by Anita Mills
“Just don’t get out the saw—I’ll stand damned near anything but that.”
“I got the kit, and the splints is coming,” Danny declared over Spence’s shoulder. “It’s gonna be all right, ain’t it?”
“I don’t know yet.”
Forgetting his fatigue, Spence cut the pant leg, exposing the wound. Feeling underneath, he could tell there was considerable damage. Nonetheless, he probed the entry hole, finding bits of bone embedded in the soft tissue. He’d have to section the muscle to see how much of the femur had been lost. “You’d better hold on,” he warned Jesse Taylor. Nodding to Danny, he added, “Light that lantern and hold it close—off to the right a little, but close.”
As he cut, probed, and picked around the broken femur, the man never made a sound. Spence worked meticulously, finding each sliver, exchanging the probe for needle-nosed forceps, retrieving every bit he could. The air was chilly, but he was sweating when he sat back and reached for the stoppered bottle.
“Soon as I get a little of this in there, I’ll force the bone together, and splint it. You’d better sit on his shins, Danny.”
“Jesus God!” Taylor gasped, bucking when the permanganate hit the open wound.
As he left the ambulance, Spence felt pretty good about Taylor’s chances. Barring infection, the man would be limping home with both legs, but one was going to be a little shorter than the other.
In his tent, he hung his coat over the chair, washed his hands in the water bucket, then sat to remove his boots. His gaze strayed to Lydia’s picture, taking in the incredibly beautiful woman and the small boy on her lap. God, it had been so long since he’d been home to see them. Every time he looked at that picture, the yearning he felt was nearly unbearable.
Poor Liddy. Nothing in her twenty-two years had prepared her for this. Born rich and beautiful, she’d been Cullen Jamison’s little princess, and he’d brought her up to believe she could have anything she wanted. Incredibly, she’d wanted a young doctor barely out of medical college.
Reaching behind the photograph, he retrieved her last letter. Sighing, he lit the kerosene lantern, pulled it closer, and forced himself to read the painful words again.
Dearest Spencer,
Since last I wrote, Papa’s health has worsened. Now he cannot speak or feed himself at all, and Dr. Kelso does not expect any improvement. It would be far better for all of us had he died. It breaks my heart to see him this way. And Mama is quite useless, of course. If there were a market for her tears, we should all be prosperous.
You write that you understand how it is here, but you cannot begin to know. Mama and I went to a party last Friday, but it was a sad affair. The only man there was Mr. Porter, who’s too deaf to hear Gabriel’s horn on Judgment Day. My throat was sore from shouting at him.
There is no social circle anymore. All discourse has sunk to an exchange of patriotic recipes, which are for the most part revolting. President Davis may say rats are edible, and meat markets may sell them at twenty dollars a pound, but I will not eat one. With not a single horse, mule, dog, cat, rabbit, squirrel, coon, or possum left in the whole of Crawford County, and flour costing one thousand dollars a barrel, and no sugar, rice, soda, butter, eggs, or lard anywhere, life here has become impossible.
You have no notion how hungry everyone is, or how low we will sink for food. Last week there was a riot at Rowley’s Store over four shriveled apples, which went for twenty dollars apiece before slaves armed with pitchforks pushed the crowd out and chained the door. That night, someone burned the place down.
With every able-bodied white man off to war, the Negroes have become a lazy, insolent lot, and I am afraid of them. I keep Papa’s hunting gun next to my bed at night.
In every letter to me, you ask me to be strong, but I cannot. I hate this war, I hate sacrificing everything for a doomed cause, and I hate this burden that your absence has thrust upon me. I tell you I am frightened, and you tell me to be patient. I ask you to come home, and you say you cannot get a leave. Spencer, I don’t want a day or a week of your life; I want all of it. You speak of your loyalty to your country, but what of your loyalty to me? If you cannot get yourself discharged, then you must desert. For my sake, and for that of your son, you must desert.
