Today We Go Home

by Kelli Estes

  Nellie wasn’t having it. “Take it, Emily. You need food so your body can heal.”

  “Yeah, take it,” urged Isaac. “It’s not much, but it’s fresh.”

  Gabriel had finished his egg and bread and was reaching for a strawberry. When his gaze met Emily’s, he did not say a word, but he nodded as though giving her his permission. Reluctantly, but also feeling ravenous, Emily tried again to roll over and managed this time to get onto her side and prop herself on one elbow. She took the offered food, bit into it, and nearly wept at how good it tasted.

  “There’s a lady in town,” Nellie told her around a mouthful of bread, “who sometimes gives us food and blankets. She says they are building an orphanage and that she’ll see to it we get two of the beds. But we’re not gonna go.” She slid a glance toward Gabriel.

  “Why not? You’ll be safe there, and you won’t have to steal your food.”

  “Because they won’t take Gabriel,” Isaac told her matter-of-factly. “On account of him bein’ a contraband.”

  So, Gabriel had been a slave. She looked at the boy and was surprised to see he did not seem sad at being rejected by the orphanage but, rather, resigned. “But he needs to be cared for the same as the two of you,” she protested.

  Nellie shrugged. “They don’t want any negroes. Only white children.”

  “So what’s Gabriel supposed to do?”

  Isaac lifted his chin as though preparing for a fight. “He stays with us, that’s what. We’ll care for each other.”

  Emily’s heart twisted again, and she didn’t know if it was simply in response to the love these three clearly felt for one another, or in envy of their relationship when she had no one.

  When the food was gone, Gabriel pulled out a canteen stamped on the side with the letters CSA, for Confederate States of America. He took a swig and passed it to the other kids who also drank before passing it to Emily. She drank, seeing the irony of drinking out of a Reb’s canteen when only a few weeks past she’d been shooting at them.

  Completely spent, she handed the canteen back to Gabriel and eased herself back to the ground, feeling a wave of heat that hinted at the possibility she might be becoming feverish. She closed her eyes and waited for the food to bring her body strength.

  The kids must have thought she’d gone to sleep because they started talking about her in whispers.

  “How long is she going to be here?” Gabriel’s voice. “It takes all we got to feed ourselves. We don’t need another mouth around.”

  “She’s hurt, Gabriel,” Nellie reminded him in her tiny voice that gave away her young age, no matter how mature she acted. “She has no one else to care for her.”

  “How do you know? She probably has folks back home wherever she came from.”

  “She told me. She’s all alone.”

  The kids fell silent, and Emily drifted off to sleep.

  Her dreams were tangled and fraught with danger. She could hear Ben and Willie calling to her for help, but she couldn’t reach them.

  But then it was Gabriel, Isaac, and Nellie standing on the battlefield with dead bodies lying all around them. They held hands and stared at the horizon as if waiting for someone. Their parents? Emily called to them, but they couldn’t hear her. They stood there, motionless except for the wind blowing Nellie’s long blond hair across her face and her skirt around her little legs.

  Suddenly, Emily was back in the thick of battle, chasing after a Reb. No matter how far she ran or how many shots she fired, he wouldn’t die. She kept running and firing, but the bastard wouldn’t die.

  And then she was with Willie, who hung onto her hand and begged, “Find my sister. Tell her I’m sorry.” Her eyes pleaded with Emily even as blood ran down her face, turning it into a grotesque mask.

  “How?” Emily begged her. She was holding on to Willie’s hands even though she felt the flesh drain away through her fingers until she was left holding nothing but bone. “How can I find your sister? I don’t know your real name!”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  June 6, 1862: Nashville, Tennessee

  It took a week of being cared for by the children before Emily felt strong enough to emerge from their little hut. She was plagued by nightmares and, even a few times when she was awake, by visions of men with guns bursting into the room and shooting at her and the children. She was sure the kids thought she was out of her mind, but they did not say a word about it. They simply went about their routine of melting into the city and returning with pilfered food that they cooked and ate together, sharing stories and helping each other as best they could. She told them about Willie and Ben. They told her about living on the plantation and how they’d walked into town and found this shack.

