Lavender Blue: A Time Travel Romance (Lavender, Texas Series)

by Bartholomew, Barbara

Weeks passed with no word from Caleb, but Betsy told herself that with the lines of battle between them, he probably had no way of sending a message. No doubt he and Forrest would come riding in any day now.

  The days turned hot, but the door to the cookshack was kept resolutely closed as they prepared meals inside the winter kitchen with perspiration trickling down their faces as they leaned over the stove.

  Usually Doc’s work slowed down a little after the winter colds had faded, but this summer it was one thing after another as waves of illness swept the small community. There was a case of typhoid at a remote farm, an old woman came down with pneumonia, several children would have died of the summer complaint except for Doc’s intervention. Robbie Miller fell off his roof and broke his leg. Mrs. Harper lost the baby she was expecting. And several soldiers came home still badly injured and needing continual medical care.

  Betsy and Hetty continued to cook, clean, garden, milk, gather eggs and see to the more helpless of their neighbors with Evan and Miranda continually underfoot.

  If Betsy began to feel ungainly and quick to run out of breath, she comforted herself that Lavender was growing into the community she remembered where everyone got along—well, most of the time and with a few longtime feuds.

  With embargos still in place at the ports, word was that local plantations had trouble selling their crops and supplies could not come in, though she heard that with traffic still drifting back and forth across the Mexican border, making some areas of Texas less starved than most of the south.

  Still they went short of supplies and depended mostly on their own produce and wondering what the next winter would bring, tried to can or dry any surplus food. She and Hetty gathered wild blackberries and plums and planted a late garden to try to keep the food supply going.

  And still they didn’t hear from Caleb and pretended to each other that they weren’t getting worried.

  Chapter Twenty

  They came close to losing Forrest after he took in the news about Lavinia, his system weakened by his long spate as a prisoner of war giving away with this last tragedy.

  Caleb limped around on his cane, looking after him and other patients until the nurses began to treat him as one of them and, still hoarding the gold coins for the trip home, he slept on the floor near Forrest’s bed and shared the scant meals the hospital provided its workers and patients. When Forrest rallied enough that it was hoped he would live, Caleb added a few hours’ work at a nearby stable in return for feed and housing for the two horses they would need to get back home.

  He was bursting with the need to see Betsy and know she was all right and wanted to shake Forrest and tell him they must go home now. Old institutions were breaking down across the south, towns swept away, farms ravened and burned. He wrote letter after letter, but had no way of knowing if any of them got through. And, if they didn’t, Betsy couldn’t contact him.

  He had nightmares where she was crying out for him, telling him he was going to miss the birth of his own baby. In others, the house was being stormed and Doc hanged right before the eyes of the womenfolk and children.

  He told Forrest about the boy who needed him to live and come home, but the despairing man on his little cot seemed barely to hear him. He’d been late to wed his young wife and she’d meant everything to him. Without her, he didn’t want to go on.

  “Doc will see to Evan,” he said and turned his face to the wall. Caleb only had time to write a brief note that night.

  Dear Betsy,

  Forrest continues to be very sick. We will travel as soon as he’s able.

  Missing you so much.

  Love to you and the rest of the family,

  Caleb

  He had little hope that the missive would get through. Atlanta was under siege all that long summer by the forces under William Tecumseh Sherman and he didn’t know if he and Forrest could get out even if Forrest was able.

  His friend urged him to go home and there were days when he considered trying to slip through the lines to do just that.

  By July Betsy felt so tense and jittery with fear for the still silent Caleb that she wondered if the way she was feeling would harm her developing baby. She worked hard at feeling calm, at being hopeful, but all the edges were beginning to fray. It got so that she could barely manage to eat and the house seemed to simmer with the summer heat and Doc worried that she was growing thin and pale and urged what delicacies he could find from his farm contacts on her, telling her she must eat for the baby’s sake.

  She tried but the food would hardly go down her throat and then seemed to hang there caught midway so that she couldn’t manage another bite.

  It was sometime in August when word reached them of the battle of Atlanta in late July between the armies of northern General Sherman and confederate General John B. Hood. Considered a victory by the union forces, it was said that Mr. Lincoln’s northerners were much cheered, but still Atlanta remained isolated in siege, starved and desolate within the lines of battle.

  Now she knew why Caleb hadn’t come home or sent any letters. Along with Forrest, he must be caught within the lovely old city.

  At least she hoped that was the answer. Surprisingly, she was cheered and began to be able to eat again. She had hope that both of them were still alive. She told herself it could have been worse. They could have been at Vicksburg during this long terrible season of despair.

  Doc, worn out with worry and the hard work of looking after the sick, succumbed to a summer cold in August and kept on going until he collapsed, murmuring something about pneumonia and how he had to go check on old Mrs. Hayter who was ninety and sick abed way out in the country with only her seventy-year-old daughter to tend her and the barren little farm since the grandsons had gone to fight.

  Hetty reassured him that she would see to the old woman once she’d gotten him safely to bed. There was little other choice as Betsy was now too heavily pregnant for horse-back riding to be a desirable choice and anyway Hetty was much more medically knowledgeable than she.

