Annie, Between the States

by L. M. Elliott

  BOOM-BOOM-BOOM.

  A black comet sliced the air and landed in the cornfield, hurling up dirt and smoke and shattered stalks.

  Frozen, Annie watched the ten-acre cornfield and its shoulder-tall green stalks. On the far side, it seethed and smoked, as if it were coming alive. The writhing rippled forward toward the house, closer, closer. Then she heard it. The crack of muskets firing, men shouting, screams, explosions, horses neighing in fright.

  A Union soldier popped out of the corn, looked back, stopped, fired, then ran on. Another dashed out, suddenly splayed out in a spasm, and fell. A third bluecoat stumbled out of the stalks, crawling, screaming, moving on all fours. Then there were five more, six, ten.

  The battle was coming straight at her.

  CHAPTER TWO

  In her mind, Annie was running, skirt hitched up, feet flying across the lawn, into the house, fast as a rabbit.

  In reality, she was rooted.

  This can’t be happening.

  Annie opened her mouth to scream. Nothing came out. She couldn’t hear a thing, just a roaring in her ears, like high winds. Her body swayed with the violent thumping of her heart.

  Faintly, Annie heard a voice, like a whisper, far away: “Run! Run, miss!”

  Another Harpylike whistle through the air, a black ball hurtling into the cornfield, a shock, a volcano of cornstalks, and screams.

  Crack-crack-crack.

  Up from the corn, coming toward her, billowed a wave of blue-clad men, panicking, crying, many dropping rifles and ammunition, throwing everything overboard so they could move as fast as possible. They jostled one another. Some fell and were trampled. Others stooped, picked up the fallen, and dragged them along.

  A rider crashed out of the cornfield. His chestnut horse reared and pawed the air as the officer yanked him to a stop. “Stop, you cowards!” he bellowed. “Turn and fight!”

  A few slowed, looking nervously back toward the officer. One small, thin soldier actually stopped, loaded his gun, and aimed toward the field, ready. But most kept running, ducking their heads lower.

  “Stop or I’ll shoot you down!” the officer shouted, and fired his pistol into the air.

  Annie felt herself inching back, back, back.

  She could see faces plainly now as they swept up the long hill toward her. Young faces, old, dirty, bloody. She heard the voice again. “Run, miss, run! There are a thousand men behind me!” Finally, Annie focused on a Union soldier at the front of the pack, waving his arms at her.

  His urgency kicked her into action. Annie turned and ran. Now she could hear their feet, crashing along the ground, coming up behind her. She looked toward the house and saw her mother rushing down the steps, searching the sea of confusion, calling for Annie.

  “I’m here, Mother,” Annie gasped. “Here.” She raised her hand to wave, and as she did, she smelled something smoky and sweaty. A grimy hand reached up and grabbed her arm, swinging her around. She almost fell with the wheeling motion, but the hand held her up.

  A face loomed over hers. A face twisted up in terror. “Which way to the road? Please! What will take me back to Centreville?”

  Annie choked, frozen by the fear radiating from him.

  The hand shook her. “Which way?”

  “Let go of my child!” Miriam was there, pushing the man away. “That way. Past the house, down the lane, onto the road, then three or four miles east.”

  As Miriam spoke and pointed, a half dozen boys swarmed her and the man. “Which way, ma’am? Which way?”

  The man whose face had been savaged with fear now looked ashamed. “I know. Follow me, boys. Best get back to the house, ma’am.” Then he darted off, dogged by the others.

  Miriam and Annie huddled together, unsure how to reach the house without being knocked down. A storm surge of Union soldiers broke around them and washed on. More were coming.

  “Annie, take my hand. We need to get inside.” Miriam pulled Annie along behind her as she dodged and skittered among the running men.

  “Water, ma’am. Please, I’ve got to have some water.”

  The plea was echoed, and once again Miriam and Annie found themselves stopped and surrounded by frightened, shaking, panting men. Annie looked down and realized that she still clutched the water bucket. Her skirt was drenched, but there was some water left in the bucket. She put it on the ground, and the men dropped to it. She and her mother waded on and reached the stairs.