Refolding the pages, he sighed. Why couldn’t she understand what she was putting him through with letters like these? No matter how much he wanted to go home, he couldn’t. As long as men still fought and died for the Confederacy, he had to stay. But, whether she liked him or not, Ross Donnelly just might be the answer to his dilemma.
Taking out pen, ink, and paper from the box beneath his bed, he thought for a long moment, then he began to write.
Dearest Liddy,
We engaged the enemy again yesterday, this time along the road to Franklin, Tennessee, and we have suffered a terrible loss. I expect Hood will be relieved of command for it, but that does not ease the pain I feel when I look into the eyes of dying men. I cannot even begin to tell you how it hard it is to saw through living flesh and bone.
I know how alone you feel in these trying times, and I wish I could be there with you. But with casualties here counted in the thousands, I cannot ask to leave. If you saw the misery, the suffering in the faces of our wounded, I do not believe you could ask me to abandon them. But I can offer you some company.
Our friend Ross Donnelly broke his shoulder during the battle and will be discharged for it. Since his family is out of the country, I am hoping you will welcome him into our home. As you know, he is quite the card, and I have hopes his presence will brighten your spirits and lighten the heavy burdens you bear until this awful war ends and I can be there with you.
You say I cannot know how miserable you are, but you cannot know how I long to see you and Joshua. Both of you are in my every prayer. It is your love that sustains me.
Always your devoted husband,
Spence
He reread his letter, feeling it lacked something, but he just couldn’t think anymore. Setting it aside, he lay down and pulled the blanket up over his clothes. As his eyes closed, he whispered the Lord’s Prayer, drifting off to sleep before he could finish it.
Near Salisbury, North Carolina: April 12, 1865
Smelling smoke and hearing gunshots, Laura Taylor ran to her door, where she could see the dark column rising to meet lighter clouds in the sky. As nearly as she could tell, the Baker place three miles to the north was on fire. Yankee raiders were moving south along the railroad line toward Charlotte.
Her heart seemed to pause, and for a moment, she felt an awful hollow beneath her breastbone, then dread rushed to fill the void. When they’d stolen what they could and destroyed everything the Bakers owned, the blue-bellied locusts would be descending on her.
At least Jesse wasn’t home, and surely the smoke would warn him to stay away until they passed. With that comfort came the realization that keeping what little they had depended on her. Her mind raced as she considered the only home she’d ever known. Those weathered walls would burn like tinder at the touch of a torch. And she knew better than to expect any mercy—the Yankee devils had been burning out wives, widows, and children as they cut a path of destruction through the heart of the South.
Scorched earth, it was called, this war they waged on women, children, and old men.
Well, they weren’t getting her house, not while she still had any breath left in her body. She might not be able to save the old barn or the chicken coop, and they’d probably set fire to the roof of the stone smokehouse out back, but she wasn’t leaving this house. They’d have to burn her with it.
Dry as a tinderbox, she decided, looking around at things most people wouldn’t think worth fighting for. But between that leaky ceiling and the worn planks of a sagging floor, she’d spent all twenty-three years of her life here. All the memories, good and bad, echoed off these veined plaster walls. The doors had to be secured first, or
they’d just come in after her, and there wasn’t much time. Working feverishly, she dragged the faded sofa her mother had so insistently called a davenport across the front room to block the door, then she piled books, cast iron pots, every heavy thing she could lift, onto it. Standing back, she realized it wasn’t enough to keep them out. She had to have more. Tugging and pushing and walking battered chests, both bedsteads, and the oak table and chairs, she reinforced that sofa with the rest of her furniture.
Stopping to mop the sweat from her face, she looked around her, thinking if the Yankees tried to get in that way, they’d have a job of it. But there was still the back door, and she’d run out of everything that might stop them. Walking through the four small, bare rooms, she realized she’d have to make her stand in the kitchen.
