Daughter of Twin Oaks

by Lauraine Snelling

  “I think you should be able to take him home in two or three days,” the doctor said when he made his late afternoon rounds. “Unless we get another battery of wounded, that is, and need his bed. How did”—he nodded toward Rumford—“do outside?”

  “I set him to working with Reuben, my aunt’s gardener, and he followed all Reuben’s orders without a grumble.”

  “With no visible response, you mean?”

  “Well, he did do as asked.”

  The doctor nodded. “You’re right. Thank you, my dear, for all your efforts on behalf of these men. If I had ten more like you, the care here would improve dramatically.”

  “Doctor?” one of the orderlies called from the door.

  “Yes?”

  “Train just pulled in full of wounded.”

  “So much for two or three days. I hate to ask this, but can your aunt or anyone else take in some of these men?”

  “I’m sure, but I’ll ask.” Louisa untied her apron as she headed for the doorway. “We’ll be back with a wagon as soon as we can.”

  She nearly tripped over her skirts in the rush up the front steps to Aunt Sylvania’s house. She paused only long enough to catch her breath, knowing that a scolding about propriety would set her aunt in a less-than-generous fashion. But then, she had asked what more she could do for the “dear boys,” as she referred to the soldiers. Only, up until now, the dear boys had not been needing one of her lovely rooms.

  “Aunt, where are you?” Louisa paused for a moment to know where to search.

  “In here.” The answer came from the back of the house.

  Louisa found her aunt watching Abby arrange flowers in the pantry.

  “You’re home early.” Weariness rode Sylvania’s face and left her hands shaking.

  “I know. I need to get back. The doctor said we could bring Zachary home if we had a place for him.” Louisa breathed another calming breath. “But we couldn’t take him upstairs very easily.”

  “Then we will have to move a bed into the parlor.” Sylvania rose from her chair. “Come, Abby, call Prissy to help you.”

  “Ah, while we are moving one bed, could we do two—or maybe three?”

  Sylvania studied her niece over her glasses rims. “What did you have in mind? Bringing in the whole hospital?”

  Louisa ignored the sarcasm and shook her head. “A train pulled in with a load of wounded. The doctor asked if I knew anyone who would be willing to help with the men who are so much better, that’s all.” Please, God, let her decide to help.

  “I see.” Sylvania turned to Reuben. “Go next door and ask for Miss Julie’s Sady. She can run notes around while you and the girls get the parlor ready. We can lay a pallet or two in the dining room if need be.”

  Louisa breathed a sigh of relief. Why had she been so afraid to ask this of her aunt? It wasn’t as if she hadn’t been knitting socks and sewing uniforms for their soldiers like the rest of the women. She just hadn’t approved of her niece working at the hospital. After all, women nurses were considered little above the prostitutes, of whose existence Louisa was not supposed to even know. Her brothers had called them various other names, but she had eavesdropped often enough to learn things not discussed around womenfolk.

  Thanks to her brothers, both she and Jesselynn knew many things young women were not supposed to know. Carrie Mae, however, had never cared to follow her sisters. Instead, she had become an expert musician, and her singing, as well as her piano playing, had entertained them all, including the surrounding neighbors.

  Suddenly, homesickness for Twin Oaks bathed her like a pouring rain. Please, God, let the war end soon. I want to go home. Taking time to count the numerous pleas of this sort she’d sent heavenward would be a waste of precious seconds.

  They had two beds set up by the time Sylvania’s notes were ready to be carried around. Reuben listened to his instructions, nodded, and slipped out the door as Abby and Louisa smoothed the clean sheets into place and folded a blanket at the end of each bed. The weather was still far too warm to put two blankets on, let alone winter quilts. By the time they’d folded the quilts up for pallets and made up two in the parlor, Reuben returned.

  “We’s got two yeses, two maybes, and one not to home.” He handed the papers back to Sylvania. “Asked Widow Penrod if we could borry her horse and wagon, so soon’s I git dat, we be off.” He smiled at Louisa. “Dat brudder of yours be home before supper.”

