a place to…to squat, like the nesters back home—and you found the Gentrys, after they’d lost two sons, and they took you in because I was sick and you were like a son come home wounded from the war. You took advantage of them.”
It was all falling into place. She pulled herself up to a sitting position, and he wouldn’t meet her gaze as she rushed on. “You couldn’t take me home, because you’ve got a wife there! So you wanted to stay here, pretend the war didn’t exist, your wife didn’t exist, or Nathan—any of it!”
She was gasping for breath, body heaving, overcome with the realization of the trap she had fallen into. Finally, he lifted his watery eyes to meet her cold stare and said, “I’ve always loved you, Kitty. Nathan’s not good enough for you. He never was. And you don’t know what he’s like now, but I do. He’s a coward, hiding behind the uniform of an officer and seeking glory in other men’s blood. I didn’t want you to see that, and I didn’t want to lose you. We can be happy here, all of us. I’ve told the Gentrys the whole story, and they want us to stay.”
“You are mad!” She got to her feet, afraid that if she didn’t get away from him she would rake her nails down his face. She fought to remember that his mind was warped.
She began walking toward the cabin, but David was right behind her, screaming like an angry child in the midst of a tantrum. “Just where do you think you’re going? War is all around us. Our only hope is to stay here, give aid to both sides, and stay out of the war completely. Hooker’s got over a hundred thousand soldiers, they say, and he’s headed straight for Richmond. The Yankees are going to win, and Nathan and all the other fools are going to die!”
Kitty lapsed into an icy silence, refusing to speak to David, Mark, or Lucille. They left her alone, whispering that she would come around. They went to bed early that night, leaving her alone on the porch. They were all mad, she thought, terrified to stay another minute in the cabin. Her heart went out to David, but she had her own life to live. And she ached for the Gentrys, who’d lost their family and now thought they’d found another, ready-made. But it was not time for sympathies. Kitty felt that she had to get away as quickly as possible, and as soon as she was confident they were all asleep, she led her horse from the barn and rode east toward Virginia and, she prayed, toward the Confederate lines.
Meeting settlers along the way, Kitty received enough food and water to keep her going. She would rest only a fe
w hours at a time, wanting to keep on the move. Finally, after riding for almost five days, she came upon a company of soldiers dressed in tattered gray uniforms. When she told them she was a nurse from North Carolina, some of them broke into tears of joy. They’d gotten separated from their main brigade and they had many wounded. She was put to work with a hospital wagon as the company tried to find its way back into battle. Their only doctor had succumbed to disease, and Kitty was all they had to treat their wounded.
Bone-tired and so weary that day turned to night without her even noticing, Kitty was shocked the day someone shouted they were outside Richmond.
“Richmond?” She left the side of a soldier with a gaping head wound, who would soon die. “But I thought Richmond would have fallen by now.”
“Hooker got his ass beat!” A grizzly soldier with one leg called out jubilantly from the roadside where he stood leaning against a crutch, watching the company move slowly by. “General Lee done run him off!”
The soldiers were ecstatic. Kitty was anxious to hear more, but the dying soldier needed her attention. She sat next to him, straining to hear his last words. Send his Bible to his mother, he instructed in garbled words. Write her and tell her he was ready to go and meet his God. She was not to worry. He was ready to die. Kitty could not be sure that he understood that she was promising him she would carry out his last request. Somewhere in a little town down in south Alabama, a loving, fearful mother would weep over the bloodstained Bible Kitty would send to her, comforted only by the knowledge that her son felt he was ready to go and meet his Maker.
The soldier gave one last gasp and died. Kitty pulled the bloodied blanket over his face and then climbed down out of the wagon. The company had stopped, eager to hear news of the war.
They were saying that Hooker got more than seventy thousand men placed around Chancellorsville, a crossroads about a dozen miles back of Lee’s left flank, and his cavalry went swooping quickly down to cut into the Richmond, Fredericksburg, and Potomac Railroad farther south. General Lee, however, ignored the cavalry raid and used Jeb Stuart’s cavalry to control the roads around Chancellorsville—and Hooker had been unable to find out just where the Rebels were. Bewildered, Hooker had called a halt and sent his troops out into sketchy fieldworks near Chancellorsville, instead of going on to more open country a few miles to the east.
Love and War: The Coltrane Saga, Book 1 Page 35