by Lisa Klein
“How about a proper greeting, Lizzie?” he said, holding open his arms.
“Luke! I’m not still dreaming, am I?” I hugged him, laughing and crying at once. “You look so different. Your shoulders are so big!”
“You’ve grown a heap, too, Lizzie,” he said, looking me up and down. Though he smiled, his eyes looked weary and pained, like they belonged to an older person.
“Where is your bugle? Play it for me,” demanded Ben.
“Sorry, but I swapped it for this rifle, which is a durn sight more useful.”
“But how did you all get here?” I asked, still confused.
Luke replied, “I was carrying a buddy whose leg was all busted up, and we stopped at this farmhouse because we smelled fresh bread, and there were Jack and Clara on the porch. I said, ‘How’d you all like to go home today?’ So we flagged down an ambulance for my buddy, and Clara and Amos’s wife and baby rode courtesy of the U.S. government, while me and Jack walked.”
“The nice man in the am’blance showed me a picture and said I was just as pretty as his girl!” said Clara.
“But won’t you get in trouble for leaving your regiment?” I asked Luke
He shrugged. “Some of the men got leave to visit their folks in town, and when the rest of us heard, we took off too. I’m going back, of course. I’ve got to, Ma,” he said, looking regretful. “Tomorrow morning we go after Lee’s army. They’re already starting to slink away like whipped puppies.” He said this without gloating.
“Did you see Annie Baumann?” I asked carefully. “She is working as a nurse in the Weigels’ barn.”
“Gosh durn it, no,” he said. “I was hoping to see her here in town.”
“Luke’s in love with a girl,” Ben began chanting, but Luke only laughed at him.
“Who’s Lizzie in love with?” he asked Ben.
“No one!” I said quickly.
“Martin Weigel!” shouted Ben, darting away before I could grab him.
“That skinny farm boy?” said Luke in disbelief.
“You’re not the only one who’s changed in two years,” I said, feeling defensive of Martin.
“Come and eat something, Luke,” called Mama. “I dug deep in the pantry and found some potatoes for the soup.” She put a bowl in front of Luke and we watched him eat. “You’re so thin,” she said, cutting a generous slab of butter for his bread.
“That’s not fair,” I said. “We only get a teaspoon of butter each day.”
Mama sighed and started to scold me, but I interrupted her with a laugh.
“I’m teasing! Here, Luke, have some more. And tell us everything that happened to you the last few days. You were on Little Round Top.”
“How did you know?” he said between bites. “I hardly knew where I was.”
“I showed General Warren the road on the east side of the hill, and I was on Little Round Top when the battle started Thursday.”
“Gosh, you’re the one with the story to tell!” said Luke with his mouth open, showing his half-chewed food.
Mama raised her eyebrows at me. I hadn’t told her everything after all.
“Luke, don’t talk with your mouth full,” she said.
“Sorry, Ma. Well, we marched thirty-five miles on Wednesday, then bivouacked about a mile east of Cemetery Ridge. I fell asleep until Thursday afternoon, when we were called up and hustled into place behind a stone wall on that hillside, and I stayed there all night and all yesterday.”
“Did you see the Confederate charge yesterday?” Mama asked.
“Ma, a soldier can’t see nothing on the battlefield. You don’t know the plan. You just go where they tell you. All you know is the fence in front of you, or the ditch where you’re lying. Half the time, you don’t even know where the enemy is.”
“So that’s why the generals stand above the battle and give orders,” I said, thinking of the view from Little Round Top.
“Well, for their own safety, too. But no, I didn’t see the charge, didn’t hear until today that it was practically a massacre.” Luke finished chewing his mouthful of bread. “After it was over we got the order to clean out the woods in front of us, so we drove the rest of the rebels through Rose’s woods and a wheat field full of bodies. We captured a passel of prisoners, a heap of muskets, and the colors of a Georgia regiment.”
“How many rebels did you kill?” asked Ben, who had come into the kitchen.
“You don’t stop to count,” Luke said, a grim look on his face.