  “I already told Cook to make enough supper for four more.” Aunt Sylvania sat in her chair and picked up her fan. “Lawsy, this is unseasonable weather. No wonder those men in the hospital are so miserable.”

  Louisa didn’t tell her about the garden efforts, figuring that the borrowed garden tools would be back before they were missed. At the same time she wondered who their guests would be. The thought of the lieutenant flitted through her mind, but as if it were a yellow jacket, she brushed the thought away.

  She’d just started out the door toward the wagon when another thought buzzed by her. This one made her stop and blink. How would she keep these men from realizing she was not the wife of Zachary Highwood but his little sister instead?

  Oh, Lord, now what have I gotten myself into?

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  On the Mississippi River

  “Benjamin and Domino fell in!”

  The oars stopped. Shouts filled the air. Ahab whinnied, just about breaking Jesselynn’s eardrums. The ferry drifted downriver.

  “Can you see him?” Jesselynn didn’t dare leave her post at Ahab’s head to go see for herself, or everything might end up in the river.

  “Lawd, Lawd, we’s comin’ home,” Ophelia added to the din. The boys’ cries could be heard from the back of the wagon.

  A string of expletives came from the ferry owner at the rear. “Pull, you fools, or we’ll end up on a sandbar. Row!”

  Oh, God, not Benjamin. Let him live. The shore isn’t that far, Jesselynn pleaded over and over in her mind while she kept up a steady murmur that calmed both herself and the horses.

  “ ’Phelia, enough!” Meshach’s command cut off the blubbering like blowin’ out a candle. “Good. Now take care of de boys.”

  “I is.”

  Benjamin, where are you, Benjamin? Jesselynn and Benjamin had grown up together, playing games in the orchard and snitching cookies from Lucinda’s baking only to run off laughing when scolded. He couldn’t be gone, not after living through the war and bringing her daddy home to die. He’d saved her father, and right now she could do nothing to save him.

  The ferry moved ahead again and within minutes bumped into the packed sand of the shoreline.

  Ahab shifted at the jolt, and Jesselynn clamped the reins under his bit even tighter. “Easy, son.” She resumed her reassuring murmur as two of the oarsmen slid planks in place for them to disembark. Meshach led his horses off first, then Sunshine, before coming back to lead the team down the incline. Once they were all on the ground, Ahab shook himself, setting harness and chains to rattling.

  “Sorry as I kin be ’bout that other horse and your boy. I wouldn’t give up hope, though. They mighta swum in.” Mister Jed shook Jesselynn’s hand and motioned his hands to ready the ferry for the return. “Floatin’ logs and such are the hazards of night crossin’.”

  “I understand. Thank you for the service.” Jesselynn climbed up on the wagon seat and clucked the team forward. “Meshach, you go look that way, and Daniel, you go downriver.” When the two riders took off, she turned to the woman still whimpering in the back of the wagon. “Ophelia, if you don’t stop that, I’ll send you back across the river.”

  “There’s a road back up thata way,” Jed called as he poled the ferry back out into the current.

  Once on firmer ground, Jesselynn stopped the wagon and got out again, this time to remove the stone that Meshach had wedged in Ahab’s hoof to make him limp. Last thing they needed now was a truly lame horse. Once moving again, the horse and mule leaned into their collars
as the wheels rolled through shallow sand. She slapped the reins to keep them pulling forward, sure that if they stopped, the wheels would sink. Between Ophelia’s continued sniffling, the boys’ whimpering, Benjamin’s getting lost, and not knowing where the road was, Jesselynn wanted to do nothing more than run screaming down the road or hide her head under a blanket and sleep until life improved.

  Where was the road? Surely they hadn’t drifted that far off course.

  Just as she recognized a lighter spot in the woods as the break for the road, she heard a horse cough, the kind of cough induced by the herb that Meshach had given Domino.

  “Benjamin?” She raised her voice and called again. “Benjamin?”