  The Union surgeon had managed to move all the wounded onto the porch. But the house was no island. Several of the fleeing soldiers scrambled up the steps and raced through it and out the other side.

  Miriam spoke firmly. “Molly and the children are down in the cellar, Annie. I want you to go there, too.”

  Annie finally found her own voice. “What’s happening, Mother?”

  From the floor came her answer. “It’s a retreat, miss,” the Massachusetts officer said with disgust. “And a disorganized one. See that officer down there?” Annie looked to the rider, who was still shouting and circling his sweat-lathered horse. “His men aren’t listening to him at all. If he can’t dissuade these men from running, no one can. There must be something really fierce chasing them. Our cavalry should be protecting their rear. But perhaps they’re engaged with Confederate riders. It looks as if everyone is mixed in together. I’m afraid you’re not very safe at this moment, miss. You should go below in the cellar.”

  Annie nodded. “You, too, Mother. Please.”

  “Yes, soon, darling, I just want to make sure these boys…”

  At that moment, Thomas Walker’s prediction came true. Out of the corn burst twenty horses, kicking and snorting, hot to race on. Their Union riders fought to control them and regroup, waving sabers in the air, a few aiming pistols.

  From deep in the corn welled up a horrendous, wailing shouting—a sound that made the hair on Annie neck’s prickle and Thomas Walker prop himself up. “What in God’s name?” he murmured.

  It sounded to Annie a little like the baying men did during foxhunting, but it had a haunting caterwaul to it, a shrieking aggression like that she imagined of Indians on the warpath. It carried a chilling abandon as if the men making the cacophony knew it was a death cry, perhaps a foretelling of their own end, and they both welcomed and mourned it. The Rebel yell.

  The Union cavalry horses reared and bucked in reaction to the sound. Only a few of their riders managed to fire off shots before they, too, turned their mounts and fled, catching up with the soldiers running on foot.

  Crack-crack-crack. Little puffs of smoke popped atop the corn as whatever was hidden answered fire. Something glinted in speckles of hot silver. Sabers. The Southern cavalry was coming.

  “It’s our boys, Mother. Oh, hurrah, we’re saved.”

  BOOM-BOOM-BOOM.

  An ancient maple tree guarding the corner of Aunt Molly’s lawn sparked, lit up, and shattered, hurling shards and beam-sized pieces of wood into the air. A thick branch spun round and round to the ground and crushed a young man beneath it.

  “Sweet Jesus, have mercy! That poor child.” Miriam started down the steps, as if she were going to try to lift the log off the broken boy.

  “Mother, no!” Annie grabbed hold of her mother’s skirts.

  “Annie, that could be Laurence. Oh, my God.” She struggled to pull free.

  It was the Union surgeon who stopped her. He spoke brusquely. “Ma’am, you must go downstairs. That soldier is dead. Do you want your daughter to be hit next?”

  “Mother, please.” Annie pulled her along a few feet. “It’s not Laurence. He’ll be all right.”

  Miriam finally turned to Annie. Annie could see the grief in her mother’s face and knew she was also thinking of three other sons—brothers Annie barely remembered, two older than Laurence and one younger. All three had died with their father in an epidemic of scarlet fever that had decimated their household years ago. At the time she’d been six years old and her little brother, Jamie, had been four. The
y and Laurence had been sent away to avoid the sickness and survived. But afterward, the responsibility of being the eldest, of helping to run their farm, and of coaxing their mother out of her sorrow and self-recrimination had dropped like a stone on Laurence. Overnight he had become solemn and trustworthy. He’d been only twelve. He was precious to Miriam, very precious, more than Annie or Jamie could ever hope to be. Annie often resented that fact, but today she understood. Laurence being safe meant that he’d be there to keep them all safe.

  Crack-crack-crack. A crest of Confederate gray riders plunged out of the corn. Spurring their horses on, they caught up with the last of the blue cavalry. Riders skirmished in a jumble of horses, plumed hats, gold epaulets, flashing steel, pawing hooves, and curses. A shot. A horse stumbled and dropped to the ground as his rider jumped aside and landed on his hands and knees. He rose, only to be whacked on the head with the butt of a pistol.