Mama pointed her finger, and Ben left the room sulking.
Luke shrugged. “That’s all. I was lucky. Others weren’t.”
I could tell he didn’t want to talk any more about the battle. He fiddled with his knife. Something was still weighing on his mind.
“Any news from Pa?” he finally asked.
Mama shook her head. “Are prisoners even allowed to write letters?”
“I don’t know,” Luke said.
“Are you sure he wasn’t wounded?”
“Ma, I’m sorry!” Luke said, covering his face with his hands. “I know I promised I wouldn’t come home without him, but—”
“Hush. There’s nothing you can do. It’s not your fault.” Mama said, stroking his hair. “I just wish I knew where he was.”
“Soldiers captured in Virginia often get sent to Belle Isle Prison, near Richmond. It ain’t such a bad place, I hear,” said Luke.
“Richmond! Why, I’ll write to my brother now. He works for the Confederate government. He can use his influence to find your father,” said Mama, springing up.
Luke and I were left alone. He toyed with the remainder of his food.
“So, how’s school?” he asked.
“I don’t even go to school. I’ve been too busy at the shop. Mama lets me make most of the decisions.”
“I would have made a mess of Papa’s business in two months,” sighed Luke. “So, you’re not still mad at me for leaving?”
“After two years? No, I finally got over it … sometime last week.”
Luke snorted. “That’s funny, Lizzie! I don’t remember you having a sense of humor.”
“If you don’t laugh sometimes, you’d always be crying, these days,”
I said soberly. “Luke, I learned this morning that Margaret’s beau died. She doesn’t know yet.”
“I was on burial detail this morning, Lizzie,” Luke began in a low voice. “I shoveled dirt on fellows who were alive just two days ago. In some places, the bodies lay so thick we had to just dig a trench right there and bury them all together. No one even said a proper prayer over them.” He exhaled raggedly and ran his hand through his hair. “I ain’t saying I wish I’d never enlisted. Hell, I’m glad we won this battle. Maybe we’ll win the war now. But North and South ain’t never going to be one country again. Who can forgive all this killing? And can anyone tell me what in the bloody hell—I mean, what in the heck are we fighting for?”
My heart went out to my brother. I had never seen him so distressed. Fortunately Ben staggered into the kitchen carrying a load of wood, sparing me from having to answer Luke. Amos was behind him with a bucket of water. Grace came up from the cellar with the baby wrapped in a small colorful quilt.
“Time to give mah son his first bath,” said Amos with a proud grin.
“What’s his name?” asked Luke with some effort.
“Lincoln,” said Grace. “After the president.” She tilted the baby so that Luke could see his round, scrunched-up face.
“What do you say we call him Lincoln Benjamin,” said Amos, “on account of this boy who kep’ me from bein’ sold back into slavery.”
Ben’s eyes lit up with pleasure. Luke looked back and forth between them, confused.
“That would be great! It will be like having another brother,” Ben said. Then he turned to Luke and added, “It’ll make sense once I tell you all the adventures Amos and I had.”
I put my hand on Luke’s shoulder. “Does this answer your question?�
�
Lizzie
Chapter 45
The next morning, the streets were free of stray rebels. It was Sunday, but there were no services, for every church in town was full of wounded soldiers. So Mama gathered everyone into the parlor for prayers. Even Noah Zimmer hopped up the stairs on one foot to join us.
Mama held the family Bible tight and just prayed from her heart, “We thank you, Lord, for restoring our loved ones to us. Your blessed mother was not so full of joy as we in this room.”
Margaret, Grace, and Mama were in tears. Grace murmured “Amen,” and we all echoed her.
After prayers, Luke and Amos made a handcart from a broken wagon they found in the street and loaded it with some of Margaret’s things. Luke wheeled the cart to her house on his way to rejoin his regiment, and I went along, too. Margaret held the children’s hands firmly to keep them from exploring the debris-scattered street.
Near Middle Street we met Mrs. Brodhead, who was in a talkative mood.
