Widow of Gettysburg

by Jocelyn Green

  Gladly. Silas retraced his path north, just beyond the bevy of soldiers, and stopped to rest in the shade before he collapsed off his horse completely. Back aching from the constant jolting on his horse, he sagged against a tree trunk and closed his eyes.

  And did not sleep. Without looking, he knew that not two miles from where he sat was the Holloway Farm, and Liberty. Groaning, he covered his face with his hat. His conscience would not let him rest until he checked on her welfare one last time, now that battle had come to her doorstep. He would assure himself that she was fine, and then he would leave. He would not turn tail and run away as he had last time, but he would make his exit like a gentleman who knew not to overstay his welcome.

  With a sigh of resignation, Silas rehearsed in his mind what he would say to Liberty. Once he told her who he was, what he’d done, she would reject him outright, and all would be well. His heart would be safe, and so would she. All he had to do was tell her the truth. Most likely, she already knew one version of it. Silas Ford, man of the Lord, took slaves to bed and shot Pa dead!

  It was easier if he wrote it. Yes, he would write her. Reaching into his haversack, he retrieved paper and pencil, and let the story unfold in a letter. He told her almost everything. Perhaps some things were better left unsaid.

  After signing and folding the paper into his trousers pocket, he let his head fall back against the shaggy bark of the tree trunk and closed his eyes once more. Visions swirled in his mind. A flash of sunlight on the silver barrels of two lacquered walnut dueling pistols. Smoke pouring out of his gun. His father’s face before he fell. A full jug of moonshine. An empty jug of moonshine. A stranger pointing to an enlistment paper. His name, but not his signature. A gun to his head.

  Darkness.

  Round Tops, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania

  Thursday, July 2, 1863

  Congratulating himself on his perfect timing for the brewing fight, Harrison Caldwell ran up the eastern slope of the smaller Round Top hill, crunching last year’s dead leaves beneath his feet, as Union regiments double-timed into place. From beyond the wooded hill, the Rebel yell vibrated the air before a single enemy soldier could be seen.

  But they were coming.

  Harrison crouched alongside the reserves of the 20th Maine regiment, twenty yards behind the front line, and found himself next to a private he’d already met. Theodore Hopkins, the last of his brothers to go to war, and the only one still alive.

  “Well, Hopkins, what can you tell me?” Harrison asked as he pulled out his pad and pencil. The air filled with the sound of sharpening knives, and Harrison looked up to see every man on the front line ramming his rod down the barrel of his Springfield rifle, each one glinting silver and bobbing like a giant needle.

  “We’re the left flank, and the 83rd Pennsylvania is to our right. Col. Chamberlain says we’ve got to stand our ground here or the Rebels will sweep over the rest of the line. So it’s up to us.” He tore open a cartridge with his teeth, poured the powder and bullet into the barrel, and rammed his metal rod down in after it. “When there is a hole on the front line, we are to fill it. I’ve got to be ready.” He dropped his rammer in the dead leaves, and groped around for it for a few seconds before returning it to its slot and priming the gun. In training, the best men could fire three times in one minute. In the heat and confusion of an actual battle, Harrison had seen less experienced soldiers take far longer than that. He hoped Hopkins’ fumbling hands would not be the death of him.

  “Here they come!” shouted a soldier on the front line, and new energy coursed through Harrison’s veins, heightening all his senses.

  Every gun in the Union line seemed to fire at once, cracking the air as lead balls rushed at the enemy. Clouds of smoke hung in front of the barrels, saltpeter and sulfur replacing the scent of rotting leaves and warm, damp earth.

  While the soldiers in front reloaded their rifles, Hopkins chanted with quavering voice. “For right is right, since God is God, and right the day must win; to doubt would be disloyalty, to falter would be sin. For right is right, since God is God, and right the day must—”

  Rushing footsteps in the underbrush grew louder, like the tide coming in, as the Confederates charged up the rocky western slope.

  The Union guns fired at will, sporadically this time, dropping Confederate soldiers mid-stride, their bodies blending in with the felled tree trunks scattered on the slope. Orange-red sparks spat out of the barrels like lizard tongues lapping at the smoke.