  Ahab nickered, and a horse answered, then trotted out of the darkness to meet them. The filly tied to the tailgate joined in the welcome, and Jesselynn tightened the reins enough to stop the team. Flipping the reins around the brake pole, she vaulted to the ground and dashed to the end of the wagon before slowing and picking up the cadence of her soothing murmur. Domino flung his head up, then at her familiar song, nosed her outstretched hand and let her grab his reins.

  “Oh, Lawd, you took Benjamin down to de depths of de river, and now he’s home wid you. Lawsy, lawsy.” Ophelia’s crying and moaning renewed the wailing of the two boys, who might have dozed off again had she not started anew.

  Jesselynn felt around in the wagon bed until she located a lead shank. She snapped it to the horse’s halter, then removed the watersoaked bridle. As long as her hands kept busy, she could keep at bay the thought of Benjamin drowning.

  If Ophelia didn’t shut up, she was going to scream.

  “Ophelia, stop! I can’t hear myself think.” In the ensuing quiet, she listened hard. Was that a horse she heard coming from the river? Scant seconds later, she heard Meshach call her name.

  “Marse Jesse, I found ’im. Benjamin be alive.”

  “Oh, thank you, blessed Lawd.”

  This time Jesselynn didn’t try to quiet Ophelia; rather she wanted to join in, but instead, she ran back on the road to meet Meshach.

  “Praise de Lawd, Marse Jesse, our boy done be saved.”

  Benjamin slid off the back of the horse and right into her arms.

  He raised his head enough to ask, “Is … D-Domino all right?”

  “Yes.”

  At her answer he straightened, then bent over coughing until he vomited up half the river.

  Jesselynn put her arm around his waist and half dragged him back to the wagon, where Meshach had his horse tied by this time. The big man lifted the smaller and, gentle as a mother with her baby, laid him on the quilts Ophelia spread out.

  “I get dem wet.” Benjamin tried to rise, but Jesselynn put her hands on his shoulders and pushed him back down. “Just rest for now. Soon as Daniel catches up, we’ll see where this road goes.”

  Meshach dried off the younger stallion while Ophelia and Jesselynn rubbed Benjamin until he no longer shook from cold and exhaustion. With him and the boys asleep in the wagon bed, Jesselynn leaned against a wheel, growing more restless by the moment. They were right out in the middle of a road with land flatter than Lucinda’s hot cakes stretching on either side of them. While the moon didn’t show much light, other than the willows and cottonwoods along the river, the land looked bare.

  Ahab whinnied, and a horse answered. At the same moment, she heard a horse trotting toward them from the river. Ahab whinnied again.

  “You’re better’n a watchdog.” Jesselynn joined Meshach at the back of the wagon. “Think it’s him?”

  “A’course. Ahab done say so.”

  “Sorry, Marse, I din’t find nary horse nor—”

  “I found ’im,” Meshach interrupted the rush of words.

  “Thank de Lawd.”

  “Benjamin’s sleepin’ in the wagon. Domino here is all right too. We’re glad you’re back. Now we can go on.” Jesselynn patted Daniel on the knee and swung up onto the wagon seat. “Now, let’s find us a place to camp.”

  Jesselynn woke that afternoon when the sun had crept past the high point. The willow branches had shielded her up to then, but the sun in her eyes made further sleep impossible. She stretched and tossed her quilt aside. Today she would write home and tell them that she and her band were now safe in Missouri. Surely Dunlivey would not track them there, and even if he could, they would soon disappear in the oak and hickory forests her uncle had written about those years ago. He’d passed through them and broke land on the prairie for his horse farm. She’d read his letters before she left home, not that there were too many of them.

  Taking paper and the ink bottle, then sharpening a quill, she accepted the coffee Ophelia brought her and began to write. She covered two sheets before signing Jesse Highwood and blowing on the still-damp signature. She stared at it, shaking her head. Seemed like she’d been a male now for longer than three weeks, as if her life had begun the night they fled Twin Oaks. While folding the letter, her thoughts roamed to the homeplace. Surely all the Burley was cut by now and hanging to dry in the barn. It shouldn’t be long before it could be stripped and packed in the hogsheads for transporting to Frankfort.

