Widow of Gettysburg

by Jocelyn Green

  “Oh?”

  Liberty sighed. “She didn’t want me to bring water to the patients. Didn’t want me to do anything to help at all. She said they would take everything from me.”

  Bella let the words hang in the air for a moment. “Was she wrong?”

  “I’ve been trying not to think about that, actually.” Absently, she wrapped her apron strings around her fingers before dropping them. “I have work to do. Coming?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “We can keep talking, but I need to get back to the patients. I could surely use your help, too, Bella.”

  “Are you in earnest? Did you not hear the way Isaac spoke to me back there?” Indignation had crept into her tone, but she didn’t care.

  “That was wrong of him, I know it was. But he is just one patient. There are many, many others who just need us to drip water on their lint or bandages, to keep them moist. Most of them won’t even know we’re there at all. Won’t you please help me? I need you.”

  “And I need you, young lady, to think for just one moment, exactly what it is you are asking me to do.” Her fists were on her hips. “These men held my family in slavery for generations and would love to see me taken back to the auction block today.”

  “These men did?” Liberty narrowed her eyes. “Really? Do you recognize any of them?”

  “You know what I mean, Lib—Miss Liberty, don’t be contrary.”

  “Please. You have opened my eyes, just a little, to the prejudices you have faced because of the color of your skin. People make judgments about you as a person without getting to know you. They reduce your personality, your skills, and gifts to a broad category.”

  More than one category, actually. Former slave. Mulatto woman. The help.

  “Well?” Liberty’s eyes were circled with exhaustion. “Aren’t you doing the same thing now? You’re assigning the sins of your slave masters to every one of these men just because they are from the South. I met lots of men here who have never had a slave in their life!”

  “And I’ve met plenty of men in the North who have no use for colored folks once they’re free.”

  The women faced off, truth clashing in the air between them. Tears filled Liberty’s eyes, and the tip of her nose pinked. This was not the way Bella had wanted their reunion to go.

  “You don’t understand the risk you take,” Bella tried again, softer this time. “Do these men respect you enough to leave you be? Or are you a symbol to them, the embodiment of everything they hate?” A chill swept over Bella. This wasn’t supposed to happen to her daughter. Not to a woman who looked just as white as anyone else. How can I make her understand the danger? “You are a Yankee. They are Confederates. Worse, they are wounded Confederates, which means their pride is already sore. What is to stop them from hurting you to make them feel like men again?”

  “Most of these men seem to be perfect gentlemen, if not perfectly educated.”

  “All it takes is one man who thinks he owns you. One man who believes degrading you will raise his own status.”

  “I will be fine.”

  “How do you know that? You don’t know, you can never know. I didn’t know when—” Bella bit her tongue on her frantic speech. She had almost said too much.

  “‘Though an host should encamp against me, my heart shall not fear: though war should rise against me, in this will I be confident.’”

  “Your heart may not fear, Liberty Holloway, but that doesn’t mean that bad things might not still happen to you.” This was a thin line to tread. Did she really want to deflate her faith that God would keep her safe?

  Questions glimmered in Liberty’s eyes. “Bella, such an outburst. Why are you trying to scare me like this? Remember your place.”

  Oh, I remember, child. If you only knew.

  “I have to go.” Liberty sniffed, and took her basin and sponge to the nearest Rebel.

  “So do I,” said Bella, stunned.

  Liberty looked up. “Where will you go? You have no horse. The Confederates have taken the town. There’s no telling when or where the next fight will break out.”

  “Anywhere but here.” And she stalked away from Holloway Farm.

  Seminary Ridge, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania

  Thursday, July 2, 1863

  “Oh, no you don’t.”

  Silas Ford jerked awake to find himself being yanked to his feet from under the tree where he’d fallen asleep.

  “You’re not sitting this one out, soldier.” A barrel-chested Confederate half-dragged Silas from the shade with one hand, while the other gripped his Enfield rifle.

  “I’m not a soldier.” Silas shook the fog from his brain as he stumbled along. Bullet was nowhere in sight.