  While awake, Emily had a lot of time to think. She thought about her promise to Willie that she’d tell her family what had happened to her, and how there was no way she could possibly fulfill that promise. Her friend had enlisted as Willie Smith and, to Emily, that’s who she’d been. She’d never thought to ask her real name, and now it was too late. All she knew were Willie’s sister’s initials: ODE. Did that mean Willie’s real last name started with an E? Could Emily go to Nebraska and start knocking on the front door of every family there whose name started with E and eventually find them?

  Nebraska. The word filled Emily with a sense of wonder. Willie had described the wide prairie in such vivid detail that Emily could see it in her mind: the blowing grass, the rocky outcroppings, the bison and cattle and chickens and goats. Emily loved the idea of homesteading there, but could she do it? Could she really go there and build a life all on her own?

  It was a question she pondered greatly during those long days, staring at the rough boards of the little hut while twisting Willie’s ring on her finger. She could spend the rest of her days as a man and get along well, but did she want to? A part of her, a large part, still hoped to get married and have children.

  But, conversely, could she give up all the freedom she had living as a man? No. She could answer that question, at least. She would never again settle for a life where her every action, even her thoughts, were controlled by someone else. From now on, no matter where life took her, she would live on her own terms. If that meant living by herself on the prairie with no husband and no children, so be it.

  She was really starting to like the three kids caring for her, and when she wasn’t worrying over her own future, she spent hours trying to come up with a plan to help them. That line of thought always brought her back to the look on Gabriel’s face when Isaac had said the orphanage did not want him. He’d looked resigned. Where Emily had expected hurt or rejection, she’d seen only acceptance. At nine years of age, he was already acquainted with a world that did not want him and could not even see him as human.

  But then she had a new realization. Gabriel didn’t need to be accepted into the orphanage. He didn’t need pity and charity. He needed a family, and in fact, he already had a family with Nellie and Isaac. Emily envied them. Their relationship was so close that the two younger kids had turned their backs on safety and comfort in order to stay with Gabriel, as Emily had done to be with her brothers. The way the kids worked together to survive, and yet were willing to help her, a stranger, inspired her.

  She’d had that closeness before, with her own family and then with Ben and Willie. She wanted it again. She wanted a family again. Maybe she’d already found them.

  But, of course, that was impossible. The kids were thieves. They smelled like they hadn’t bathed in months. They squatted in a shack on property whose owner could return any day and evict them. They squabbled. They manipulated people to get what they wanted.

  And still, Emily looked at her future and saw them in it.

  On the morning when she finally felt strong enough, she bound her chest with a strip of cloth the kids gave her, tucked in her mended shirt, and promised to return that e
vening with food after securing a job for herself.

  Standing together in the dirt yard to say goodbye, the deserted main house blindingly white in the rising sun, all three had smiles on their faces that told Emily they were up to some mischief. “What are you hiding behind your back, Nellie?”

  “We was talkin’,” Isaac said, looking older than his years, “and we decided you don’t look right.”

  Emily blinked. “What—”

  “We got you a hat,” Gabriel blurted out, jamming an elbow into Isaac’s side. “We thought it could make your disguise better.” Nellie brought the hat from behind her back with a flourish and held it up to Emily. She was nibbling on her bottom lip, betraying her fear that Emily wouldn’t like the gift.

  The brown bowler hat drooped in Nellie’s hands. Sweat stains darkened the felt where it had once sat on some man’s head, and the smell of tobacco smoke fouled the air around it. The hat had clearly been stolen, but Emily knew her only choice was to accept the gift in the spirit it was being offered, or risk offending her hosts. She smiled at Nellie as she took the hat and plopped it on her own head. “Thank you. It is exactly what I needed.”