  Enough. Annie suddenly felt some strength. It was insane to remain in the middle of all this. “Mother, Laurence would be furious with you right now, to see you endanger yourself and me this way. We could be killed by a stray shot. Come downstairs.”

  The potential of angering Laurence did it. Miriam nodded, took Annie’s hand, and followed.

  The earthy coolness of the dirt cellar instantly calmed Annie as she shuffled her way down the dark steps. Miriam closed the door and bolted it. The shouts, the gunfire, and the cannon explosions became muffled and distant. Thank God.

  There was one small, dusty window that spread enough hazy light to see by. In a corner next to the vegetable bins, Aunt Molly lay on a straw mattress Annie and Miriam had dragged down for her when the shelling had started. She coughed and wheezed. In the gloom, the fire-red measles rash on her face couldn’t be seen. But Annie knew it flamed there and that her aunt’s horrible fever had broken as a result. She’d be all right. But Annie still didn’t want to get too close to her—she hadn’t had measles, and many a person died of it. Aunt Molly’s three children huddled way across the cellar as well. Miriam had forbidden them to have contact with their mother until she was recovered. They immediately jumped up and clustered around Annie.

  “Is it those gigantic cannons we saw?” Will tugged on Annie’s hand, his eyes big and worried. Annie nodded.

  “Miriam, what’s happening? It sounds like the Coming of the Lord out there.” Aunt Molly’s voice was thin and frightened.

  “Part of the battle has moved right into your yard, Molly.” Miriam sat down by her younger sister and took her hand. Her voice had a false singsong cheeriness about it. “But it will be all right. Our cavalry is here now, chasing the Federal invaders off. You’ll see. It’ll be over within a few minutes, I imagine. And just think, darlings”—she turned to Annie’s cousins—“you’ll be telling your children that the war was won right in your front lawn!”

  But it wasn’t over in a few minutes. The sporadic fighting went on and on. Explosions continued to rock the house, shaking buckets of dust out of the exposed beam ceiling down on them. Several times they heard doors open and bang against walls as heavy feet pounded the floors above them. Outside the window, hooves thundered by, canteens and muskets dropped, clods of clay were kicked up against the panes.

  Annie paced, running her hands along the shelves that held dozens of canning jars filled with peaches and blackberry preserves. The apple crates were empty, awaiting the fall picking, but the sweet smell of dried apples still lingered from the winter. She thought of home and the wealth of stored food there, and couldn’t help but feel a little bit superior and sorry for her aunt and her cousins. They had to work so hard to scratch out a living. The soil around Manassas was poor and overtilled. Her uncle John had a good job as a supervisor in one of the nearby grain mills, but the garden and orchard they kept on their thirty acres was small. Their cornfield was their one large crop. They had only a few hogs, chickens, and one milk cow. Annie prayed that the marauding Yankees hadn’t found the cow Will had tethered in a thicket in the scrubby pine forest.

  No one had realized until that week that a war would mean armies could come and encamp on their fields or in their houses and simply take whatever they wanted to feed their troops or haul their wagons. Annie felt a resentment and hatred building against the Union Yankees that she’d never felt before, not even as she’d listened to family and neighbors decry Washington’s imposition of high tariffs on their exported crops and imported goods, its political policies fashioned by smug Northerners living hundreds of miles away. Not even as everyone she knew prepared for a fight.

  Will and Sally, the oldest of her cousins, took Annie’s hands and walked the cellar with her. They were only seven and six years old. What would happen to them if Uncle John was killed? He’d joined the 8th Virginia Regiment and was definitely in the fray. Aunt Molly certainly couldn’t take care of all of them. It had been different when Annie’s father had died. Their home, Hickory Heights, wasn’t huge, but it had been in his family for several generations and was well established on the rolling, fertile hills of Fauquier County. They had a herd of cattle, sheep, and fine horses, abundant wheat fields, and large orchards. Unlike her aunt’s, their home had many outbuildings—barns, a separate meat house and potato cellar, an icehouse, plus a summer kitchen. There were servants to help tend and plant. It took clever managing and persistence, but Hickory Heights could thrive without an adult male running it. But here? She glanced over at her aunt, weak and sick, lying in the dirt of a cellar. She wasn’t sure. Annie squeezed Will’s hand. He wasn’t like Laurence. Such a little boy, in such a terrible time.