Taking Jesse’s heavy Sharps rifle down from the rack on the wall, she loaded it. One shot could drop a charging buffalo, he’d said, but once it was fired, the gun was empty. The double-barreled shotgun held two loads, but when either trigger was pulled, it kicked hard enough to send her sprawling. Her father’s old cap-lock Colt was hard to load, but at least it held six shots, and she knew how to use it. As she took the pouch of powder from its place on the rack, the big black stove caught her eye, and she knew if she could move it, it was heavy enough to slow them down, giving her time to pick them off before they could get through that door.
She pulled a chair from the pile, and using a ramrod and carpenter’s hammer, she knocked the flue loose, widening the crack in the plaster wall. It had taken two men to carry the stove in, she realized, but two men weren’t here right now. Using a crowbar and a slat from the bedstead for levers, she managed to budge it a couple of inches. Moving from corner to corner, she worked the stove over the uneven floor all the way to the kitchen door. Her arms and legs felt like jelly, and sweat soaked her dress and her hair, but they weren’t getting in there without a fight now.
She heard them coming down the hard clay road, and with her heart pounding in her ears, she loaded all six chambers of the Colt, getting powder, balls, caps, and sealing grease into them. Looking out the window, she saw half a dozen mounted Union soldiers in her yard, and she heard one of them yell, “Whoever’s in there, come out! We’ve orders to torch the house!” And the acrid smell of burning pitch reinforced his words.
With the shotgun tucked under one arm, the revolver in her other hand, she edged to her front-room window and broke out the glass with the Colt’s barrel. “You all get off my property, or I’ll shoot!” she shouted.
“We won’t hurt you if you come out!” he answered, banging on the door.
“Go away!”
“Either you come out, or we drag you out!”
“I’ve got a double load of buckshot waiting for anybody fool enough to try it!”
“Stoneman’s orders, ma’am—you gotta get out before we set fire to the house!”
Sweat was pouring from her forehead, dripping from her hair. Blowing a wet strand out of her eyes, she gripped the shotgun more tightly. “You’re all a bunch of blue-bellied cowards making war on women and children!”
She saw the doorknob turn and heard shoulders hitting the solid oak door. The facing splintered from the force, but the pile of furniture in front of it didn’t budge. Amid a flurry of curses, somebody shouted the other way, “Door’s blocked—it ain’t opening!”
“Break it down!”
She couldn’t tell whether it was the men or her temples pounding as they threw themselves at her door. Leveling the Colt, she cocked the hammer and pulled the trigger. As the bullet tore through the wood, a man yelped, and a cloud of gun smoke filled the room.
“She shot me!”
“Go round back! Go in and drag her out by her hair if you have to!”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a bluecoat coming by the window, and she fired again. He dropped down and crawled back to the riders out front.
The tone turned conciliatory. “Ma’am, we don’t like hurtin’ women, but we got orders to get everybody out of here. You come on out, and we’ll see you get into town.”
“Get off my property!” she yelled again, cocking the Colt’s hammer. “If anybody leaves, it’s going to be you!”
“Ma’am, we’ve got no choice. Just do what you’re told, and nobody’ll hurt you. You’ve got the word of an officer and a gentleman.”
“You’ll have to burn me with my house, ‘cause I’m not leaving! That ought to make you real proud of yourselves!”
“Go round back!” she heard somebody shout again. “She can’t get all of us!”
Her heart thudded painfully beneath her breastbone, but she managed to keep the bravado in her voice. “Come on in!” she challenged them. “There’s enough guns in here for an army, and every one of ’em is loaded! So which one of you Yankee cowards wants the first bellyful of buckshot? You come through that door, and I’m cutting you in half with it!”
“She’s bluffing! Go get her!”
She caught a glimpse of blue creeping low, trying to get around the other side of the house. She got to Danny’s window in time to get a good look at his blue-covered rump. Taking aim at it, she pulled one trigger of the shotgun. It sounded like an explosion, and the recoil threw her into the wall as the shot shattered the window. Clutching her shoulder, she wasn’t sure the scream she’d heard was hers or his, but when she dared to look through the jagged glass, she saw the soldier jerking and writhing on the ground. The buckshot had torn through the back of his pants, and his backside looked like raw meat.