  So Betsy was left to look after Evan and Miranda while she fed Doc warm broth and the medicine Hetty had compounded for fever.

  “He’ll most likely sleep,” she said, “but if he gets too feverish sponge him with cool water.” With those simple directions, she went out to saddle the old plow horse and ambled off with a supply of medicines and food for an invalid in her saddlebags.

  With the baby only a little over two months from its due date, Betsy felt thick and lumpish, her ankles swollen and fatigue a constant companion. She was frightened at the idea of Doc being sick because it was such a rare event.

  He was old too, not nineties old the way his country patient was, but old enough and rundown from the hard hours he put in. Even in 21st century America, older folks sometimes died of pneumonia and here and now, such was an all too common event.

  She put the children to playing under a tree outside, allowing them to make mudpies and get as dirty as they pleased so she had time to see to Doc.

  He slept restlessly, tossing in his bed and mumbling feverishly. When it was time, she fed him more medicine and more broth, already fearing the night ahead when fever tended to rise and illness to grow worse.

  She had the children bathed and supper ready by the time Hetty returned with the good news that old Mrs. Hayter would probably outlive them all. While Hetty checked on Doc, she put their beans and fried potatoes on the table, adding sliced cucumbers from the garden, and a pan of hot cornbread.

  She was pouring glasses of milk for them all when Hetty came back, shaking her head over Doc’s condition as she washed her hands with homemade soap in the washpan.

  She told Betsy the story of her unaccustomed journey into the countryside as they ate, looking as weary as Betsy felt. The trouble was they were all tired out, especially Doc, but they had to keep going doing what had to be done.

  Except Doc. Like it or not, he was in for a spell of rest.

  Almost in spite of himself, Forrest got b
etter, though he still bore too much of the appearance of a thinly clad skeleton walking around. For the last few days, he’d insisted they had to start for home and though Caleb welcomed this new attitude of impatience, he wasn’t sure they could even get out of town.

  The battle in July had left Atlanta virtually defenseless, but still the forces of the dueling powers went on with the south growing weaker and weaker. Caleb had been forced to accept that things were mostly over except for more hunger and killing and word was that like a wounded animal, people were resisting in isolated little places with all their might.

  He knew how dangerous such an animal could be and considering the bitter division of feeling back at home was desperately anxious to get back to Texas and the family. No telling what kind of trouble Doc was getting them into these days.

  So when Forrest produced a pass through the lines good for only the next twenty four hours and told him he’d go without him if necessary, he had no choice but to give in. Forrest had connections, not only old friends among the families of confederate officers with whom he’d served, but the ladies who ran this little hospital were among the once powerful and they had contacts.

  Even the Federal officers now so prominent outside town seemed to have little worry about catching a worn-out officer from Texas and his crippled companion so with Forrest on one horse and Caleb on the other and every possession they had with them in saddle bags, they set out cross country in what would necessarily be a slow trip.

  Caleb worked for their food, doing whatever chores were needed and allowing Forrest time to rest, using the coins only when he had to as they moved through the war ravaged states between Georgia and Texas. Everywhere they went they found desperate need and near hopelessness. At one farm, they found six little girls, their mama and grandmamma with a burnt out house so that the only dwelling they had was a tumbled down barn where they slept in the straw and lived on what vegetables were left in the summer garden.

  He spent a day helping them with the scanty harvest, taking only what he needed to be able to work and feed Forrest before moving on, wondering how they and so many like them, black and white, would survive the coming winter.

  As the leaves began to crisp on the trees Arkansas was a September picture of oncoming fall as he struggled to get them home, afraid each morning when he awakened that he would find Forrest dead wrapped in their one remaining blanket.

  One of the horses died from just pure exhaustion and lack of food, but the mare, reduced to skin and bones, carried the protesting Forrest, while Caleb limped at his side. Not too far from the Texas border, a farmer with a wagon gave them a ride that sent them moving at a faster pace.

  Finally Caleb realized one evening that the countryside around them was beginning to look familiar. They were only a day or two from home and Forrest was still alive. Even old Rosie who had been tied to the back of the farmer’s wagon was still alive.

  He could hardly wait to get home and both feared and anticipated what he would find there.

  Some of the farms they passed looked idle and unworked. On those being worked, he saw no men in the fields, only young boys, old men, women and girls.

  Livestock, horses and cattle, looked poorly fed, and were fewer in number than he was accustomed to seeing.

  When they parted company with the farmer and his wagon to go on alone, Forrest refused to ride until after an hour he collapsed on the trail and, swearing mightily, Caleb told him that if he didn’t ride that poor dang horse, neither of them would ever see home again.

  And so it was that as they came into Lavender, Forrest was once more on horseback and Caleb using his cane to keep up. It wasn’t hard. The poor horse was plum worn out.

  Chapter Twenty One

  Betsy was so weary she could barely stand, but still she remained in the doorway, watching anxiously for Hetty to come home. Anything could have happened to her out there in the woods; she should never have agreed to let her go once more to respond to the needs of the sick.