“I’ve been in my cellar for four days,” she said. “We were in the thick of it the whole time. I declare, I worried away a good ten pounds of flesh. I thought those rebels would never go away. Now I’m on my way to help at the church.”
“Yes, indeed,” said Margaret sympathetically, “you did have the worst of it there on Chambersburg Pike.”
We crossed the street to investigate a sort of celebration outside the newspaper office. The telegraph was still broken, but a merchant returning from Harrisburg had brought the news: Vicksburg had fallen to General Grant. Luke let out a loud whoop.
“The tide has turned!” proclaimed Margaret with more than her usual zeal.
“Surely the war can’t go on much longer, after two such victories,” said another bystander, and people nodded in agreement.
After we unloaded Margaret’s belongings and determined that no stray rebels lurked inside the house, it was time for Luke to go.
“This time you have to say a proper good-bye,” I said. We hugged each other tightly, and I said, through my tears, that I was proud of him. He was too choked up to reply. I stood gazing after Luke long after he had disappeared from view.
I returned to find Margaret picking up shards of glass in the dining room. A bullet had broken the window, shredded the draperies, and lodged in the opposite wall, cracking the plaster over her sewing machines.
“That’s not the only one,” said Margaret. “Both sides of the house were hit. There’s a bullet in the parlor mantelpiece, too.”
“Thank God you weren’t here,” I said.
“Yes. Oh, poor Ginnie Wade—and Georgia, and Mrs. Wade,” Margaret murmured. “Will you stay here tonight, Lizzie?”
“Yes, I told Mother I would.”
“Then let’s get to work,” she said, dusting off the sewing machine. “Time to make bandages instead of trousers. Lizzie, start in Rosanna’s old room and gather up the extra linens.”
I went upstairs and opened the door to Rosanna’s room. There was the bed, mounded with pillows, where I had last seen my cousin weeping at the news of Henry Phelps’s death. I put my cheek against the pillows, but of course Rosanna’s scent was long gone. Her favorite book of poems still rested on the bedside table, collecting dust. I opened it up to the ribbon marker and read a verse she had marked with a pencil: O for the touch of a vanished hand and the sound of a voice that is still. There was no anger left in me, only a sad longing for something that was past. I wondered where Rosanna was and imagined her wearing a black crepe dress and weeping as she followed the Confederate army somewhere deep in the South. I started to pull the quilt from the bed but stopped. I smoothed it back in place, resettled the pillows, and closed the door again. In the hall cupboard I found some spare linens.
The rest of the day I spent cutting linen into strips while Margaret stitched up the edges. Clara played with the scraps on the floor, and Jack pressed his face to the window, complaining because his mother would not let him play outside.
“Thank you for staying, Lizzie. I know this is dull for you.”
“I don’t mind it,” I said. “I’ve had enough excitement.”
“I’ll say. Taking Grace and the children to the Weigels’ and coming back, right through the battle lines, toting a rifle, just to be sure we were safe! Jack told me about the rebel spies, too. You are indeed brave, Lizzie. I’m too scared to even touch a gun, but I’ve no doubt you would kill a man to save one of us.”
“Perhaps I would,” I mused. “But let’s hope I don’t have to. Because I left the rifle at mother’s.” Margaret and I both laughed.
“Look who’s here!” cried Jack, dashing from his post at the window to open the door. There stood Ben, covered in mud. He carried a knapsack, which fell to the floor with a heavy thud as he eased it from his shoulders.
“What do you have there? Where have you been?” I asked.
“Hunting for relics,” he said, his face shining with excitement.
Margaret and I exchanged confused looks.
“Souvenirs—of the battle,” he explained.
“You’ve been out on the battlefields?” I shook my head in disbelief.
“Sure! All around Culp’s Hill. Lots of people are there picking up souvenirs. They’ve come from everywhere.”
“But aren’t there bodies still on the field?” asked Margaret.
“No, they are mostly buried. But there are dead horses still lying around. It smells ten times worse out there than the critter that died behind the kitchen wall last year. Remember that, Lizzie? But look what I found!”