  “Don’t matter what you call yourself, but your haversack there says C.S.A. You’re a Rebel, and you’re coming. Or you’re a deserter, in which case I’ll shoot you myself.”

  Any further argument was useless as Silas was dragged into a regiment marked by the palmetto symbol of South Carolina, their rifles bouncing sunlight into his bleary eyes. The crowd of soldiers he had searched an hour ago had swollen to a large battle formation. As though in a dream, Silas watched a contest from the inside for the first time.

  Twenty yards to his right, four regiments were already advancing, across Emmitsburg Road, over a stream, toward a wooded area. Then an order was shouted, and the regiment surrounding Silas began to move forward. The boy next to Silas wet himself with fear.

  Shots cracked the air ahead and to the right as they crossed Emmitsburg Road toward the Union positions. Gun smoke knit together in the air in a surreal blanket of haze as rifle fire grew to a near constant rattle in Silas’s ears.

  Billy Yanks locked with Johnny Rebs, grinding and churning like a plough through rocky soil. Yards of ground gained were soon lost again. Grey pushed back Blue, Blue drove back Grey, thrusting and reeling in waves as the ground grew red beneath them.

  “Take up a weapon!” A Rebel shouted at Silas while ramming his rod back into his musket barrel.

  Silas had no weapon.

  Time suspended, impotent to end the fight by its passing. The battle raged, sweeping the soldiers into a wheat field where ripening grain smoked with gunpowder. The strong unflinchingly fired their guns while men were hurled from life to death on every side. The weak clung without pride to the bellies of fallen horses, taking cover behind their girth. Some boys became men in an instant. Some men cried for their mothers. Bullets pierced courageous and cowardly alike, while riderless horses reared and plunged. Men came apart.

  Union twelve-pounder Napoleon guns blasted canister shots at the Rebels, the balls spraying into the wheat like hail. A shell screamed overhead and Silas splayed his body against the ground, crushing stalks of wheat beneath him, while men slammed into the soil around him. Thin golden stems snapped while the field grew ripe with a harvest of bodies.

  Minié balls whirred and moaned over Silas’s head, somewhere in the battle cloud that hid the blue summer sky. His parched mouth filled with the tastes of nitrate and sulfur. “God! God!” The staccato prayers of the wounded passed through their bloody lips, and Silas matched them with his own silent plea.

  “Fight, for Pete’s sake! Take a rifle from the wounded!” The soldier’s eyes were veined with red, his face sketched black with gunpowder from tearing tops off the cartridges. But Silas would not pick up a weapon ever again, had not touched one since—

  BOOM! The ground shuddered as the Napoleons fired their canisters again, and Silas shielded his head with his arms. Mud coated his face as he pressed his head down. If he stayed, the Yankees would kill him. If he fled, the Confederates would kill him.

  Confusion swelled and swirled in the smoke-filled field. The late afternoon sun permeated the haze, baking Silas’s sweat-soaked back as soldiers in blue and grey fired through the wheat. There was no way of knowing how many Federals the Confederates now faced in this hazy maze, nor who held the field.

  “Fool!” The so
ldier yelled at Silas again as he reached for another cartridge. “See that rifle there—”A bullet cut short his sentence, tearing through his throat, and a jagged crimson stream arced forth. His eyes bulged, he stumbled, fell, the thud muted by the surrounding cacophony.

  “Bayonets!” The cry came from somewhere in the fog, bristling Silas’s skin, as he stripped the shirt off his back. Quickly, he twisted the shirt into a tourniquet, but by the time he brought it to the soldier, life had already left his body.

  The rattle of musketry ceased as soldiers on both sides fixed their bayonets to their muskets. Silas’s heart banged against his ribs, pulsed in his ears. He swiveled on his knees, warm mud seeping into his trouser legs. All around him, men were cut down, as if by a giant scythe. He dropped to the ground and wormed between the dead, away from the fray.

  “How bad is it?”