  A Maine soldier slumped silently over the hastily built pile of rocks in front of him, dead. Another fell back as a bullet slammed into his shoulder. Rebels were beginning to perforate the Union line.

  Harrison glanced at Hopkins. A film of sweat coated the boy’s face under his kepi, his knuckles were white against his barrel. Expelling a breath, he pulled out another cartridge and put it to his teeth.

  “You’ve already loaded it.” Harrison laid his hand on Hopkins’ shoulder. “You’re ready.”

  “I’m going to be sick. My mother told me not to enlist. I can’t die. She’ll be all alone. I can’t die.”

  Harrison groaned inwardly. It was the same story he’d heard countless times, yet no less tragic despite its repetition. Young man wants to prove bravery. Mother says no. Man enlists. Man dies. Another mother mourns.

  “Private!” An officer stood over him. “Fill that hole. Now.”

  Crouching low, Hopkins crept up to fill the breach in the line, pulling another cartridge packet from his box as he went.

  Time stretched as men in blue traded shots with men in grey. Harrison stood to get a better look, but dropped down again when a bullet whizzed past his head, taking a notch out of his straw hat.

  Minutes crawled by, punctuated by showers of musket fire and the thunder of artillery from elsewhere on the hill. Until an explosion in the line twenty yards in front of him made everything else sound like rain.

  Dread trickled over Harrison, seeped into his skin. He looked down and saw the torn papers from eight cartridges that had not been there when he had first arrived. Eight! His stomach roiled. Hopkins must have gone mad with fright, and reloaded his gun out of nervous habit, jamming the barrel with gunpowder and lead before ever taking his first fatal shot.

  “They’re falling back!” someone called. The shots tapered off to an eerie calm. Smoke swirled in long shafts of sunlight falling through the trees. “Remove the wounded, gather their ammunition.”

  Harrison watched as soldiers dragged their comrades from the stone wall and moved them back to the reserves line, out of danger’s reach.

  Some men grimaced in pain, while other faces were already frozen in death. One face had been blown off completely. So had his hands. It had to be Hopkins.

  Such a waste.

  A sheen of moisture stung Harrison’s eyes, and he wiped them angrily. A war correspondent has no business getting weepy over a single casualty when thousands fall.

  He had seen too many boys and men—sons, fathers, husbands, brothers, sweethearts—pass ingloriously into the next world. The hardened reporter’s shell he had built around his heart was beginning to crack, and it frightened him. If he was going to make a name for himself with a profound story as a war reporter, he needed to toughen up.

  I’m too close. What Harrison needed was a big picture view, not a character study.

  “Here they come again!” A new wave of Confederates came charging up the hill.

  With bullets zipping through the air above him, Harrison scurried down the eastern slope to retrieve his horse from the Weikert farm. He needed a different observation point, that was all.

  Then he saw her, Bella Jamison, running frantically back to the farmhouse with the rest of the women and children.

  “Mrs. Jamison!” He called out, but she did not hear him. When he got close enough, he grabbed her elbow, and she whirled around and punched him in the gut. He doubled over for a moment, and vaguely registered that she had laid a hand on his back in apology,
he guessed. He stood again.

  BOOM!

  “I need to get over to Seminary Ridge!” he shouted over the roar of Union artillery. “Do you still want to go?”

  BOOM!

  Her eyes went wide, she nodded, and together they ran to his horse, the earth rumbling beneath their feet. He helped her up into the saddle, swung himself up to sit behind her, and kicked his heels sharply into the horse’s sides.

  “I need to watch the rest of the battle from the Ridge,” Harrison shouted, “and then I’ll take you wherever you wish.”

  Blue-grey powdery smoke rolled down the hill, chasing them as they left.

  Holloway Farm, outside Gettysburg, Pennsylvania

  Thursday, July 2, 1863

  Shock rippled through Bella as Harrison’s horse carried her onto Liberty’s property. Three horses wandered about in the nearby field, grazing on and trampling the wheat. The fences that had once neatly enclosed the garden were gone, used for kindling, Bella surmised, for the fire that crackled loudly in the sweltering summer afternoon. Black smoke billowed up from behind the house, sending noxious fumes of burning horseflesh into the air.