Ben opened his bag and withdrew a Confederate cap and fringed cavalry sash, a pipe and tobacco pouch, several chunks of shrapnel, a framed print of a woman and a baby, and a bowie knife. Jack clamored to touch the knife, but Ben held him back. He placed some misshapen metal pellets in my hand. I was too astonished to speak.
“Minié balls. They get bent from the heat when they strike a rock or tree,” Ben explained. “Look, these two are melted together. They must have hit each other in midair. But here’s my best find!” He unwrapped from a blanket a twelve-pound cannonball.
Margaret gasped and I finally found my voice.
“Whatever possessed you, Benjamin Allbauer? Don’t you know how dangerous this could be?” I sounded exactly like Mama.
“Oh, I know. Some boys found a shell lying on the ground, and they were throwing rocks at it, trying to hit the fuse. I would never do that.”
“Did it blow up?” asked Jack.
“Yep, finally it exploded. But they weren’t badly hurt.”
“They might have been killed!” I grabbed Ben’s collar and said in my most dire voice, “Don’t you ever go back there.”
“I think it’s shameful, to go playing and digging about where men died for the cause of freedom,” said Margaret.
“What will you do with these things?” I asked.
“Well, I can’t take them home because Ma would yell at me worse than you are,” Ben said, putting his souvenirs into the sack one by one.
“Do you plan to sell them? Did you collect them just for the money?” I demanded.
“I’m not going to sell anything!” Ben cried, clutching the knapsack. The tintype of the mother and child slipped to the floor. “I’m going to keep all of my souvenirs and show my children and grandchildren so that nobody will ever forget this battle!” He was almost in tears.
Margaret picked up the tintype and gazed at it. Then she said gently, “You may leave your treasures here for now, and I will keep them safe.”
Ben’s shoulders sagged with relief. “Thank you,” he murmured.
“Now go straight home,” I ordered my brother. “I know you didn’t mean any harm, but stay away from the battlefield. Tell Mama I’ll be home tomorrow morning, and we’ll get the shop ready to open.”
Ben left in a chastened mood. The sun was sinking behind the rooftops and the only traffic on Baltimore Pike was the Union soldiers heading south. Drumbeats kept their weary steps in
rhythm as they marched on, pursuing Lee’s army.
“I hope they aren’t leaving us entirely undefended,” said Margaret in a worried tone. She began to light one lamp after another. “Let’s make it look like the house is full of people.”
Jack and Clara went to bed early, but I stayed up to keep Margaret company. I yawned as we stitched and rolled bandages. Then I realized Margaret was shaking me by the arm.
“Did you hear that?” she asked. A V-shaped furrow appeared between her eyebrows.
“No,” I said. “I must have dozed off.”
“It sounded like the gate creaking. I think I hear footsteps!”
We tiptoed to the front window, but the lights inside the house made it difficult to see outside. Finally I could make out the figure of a man, his face hidden by a hat.
“It’s not a Union soldier. His pants are light colored,” Margaret whispered.
“I don’t see a rifle. Do you?”
“Look at his hand. Is it a Negro?”
“I think he’s alone.”
“Oh, Lizzie; what if he’s a deserter come to shoot us? It’s after dark, so he cannot be up to any good. What are we going to do?”
I wished I had John Ray’s rifle to put between us and the stranger. Otherwise I was out of ideas. “I’m thinking!” I said.
“I’ll grab Jack and Clara and we’ll run out the back door,” suggested Margaret.
“No, wait,” said Lizzie. “If he has come to the front door of a lighted-up house, he isn’t looking for trouble. And there are two of us. Get the fireplace poker, just in case. I’ll see what he wants.”
With Margaret beside me hiding the poker behind her skirts, I swung the door open and demanded in the surest voice I could muster, “Who’s there?”
The man took off his hat and said in a voice deep and soft with the accent of the South, “My name be Thomas Banks, an’ I mean you ladies no harm.”
I could see that the man was in a pitiful state. One arm was in a sling made from a scrap of blanket that was damp and sticky with blood. Over his other shoulder he carried a haversack with a red cross stitched to it.