  Silas startled, and turned toward the feeble voice. The soldier beside him was not dead yet. His left thigh bone had been shattered, bits of bone sprinkled and embedded in the exposed red muscle. Flies buzzed above his wound.

  “You’ll be fine, we just need to get you to a surgeon.” Sweat spilled down Silas’s bare back as he threaded his shirt beneath the soldier’s leg and then tied it snugly against the flesh, above the wound.

  “Charge!” The call sounded far away, but Silas didn’t trust his ears. Everything sounded far away after being caught in the thunder of battle. If he didn’t get this soldier to safety, he’d bleed to death or be killed by bayonet. And so will I.

  “Take his uniform,” the soldier pointed weakly to a fallen Union soldier yards away. “If they are close enough to charge us, they’ll be close enough to see you’re a Yankee.”

  Silas hurried over to the Union man and found him unconscious, if not yet dead, his hair matted with blood. He ripped off the dark blue jacket and stretched it on over his torso, not bothering to put on the shirtwaist beneath it. Silas’s own trousers were already a grey-blue color, and would suffice for the hasty disguise.

  Sweat beaded at Silas’s hairline and rolled down his face, mixing with mud, as he hustled back to the soldier.

  “Get down, down,” the soldier said. “We’ll not be killed by bayonet if they think we are already dead.”

  Silas dropped to the ground before the blanket of gun smoke unraveled above them. The clash and clamor of hand-to-hand combat reached a fever pitch before receding beneath the more insistent sounds of fresh pain, until the fight had gone out of the men completely. There was no way to tell who won.

  Silas glanced at the wounded man beside him. Short gasps of pain were the only sign that he hadn’t yet succumbed to unconsciousness. Silas was glad. If he fell asleep now, he might never wake up. He had to keep him talking.

  “I never did catch your name, lieutenant.” Silas tried to sound casual as his mind spun for a way to get him help, fast.

  “Holmes. Pierce … Butler … Holmes.”

  “And where is home for you, Holmes?”

  “Little town … Darien … Georgia.”

  Slowly, Silas stood and spun in a slow circle to view the wreckage of the trampled field. Until—“There! An ambulance. We’re in luck, Holmes.” He turned back to the ambulance. “Stretcher!” But none came. The driver stumbled away from the wagon and wretched before looking up at Silas.

  “I quit!” he shouted, shaking. “I hope I never see so much as a scratch on a man again!” With that, he staggered away from the empty four-wheeled wagon, tripping over bodies as he went.

  Silas grit his teeth, but said nothing. He would load this man into the ambulance himself, along with any others he thought may yet be saved, and take them to a surgeon. The Holloway Farm was three miles from here, perhaps a little further. Silas was sure it had been taken for a hospital by now. If it was held by Yankees, his uniform would be his protection. If it was held by Confederates, they would welcome this wounded soldier. Either way, he had to try.

  Willoughby Run, outside Gettysburg, Pennsylvania

  Thursday, July 2, 1863

  Bella Jamison tramped along the west bank of Willoughby Run, away from Holloway Farm. Where she was going, she did not know, and she did not care. The only thing she cared about right now was Liberty.

  But to Liberty, Bella was the hired help. Nothing more. Hired help was paid to wash clothes, bake bread, curry the horses—not to direct the course of one’s life. That was the role of a mother.

  A role Bella had given up long ago, and willingly. As long as she could be part of Liberty’s life, in some small way, even if it was as the help. This was the role she had chosen to play. She could not deviate from it now, without an explanation, any more than an actor on stage could suddenly switch characters. It would upset the entire performance.

  Better that no one knew Liberty was one-quarter Negro. Even in the North, being mixed race meant more questions and fewer opportunities. This close to Mason and Dixon, it meant living with the possibility of being sold into slavery. Being subject to other people’s wishes and control. Spit upon. Ridiculed. Rejected.

  She had watched too many times as her mother had been hauled off to the overseer’s house on St. Simons Island, then come home the next day, with his seed in her womb. Nine months later, a baby would come, and so would the overseer’s wife, who beat her into a hospital bed. Between the overseer and his wife, Bella’s mother had no escape. No choice. No relief.