  “I take it this is not what you expected to find.”

  Coughing, she drew a hand over her mouth and nose, but the smoke had already snaked down her throat.

  “Nasty business, burning dead horses,” Harrison muttered as he helped her dismount. “But it’s the only way to be rid of them, and the sooner the better. Are you going to find her?” He tied his horse to an apple tree bearing small green promises.

  Bella’s feet remained rooted in the ground. Another smell, the strong odor of ammonia, pinched her nose. If the men had bothered to dig a ditch for their own waste, they had not bothered to turn soil onto it, or throw in chloride of lime. The dooryard and much of the land was covered with men in bloody bandages, and men who had come apart. A buzzing layer of flies covered a pile of festering limbs outside the summer kitchen. The loping Southern accents that drifted to her told her they were not Union men even without looking at their uniforms.

  Confederates!? Here? Her heart pumped faster to keep up with her whirling thoughts. If any one of these men had laid a hand on Liberty—

  “Come, I’ll go with you.” Harrison offered Bella his elbow, and she hooked her hand through it, keenly aware she was doing two things she’d never dreamed of in this life: she was being escorted by a white man, and she was willingly walking into a sea of Rebel soldiers. At least they are all wounded. “They won’t harm you now.” For once, she was glad to have this nosy reporter around.

  “Bella?”

  Bella jerked her head around until she saw Liberty. Her brown gingham dress and broad apron were speckled with dark red spots, the hem lined with mud. Black curls fell loose from their bun and clung to her neck. But it was her eyes that told on her. That she had seen too much, had seen things that would haunt her for the rest of her life.

  Liberty hitched up her skirts and wove her way through the men on the ground until she was right in front of Bella. She grasped Bella’s hands, and squeezed. “You’re here! Oh thank God, thank God you’re here.” She threw her arms around Bella’s neck. Bella hugged her tightly, and noticed she no longer smelled of apples and cinnamon, but of sweat and fear and pain. But she was safe. Her daughter was safe.

  Libbie stood back.

  “You’re all right,” they both said at once. Harrison chuckled at Bella’s side.

  “Oh, Liberty Holloway, this is Mr. Harrison Caldwell. He’s a reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer, and he brought me here from Cemetery Ridge.”

  Liberty shook his hand. “Pleased to meet you. Thank you for bringing her to me. And these—” she spread her arms wide and glanced over her shoulder. “These are my patients.”

  “Excuse me? Your patients?” Alarm rang throughout Bella’s spirit.

  Liberty raised her eyebrows. “Well, yes! I know they aren’t Union soldiers, Bella. I would have preferred to care for our own—actually, if you had asked me two days ago, I would have said I preferred to be left alone completely. But these men need help, and I have been doing that ever since they arrived.”

  “Doing what, exactly?”

  “Bringing them water, brandy, food. Writing letters for them. Assisting the doctors.”

  Visions of the mangled bodies at the Weikert farm swam before Bella’s eyes. The sights had been so gruesome, she was grateful to be able to spend all her time laboring over a hot kettle of beef tea in the kitchen instead. How on earth had Liberty been able to stand it? “Assisting the doctors? Really?”

  “Don’t look at me that way. I know what you’re thinking. But I did it. Just ask the doctor.”

  “Or me.”

  All three heads turned to see a patient grinning up at them. “She was right there when saw-bones nearly took my arm. A braver, more beautiful gal I never did see.” That Southern twang, combined with the hungry look he gave Liberty, was enough to make Bella’s stomach sour.

  But Libbie smiled at him. Smiled at him! “Thank you, Isaac. Is your arm feeling all right now?” She turned to Bella and Harrison. “It was only a round musket ball, not a minié ball that entered his arm, so the doctor was able to pull it out fully intact.”

  “I feel right as rain whenever you’re around, Sugar. Liberty’s my girl, now. Aren’t you, Liberty?”

  Bella stared at Liberty. This could not be happening. This was not right. Liberty was in mourning for a man who died for the Union. She would never put up with this—

  “Right, Isaac. Remember, you and six others.”