  Not that she’d known any way to stop her. Hetty had a mind of her own and she saw Betsy as mighty near a little girl, only partly grown, and her responsibility almost as much as for Miranda and Evan.

  And now with dark coming on and potato soup keeping warm on the cookstove and Doc in feverish sleep in his room, she watched the little boy and girl playing in the yard, her ears strained for the sound of an approaching horse.

  She wasn’t the first to hear that sound. Miranda called out, pointing. Evan gave a yell. Both ran back toward her so she guessed whoever was coming, it wasn’t Hetty. They would have run to greet her.

  Holding a child by each hand, she edged forward, than caught her breath. She recognized the horse before the men. Old Rosie, Doc’s brown mare looking old and worn, came toward them.

  Slowly they came nearer, the thin old man on the horse, the limping man hanging on to the mare’s bridle. The sinking sun cast a glow over the landscape, outlining them with fire.

  Looking down, they hadn’t seen her and the children, not yet.

  “It’s your daddy, Evan,” she whispered. “Your daddy’s come home.”

  She could have said the same to her own unborn child. Ragged and dirty, both of them looking nearly dead, they were the happiest sight she’d ever seen.

  They were here. They were home. The baby inside her gave such a kick that she felt that it was rejoicing with her.

  When Caleb saw her, he forgot that he could not walk without support and ran toward her, falling to the ground in his weakness and without two good legs. Dropping the children’s hands she ran to him and, clumsy because of her condition, dropped to her knees to take him in her arms.

  “Is this my papa?” she heard Evan’s voice as though from a great distance and she knew her was talking about Caleb.

  “Your papa is on Rosie,” she said even as she planted kisses all over Caleb’s bewhiskered face.

  She heard Evan’s response. “But that’s not a papa,” he said. “That’s a grandpa. He’s an old man.”

  Doc was nearly well again as the season chilled into fall, but Forrest was a worry to them all. He lay in the bed he’d once shared with Lavinia, eating what they fed him and sleeping most of the time. When he was awake, he didn’t want to see anybody much other than Caleb with whom he talked about the war. Caleb said he never mentioned a word about his imprisonment and Betsy could have told him that as far as she knew, he never would.

  Doc shook his head over Forrest’s condition and said he’d seen things like this before back in the old days and sometimes the person never got well, but just gradually dwindled down into death.

  Most heart-breaking of all was the way he and Evan failed to react to each other, the little boy continuing to insist that the man in the bed was not his father and Forrest expressing no interest in the child.

  With the room she had shared for so long with the children now occupied by Forrest, Hetty accepted Betsy’s offer of her little bedroom as an abode and she might have risked moving back out into the lean-to with Caleb, but neither Doc nor Caleb would hear of her as much as stepping a toe into the old cookshack. Instead Doc took to sleeping in the lean-to, leaving his bedroom for the young couple.

  It seemed to Betsy that everything was all mixed up and wrong and she told herself that her feelings were so tortured just because she was expecting a baby. Never before a nervous person, now she awakened in the early hours before dawn, thinking of them all, her family here and her family there, and lay sleeplessly expecting disaster and not sure what direction it would come from.

  News from the war front was all bad for the southerners. Hood had been forced to flee Atlanta ahead of Sherman’s advancing army as it finally broke through into the city. Just as she’d remembered from Gone With the Wind, the union general had ordered the beautiful city burned in the wake of his army and Atlanta had gone up in flames as Sherman had marched on toward Savannah, leaving terrible devastation in his wake.

  Robert E. Lee’s dwindling army contin
ued its hopeless fight and townspeople in Lavender tried to hold on to the conviction that they could still win even while Betsy heard the joyful whispering of Hetty’s friends that real freedom was coming with the devastating northern armies sweeping the south, freedom that was more than just laws written on paper.

  The last of the slaves had deserted Cottonwood Creek Plantation and gossip around town said that Bolter Jackson sat in the big house alone, barely paying attention to his two surviving children, and dwelling in anger and grief on thoughts of his losses. Some said that he was half mad and feared that he might do something dangerous.

  Men began to trickle back into Lavender and the surrounding countryside, some of them coming home injured, but more of them returning having given up on what was increasingly looking like a lost cause and brought back by pleas from those struggling alone at home.

  Mrs. Hayter’s great-grandsons came back, as did the Millers’ boy and countless others. Union sympathizers dared show their faces again, though bitterness remained high in the community.

  Letters came from Hetty’s sons who said they were alive and well and intended to last out the war, but her husband came home saying he missed her so much he had no choice. Unlike Evan, little Miranda quickly became attached to the tall, solemn man with the unexpected sense of humor whom she couldn’t remember as her father. The little family moved back into their own home, though Hetty insisted on helping Doc with his medical practice until he regained his full strength. Evan slept alone in the bedroom he’d once shared with Hetty and Miranda, a strong, independent little boy who no longer cried for his mama.

  Betsy began to think longingly of those she loved back at home and wished for her mother to be present when her baby was born.

  Caleb chopped wood, did outdoor chores and indoor as well, and fretted for spring when they would be able to return to the farm. Betsy suspected he would go this minute if he wasn’t worried about her having the baby alone out in the country