  The little girl beamed.

  All day, Emily walked the streets, stopping at every business she came across and asking for work. It quickly became apparent that the city was firmly in the hands of the Federal Army and most industry was in support of the Union cause. Buildings that had once housed grocers or hotels were now hospitals or barracks or storehouses for Federal goods.

  Enlisting again was out of the question. Not only would they not accept her back, should they determine her true identity, but she found she did not want to reenlist. The fight had gone out of her when she’d lost Ben and Willie. All she wanted now was to live a quiet life of her own and turn her attention to the future, as much as she could in a country ripped apart by war. But even more than that, when she now thought about secessioners, she saw in her mind’s eye the innocent faces that waited for her back at the hut. She would never fire upon them.

  She applied for work at several stables, offering to tend the horses and tack, but every one refused her. On College Street she found a bakery emitting scents that made her mouth water. When she knocked on the door and asked for work, telling the baker who answered that she’d been baking bread all her life, he only scrutinized the still-healing bruises on her face and turned her away.

  At a carpenter’s shop on the corner of Spring and College streets, she tried to apply for a job as a laborer but was told only Federal troops worked there. When asked why she wasn’t fighting for the Union, she made up an excuse about being physically unfit for service which, of course, implied she was also unfit as a laborer. She quickly retreated before any more questions were asked.

  At the St. Cloud Hotel, she asked for work washing dishes or laundry and was turned away yet again. Over and over, she got the same response: the work was only for Union soldiers, or there was no work to be had in the first place.

  Night was falling, and she gave up. Disheartened, she turned in the direction of the hut, without the food she’d promised.

  And then her luck turned. As she passed a boardinghouse, she happened to glance in the open door to the kitchen and saw a chicken roasting on a spit over the fire, its juices running over the crispy flesh and dripping onto the hot coals beneath. The delicious aroma made her light-headed.

  She stopped and leaned against the building. She’d seen no one inside, but that didn’t mean the room was deserted. Someone could be just out of sight.

  No sounds emerged from the warm kitchen, and Emily knew if she was going to act, she’d have to be quick.

  With a request for a cup of water ready on her lips, she stepped into the room and looked around. It was bare, furnished with a scarred wooden table, two cane-backed chairs near the fire, and pots, pans, tubs, and utensils lying or hanging around the room. A pot of potatoes boiled in the fire next to the chicken, and a pan of biscuits sat on the table, ready to be placed over the coals. No one was in sight.

  She quickly grabbed the cloth from over the biscuits and wrapped it around the chicken so she could slide it off the spit without burning her hands.

  Holding the chicken to her chest like an infant, she sprinted from the room and onto the street, eager to share this treasure with the children.

  “Hey! Come back here!”

  Emily started running, turning corners and dashing down alleys to evade anyone who might be chasing her.

  Lying in bed all week had taken its toll, and she soon found herself winded and her ribs sore. Stopping to catch her breath, she peeked around the corner to see if anyone was chasing her and was relieved to see no one seemed to by paying any attention to her.

  After several more breaths, she pushed away from the brick wall and headed for the kids’ hut, this time at a slower pace. A warm chicken right off the fire was going to fill their bellies and fuel them through another night.

  As soon as she skirted the abandoned house and made her way into the yard where their little hut huddled against the back wall, she heard the kids arguing.

  “You shouldn’t have taken that, Gabriel!” Nellie’s voice. “It isn’t yours!”

  Emily paused to listen.

  “She’s right, you know,” Isaac put in. “You need to give it back.”

  “But she’ll be cross with me, and I…I like her.” Gabriel sounded defeated. After a beat, Emily realized the “her” being discussed could only be herself.

  To give them warning, she retraced her steps and intentionally kicked a rock so it banged against the water pump, making a clanging noise. The kids’ voices cut off.

  She pushed open the ramshackle door, and acting as though she hadn’t heard a thing, she held up her prize. “We’re having chicken for dinner!”