  They’d always held a celebration when the tobacco was sold. All the neighbors joined in too. There was dancing and tables groaning with delicious food. Her stomach rumbled at the thought of all the spicy boiled shrimp, the sweet potato pie that Lucinda was known for, biscuits lighter than a cloud. Her stomach rumbled louder.

  She finished addressing the envelope and went in search of a dab of flour and water to paste the flap shut. While she’d brought her father’s sealing ring, she’d neglected to bring the sealing wax.

  “You want to go into Charleston with me?” She paused by where Meshach was cleaning the harnesses and bridles.

  He shook his head. “I needs to grease de axles and tighten up de shaft. ’Sides, no one recognize Daniel.”

  “You don’t think …”

  “No sense takin’ chances. We come too far for dat.”

  The hairs up the back of her neck stood at attention. And here she’d just been congratulating herself on getting away and was beginning to feel safe.

  “Take de mule. De horses need more grazin’ time and a rest.”

  Jesselynn sighed. When would they really be free?

  A short time later they trotted into town double mounted, both of them leaning back to keep from being jostled to bits by the mule’s sledgehammer trot. The bony ridge of his back didn’t help either. They both sighed when they slid off behind some buildings.

  Daniel rubbed his seat. “I think he do dat on purpose.”

  “What? Trot harder?” Jesselynn grinned. “Might be. You go that way, and I’ll try this way. Just stop and listen to people talkin’. Like you used to do at home.”

  Daniel tried to look affronted but laughed instead. “Don’ you go leavin’ me behind now.”

  “Then be back when the sun goes behind that willow tree over there.” She nodded to a tree that had obviously outlived many a flood.

  Jesselynn located the post office first thing, mailed her letter, then strolled across the dirt street to the store where several men had gathered.

  She dug in her pocket and pulled out a jackknife to begin cleaning the dirt from under her fingernails. With her rear tight against the porch floor, she hoped she was as invisible as she felt.

  The more they talked, the more her stomach churned. There were more skirmishes going on in Missouri than in Kentucky, and the fighting had started earlier. Why hadn’t she known that? She could answer that question before thinking. They’d been so isolated at Twin Oaks that until the army took the horses away they’d not been much bothered by the war.

  One thing for sure, they’d not be going north to try to hook up with the Wire Road. Whyever they called it that was beyond her. When the talk turned to the bands of deserters who were terrorizing the countryside under the guise of Confederate soldiers, her throat went dry. She’d heard about Quantrill’s Raiders
in the last town, but they were said to be more in the Kansas City area. Springfield was a far cry from Kansas City.

  At least Dunlivey was on the other side of the river. If she’d reminded herself of that once, it had been ten times. It wasn’t hard to picture him as the head of a band of raiders. But he’d been an officer in the Confederate army the last time she’d seen him. Then what had he been doing in that tavern? Of course the army did move their forces around.

  The argument kept up in her mind apace with the cussing and discussing on the porch. When they began in on “that nigger lover in the White House,” she sidled away. Her father had a great deal of respect for President Lincoln, and therefore she did too. “One nation under God, the way the United States had been founded, and the way it should stay.” She could hear her father’s words as plainly as if he were walking beside her.

  Checking the angle of the sun, she moseyed back to where they’d tied the mule. Daniel sat with his back against the wall, chewing on the end of a stalk of grass. Jesselynn swung aboard and braced her foot for him to use as a step to swing up. Once he’d settled behind her, she turned the mule back the way they’d come and headed out.

  “What’d you hear?” she asked when they were out in the country again.

  “Dem folks sure don’ like Marse Lincum.”

  “I heard that too. What else?”

  “Bad sojers about. Man in tavern laughin’ him head off ’bout dem hangin’ a runaway slave.”

  “Where?”

  “Don’ know.”

  “This side of the river?”

  “I guess. Dey talkin’ ’bout Missouri.”

  Jesselynn looked up to see if the despair settling over her wasn’t a cloud in the sky instead, but the sun still shone as it sank closer to the horizon.

  What if someone found their camp and wouldn’t believe Meshach when he said they were free blacks?

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Richmond, Virginia