“Dear God, forgive me, but I had no choice,” she whispered, stunned by what she’d done. Recovering, she called out, “Anybody fool enough to try that again?”
“Throw the torch! Burn the bitch in it!”
Moving just out of Danny’s door and into the front room, she listened intently, trying to guess which way it’d be coming, and she saw the rider raise the burning brand. “Please, God, don’t let me miss,” she prayed fervently as she leveled the Colt and fired.
The horse reared, then went down. As the torch hit the ground, the flames shot up, frightening the animal further. It fought to regain its legs, then bolted. The rider picked himself up and limped after it, cursing loudly.
Regrouping at a safe distance, the raiders disputed among themselves, but she couldn’t make out what they were saying. Taking aim at a branch of the old oak tree above them, she fired the Sharps, hitting it, and they scattered. Wheeling their horses, they charged, giving the house itself a wide berth, going around the other side of the barn to torch the pile of hay there. As flames shot up above the roof, they circled to set fire to the coop and smokehouse, then came back to retrieve their wounded before they rode off.
She tried to open the kitchen window, but the rope stuck. With thick, choking smoke filling the air, and dry wood popping and crackling, she had to watch helplessly while flames consumed the barn. Then the chicken coop caved in.
The realization that the soldiers were gone, that she’d survived sank in slowly, followed by an awareness of her aching fingers. When she looked down, she had the Colt clutched so tightly that she couldn’t turn it loose. Still holding it, she leaned her head against the wall and let the tears flow.
When she finally regained her composure, she wiped her streaming eyes with the sleeve of her faded dress, then she looked outside again. A raw spring wind was carrying live coals out toward the thicket of wild plums and bittersweet.
It could have been worse, she told herself. If Jesse’d been there, he would have put up a fight, and they’d probably have killed him and taken Old Dolly. While she’d lost the outbuildings, she still had her husband, her house, and a plow horse.
North Carolina: May 14, 1865
The rain poured over the brim of Spence’s hat, soaking through his coat and shirt, chilling his weary body all the way to the bone. Beneath him, the roan horse plodded slowly, its hooves sucking at the mire with every step. The muddy road was d
eeply rutted, still scarred by the passage of Sherman’s heavy artillery wagons two months ago. Now the ragged remnants of a beaten army were walking it home.
As they’d passed the skeletal remains of charred chimneys and burnt farmhouses, seeing endless miles of fire-blackened fields, the relief most had felt at war’s end was gone, replaced by angry bitterness. Exhausted, footsore, and hungry, former butternut soldiers had themselves become foragers in their own land, fighting each other for food, horses, or enough money to get them to their own devastated farms and towns farther on.
Straightening in the saddle, Spence shrugged aching shoulders and fought to stay awake. He’d hoped to be in Georgia by now, but he knew it was still a long way to the state line. Between bad roads and worse weather, he’d be damned lucky if he made it to Charlotte tonight. If he could get there, he had enough money in his boot to pay for a place to sleep. If he couldn’t, he’d have to stay awake. He’d already witnessed barefooted infantrymen pulling a careless cavalry officer from his saddle, taking his horse, his money, and most of his clothes. The fellow had been damned lucky to escape with his life.
But as bad as things were, the war was over. Dispersing the wounded from field hospitals to other facilities had taken precious time from Spence, but with the last transfers done, he was finally going home to the wife and son he hadn’t seen in more than eighteen months.
He had a lot of time to make up, and maybe things would be awkward at first, but he couldn’t wait to see Liddy. In his mind’s eye, he’d pictured his homecoming a thousand times. She’d be waiting for him on the columned porch, smiling through her tears, and they’d just hold each other. Josh would be hanging back until Spence held out some of the horehound candy he’d stashed in his coat pocket, then he’d be glad to see his daddy. Now he could spend the summer getting acquainted with his boy. He’d take him fishing, teach him to ride, play games with him on the wide, lush lawn at Jamison’s Landing.