  Amid moans of delight and cries of “That smells so good!” they gathered in their circle on the floor to eat. Gabriel revealed a loaf of bread he’d obtained, and Nellie and Isaac proudly presented two potatoes they’d dug up in an abandoned garden and baked all afternoon in a pit they’d dug in the yard.

  When the chicken had been picked clean and their bellies were full, Emily took a deep breath and confessed, “I didn’t find a job today. I don’t think there are any for me here.”

  The announcement was met with silence. Nellie shrugged one shoulder. “No matter.”

  Isaac took out a coin purse he’d lifted off someone and upended it onto the ground. He and Gabriel started debating what they would buy with the four coins lying in the dirt.

  “You know,” Emily said, interrupting them, “I’ve been thinking of going to Nebraska Territory and making a homestead claim. My friend Willie was from there, and she said it’s a grand place to live.”

  The boys nodded at her and went back to inspecting their coins. Nellie dug her fingers into the dirt.

  Emily had been thinking all day about heading for Nebraska and taking the children with her. She knew it was a mad idea, but she couldn’t let it go. The kids had helped her. Maybe she could help them in return. “What do you think about going with me?”

  All three heads snapped up to look at her suspiciously.

  “Why?” Isaac asked.

  Emily shrugged. “Wouldn’t you like to get away from this war? Go to a place where you could play in the sunshine and grow your own food?”

  Gabriel’s eyes narrowed. “You going to be a farmer?”

  “Yes.”

  “And we’d be your slaves?”

  Emily gasped. A quick glance confirmed that the other kids had been thinking the same thing. “No, not at all! You’d be my family. We’d be farmers together. Look out for one another.”

  The kids exchanged glances, and then Emily felt something shift in the air.

  “How would we get there?” Gabriel, ever the thoughtful one, was already thinking through the logis
tics.

  “I don’t know,” she admitted. “If we had money, we’d take a steamer upriver or a train. But since I lost my money when those men attacked me, and I can’t find work, I don’t know how we’ll get there. Walking would be dangerous, but it might be the only way.”

  Nellie twisted her mouth in a way that showed she was thinking hard.

  “Did those men take your money?” Gabriel asked, his voice low as though he was afraid to ask the question.

  Emily shrugged. “I’m not sure. It was hidden in a diary I kept here.” She touched a hand to her chest where her bindings were. “I remember one of them tossing it aside, but then it was lost.”

  Isaac and Nellie were both staring at Gabriel with stern expressions. Gabriel squirmed, and his eyes would not meet hers. “Miss Emily,” he finally croaked. “I didn’t mean to take it. I picked it up when we found you, and when I saw it was a diary, I thought I should read it before giving it back to be sure you were trustworthy.”

  “You can read?”

  He nodded, his face still turned to the ground. “Mistress Alice taught me when she taught Isaac. Told me to keep it secret from the master, or we’d all get in trouble.”

  “That’s wonderful!” She turned to Nellie. “Can you read, too?”

  The little girl shook her head.

  “We’ll start working on that.”

  Gabriel crawled the short distance to his pallet in the corner and withdrew something from under his blanket. When he returned, he held Emily’s diary. The sight of it made her gasp.

  “I shouldn’t have taken it.” He shoved it at her.

  Emily could not hold back tears as she took the book from him. “I thought it was gone for good.” She ran a hand lovingly over the cover, thinking about the day Pa had given it to her and all the days it had kept her company in camp.

  “There was no money in there,” Gabriel insisted, his voice loud. “I swear it!”

  She placed her hand over the cover protectively and smiled at the boy. “Let’s see about that, shall we?” And then, not bothering to hide her actions from the kids, she unwrapped the leather thong, popped off the cover to the secret compartment and felt a rush of emotion upon seeing Willie’s handkerchief tucked safely inside. Her money was there, too, but all she had eyes for was the handkerchief.