  It was getting darker in the cellar. Twilight was coming. Annie went to light a lard lantern hanging from the ceiling when she realized that it was suddenly quiet, very quiet. “Mother?” she whispered. “Do you think it’s finally over?”

  They all stood still, hushed, straining to hear.

  “What’s that jingle?” Will asked. “Hear it?”

  They did—a steady rhythmic clattering. Annie slowly guessed at the sound: trotting horses, with scabbards, muskets, spurs, and canteens gently jostling against one another. She took in a deep breath and held her hand to her heart. She turned to her mother, who looked awash in relief as well.

  But the question was: which army was it?

  “Annie, can you see out the window?” Miriam asked.

  Annie pressed her face through cobwebs to look out. Nothing but muddy boots and horses’ legs. She rubbed a circle clean in the dust and peered harder. She could see uniformed legs, but in the growing darkness, there was no way to distinguish between blue and gray cloth.

  “I can’t…”

  “Shhhhh, listen.” Miriam held up her hand to stop her.

  Many feet were climbing the steps to the front porch. Voices, low, calm. But the words, the accents, were muted by the thick fieldstone walls of the cellar.

  Annie began to tremble. Dared they hope? If it was Union soldiers, if they’d managed to retake this position, how much revenge would they want, given all their wounded and dead?

  Someone was running through the house, making the floorboards creak and groan. The feet reached the cellar. The door rattled.

  Miriam moved to the steps, holding up her hands to keep everyone else in place. “Don’t move. Don’t make a sound until I know who it is,” she breathed.

  The door rattled again hard.

  “Mother? Aunt Molly? Annie? Where are you?”

  Laurence. It was Laurence!

  Annie felt the world weave and her knees give out as the floor came up to bang her head.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “Is this the same sister I had to pull out of an oak tree because she’d climbed up so high to look in an owl’s nest? The same tomboy who dared to ride the wildest horse in my herd because I’d told her that he was too much for her? Where’s my fierce Annie?”

  Annie felt herself surface to consciousness, following that gentle, teasing voice. Her eyes opened and she saw Laurence bending over her, her mother a
nd cousins bunched up around them.

  “Here, drink this, child.” Her mother held a tin cup of water toward Annie, as Laurence propped her up. Her head pounded and her hands shook as she reached for it. “You must be ashamed of me,” Annie mumbled. “I don’t know what happened.”

  “Tsush, Annie darlin’, such a day we’ve had. It’s no wonder.”

  They pulled Annie to her feet and brushed the dirt from her flounced skirt. Annie longed to pull off the clammy drawers that clung to her legs with perspiration. She tugged at the high collar of her blouse. The air was stifling. Suddenly the cellar felt more like a tomb than a sanctuary.

  “Can we go outside for some fresh air, Mother, please?”

  Miriam and Laurence exchanged glances. “The Black Horse, Radford’s 30th Virginia cavalry, is outside, Annie,” Laurence began. “They’re good boys, a lot of them from back home, in Fauquier. They weren’t going to let any bluecoats in their sight stay put. The Federals are in complete disarray, fleeing to Washington. Colonel Stuart is anxious to continue pursuing them and end this nonsense right now. But he’s bogged down at Sudley Springs with all the prisoners we caught. He said I could come ahead and check on Aunt Molly and you. There are a lot of wounded outside, Annie. Are you sure you want to go out just yet?”

  No, Annie wasn’t sure. Within this one day she’d seen more ugly, frightening things than she ever could have imagined. But she wanted to breathe in some cool night air. She wanted to hear the peeper frogs singing. She wanted to look for a falling star in the wide, purple-black sky, and forget the killing and bleeding and mayhem she’d witnessed. Besides, she didn’t want to admit being afraid. The corset had just choked the wind out of her, that’s all. Such a ridiculous thing to have to wear. Her aunt didn’t wear one. Why did she and her mother have to?

  Annie felt her jaw jut out a bit as she pulled away from her brother and mother. “Of course I’m sure, Laurence. Why would I be afraid of some of Virginia’s finest gentlemen and the Yankees they’ve captured?” She forced a smile.