  And Bella had thought she could change all that. Bella sniffed at the memory. Foolish girl.

  No, that kind of life would end with Bella. It would not be passed on to her daughter, or to her daughter’s daughter. It ended here.

  Bella knelt by the water and gazed into the glassy stream. Still, I wonder …

  It doesn’t matter. Bella dropped a hand into the cool water and let it flow between her fingers. And if she doesn’t know my story—her story—how can I expect her to be afraid that a version of that history will repeat itself? Bella sighed. She couldn’t.

  But there was no denying that girl needed a mother. “When my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up.” I have not forsaken her, Lord, but she doesn’t know that. Please, take her up. Speak to her in a way that I can’t.

  Bella stood and rubbed the knots from her shoulders as the night air settled upon her skin. She may not be able to play the role of mother to her own daughter, but she would not leave the stage completely. Liberty had hired her as the help. So, God help her, she would.

  “Easy, easy,” Silas murmured to the horses he drove, more from habit than from the belief that it would help matters one whit.

  The ambulance allowed Silas to move six wounded men from the battlefield, including Holmes—but judging from the sounds coming from the rickety wagon behind him, the journey felt more like torture than salvation for those he intended to help. With no straw to cushion their bodies, every bounce of the wheels intensified their pain. By now, all but Holmes had passed out from it, if they had not been unconscious already.

  As they approached Willoughby Run, Silas expelled a sigh in relief. “Almost there, Holmes,” he called over his shoulder. “Only five hundred yards past this creek and you’ll get—”

  CRACK! The ambulance pitched left, the horses skittered sideways, and Holmes cried out in agony. The wobbly front left wheel had finally bounced clear off the axel, leaving one corner of the ambulance sloping to the earth. Silas wiped the back of his hand across his forehead and squinted toward Holloway Farm. Surely, they were close enough.

  Climbing down from his seat behind the horses, he walked to the bank of Willoughby Run and waved his arms. “Hello!” he shouted. “Over here! Help!”

  No one looked his way.

  “Help!” He tried again, but his voice was still hoarse from the gunpowder he’d swallowed.

  Silas leaned against the wagon. “Well Holmes, our wagon has just mustered out of service, but I can see the hospital from here.”

  “They see you?” Holmes whispered.

  “Not y
et. But don’t worry—”

  “Take my gun.”

  “What?”

  “As a signal. Fire into the air.”

  No. Silas shouted and waved his arms again, but still no one turned his direction while six men lay dying in the wagon.

  “Please. Take it.” Hand shaking, Holmes held up a pistol by the barrel.

  It’s just a flare, Silas told himself. Not a weapon.

  As he grasped the handle in his sweaty palm, his father’s contorting face flashed before him once more. He shut it out, pointed the pistol to the heavens, and squeezed the trigger. The shot tore through the sky, silencing the chatter outside the farm.

  Finally, people saw. He handed the pistol back through the window to Holmes.

  “Look! Over there! A Yankee!”

  “He’s shooting at us!”

  “Shooting at a hospital!”

  “Take him down!”

  With sickening clarity, Silas remembered the Union uniform he now wore. “No!” he shouted. His sweat turned cold on his body, chilling him to his core. “I’m Confederate, and I have wounded Confederate soldiers here!”

  They were ramming their rods down on their powder.

  “I tell you I’m not the enemy!” His mouth turned dry, he could barely make his tongue obey. He walked closer to the creek, to be heard. “I escaped with this jacket—” But his voice would not carry.

  Get down! His brain told him, but his body had become wooden.

  A bullet sliced through the air.

  Hit its target.

  Dropped him to the ground.

  Instinctively, he sat up, reached for the pain, and gasped when his hand came back to him bleeding from its palm, stabbed by the bone jutting out of his trousers.

  Another bullet whistled by his ear and he dropped back to the ground, smacking his head on a rock.