  Bella gasped, and Liberty offered her a wobbly, guilty-looking smile. Harrison seemed amused by this exchange. She wasn’t amused. She was horrified. Liberty Holloway was flirting with a Rebel? She had no idea what she was doing.

  With a hand on Liberty’s shoulder, Bella spun her aside and hissed. “Just what is going on here? Have you changed so much in six days’ time that I barely recognize you myself?” Her forehead ached, and she pressed a hand to the pain. She sounded more like a mother than the hired help. She needs a mother right about now. “Have you forgotten who you are?” The words slipped out before she could catch them. Before Bella remembered. She doesn’t know who she is. Bella had always thought it was better that way. Now, doubt shook her.

  Astonishment bloomed on Liberty’s face. “You sound just like Amelia.”

  “Who’s Amelia?” Exasperation laced her tone.

  “No, who are you?” That Rebel, Isaac, rose and jabbed a finger at her. “I don’t appreciate you talking to my girl thatta way.”

  Your girl? Your girl? Bella glared at the little Rebel.

  “He’s not serious, Bella, it’s only in jest.” Liberty whispered, tugging on her sleeve. “The doctor told me to play along, to raise their spirits. It’s only a game.”

  “Oh, I am too serious. Lookit you. You think you’re as good as white just because your skin ain’t black as pitch.”

  Bella’s blood ran cold. He was thin, his chin was weak, and he was no taller than she was—but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t crack a whip over her back. Or worse. She had seen his kind before.

  “Why, Isaac Tucker—”

  He held up a hand to silence Liberty. “No, Sugar. She oughta be servin’ you, not scolding you. Or serving me.” He raked his gaze over Bella.

  She closed her eyes, shutting out his face, while the old memory dredged back up again. The weight of a man’s body crushing the breath out of her, the tobacco on his breath. Her own tears rolling down the sides of her face and filling her ears before spilling onto the pillow.

  “You get on outta here now. Go on. Make yourself useful and fry us up some chicken and biscuits.” Isaac snickered. Other patients did not. Most just stared, but one of them told him to hush his mouth and sit down.

  “Now see here—Isaac, is it?” Harrison stepped in and blocked the Rebel from her view while Liberty whisked her away, toward the shade of the oak trees next to her house.

 
“I’m so sorry, Bella,” Liberty whispered.

  “Me, too.” Her throat tightened with unshed tears. “How could you care for a man like that?”

  “I don’t care for him as a man, understand. I’m simply caring for him as a patient. See the difference?”

  Bella studied Liberty’s face and nodded. “I do. I see a big difference.” She raised an eyebrow.

  “If you’re referring to the changes in me, then yes, I freely admit I’m different from the girl I was last week. I still love the Union. I still hate slavery and hope the Confederacy is defeated soon. The sooner the better. But aren’t we supposed to love our enemies?”

  Bella grit her teeth.

  “We can talk about all that later. First, I want to hear how you are. Where were you these last couple of days? Walk with me.”

  Bella told an abbreviated version of her tale as they walked to the spring house to fill Liberty’s basin.

  “And your horse?” Libbie asked as she bent to scoop up the water.

  “Left him tied up on Baltimore Street and never went back for him. Mr. Caldwell says that when the Confederates took the town yesterday, they surely took him.”

  Liberty pressed her lips together and led the way back into the sunshine. “It will be harder to serve your clients without a horse.”

  Only one client interested Bella right now. The cries of broken men grew louder as they neared the house. “They’re inside, too?”

  Liberty nodded. “No vacancy.”

  Bella shuddered to imagine the mess that had overwhelmed the place where Liberty had pinned her dreams of a brighter future. “It will be harder to have an inn without—an inn.”

  Liberty looked as if she might cry, but she laughed instead. “I didn’t even get a chance to tell you, I got my first guest for Liberty Inn last weekend.”

  “And now you have hundreds!” Bella hoped to tease a smile from Liberty. It worked. “But tell me, who was the guest?”

  “Is. She’s still here, locked in my room. I think.” Liberty looked up toward her own window before sighing and telling Bella about Amelia Sanger, Levi’s mother. Bella’s heart sank when Libbie told her Amelia wanted her to call her “Mama,” and soared when Libbie said she refused. Then, “Yesterday we had an argument.”