I swallowed again and took a sip of the coffee, but that didn’t do any good. The rawness and harshness in my belly got worse. The soreness down there turned into a pain. And before I could stop it a fist came punching up through my stomach and into my throat. I ran among the men to the edge of the woods, holding my hand over my mouth. And then I held on to a tree while I leaned over and puked in the snow.
After I was sick I felt weak and new. I’d vomited away the poison and worry and now it was time to start again, if I could start again. I’d emptied myself and was so weak I dropped to my knees and rubbed snow on my forehead and cheeks. I put snow in my mouth to soothe my lips and tongue, and clean away the bitter taste.
When I stood up and stumbled back to the fire, Captain Cox watched me and shook his head. “Private Summers, you must take something for the flux,” he said.
“It’s just a touch,” I said.
The captain told Sergeant Gudger to go to the medicine chest and bring back the blue bottle. When Gudger came back from the tent he was carrying a little bottle so dark it looked almost black. The captain poured a spoonful and handed it to me.
“When you have bile on the stomach, take laudanum,” the captain said.
I didn’t have any choice but to swallow the spoonful of laudanum. It tasted like liquor mixed with some secret salt from deep in the earth. Though the tincture was light brown it tasted blue as the sky before dawn.
“You must take a spoonful of this every morning until the bilious flux is cured,” the captain said. He handed me the bottle.
I sat down on a log not too far from the fire and wrapped the blanket around my shoulders. At first I didn’t feel anything but the strange liquid in my throat and belly. And then a soothing softness began to spread from my belly. The raw pain in my gut cooled. My belly was empty and clean and full at once.
“Eat quickly,” the captain shouted. “We are going to march.”
“In the snow?” somebody said.
“Snow will not stop the enemy,” Captain Cox said.
AS SOON AS THE MEN ate the hog meat and hominy and hoe-cakes, and drank the scalding coffee, Captain Cox hollered it was time to break camp and march. There were groans around the fires. I reckon we had all hoped we could rest because of the snow.
“Where are we going, sir?” the man called Jenkins yelled.
The captain said again we were going to Grindal Shoals to join Major McDowell’s North Carolina militia and General Morgan’s army.
“Pack your things,” Gudger yelled. His face was red from the cold and heating by the hot fire. As we lined up, with blankets over our shoulders and our guns in the cradle of our arms, the sergeant stopped beside me and said, “Joseph, if you have to puke, don’t puke on the man in front of you.”
“No, sir,” I said, and smiled. The laudanum made the world feel mellow and easy.
Cox mounted his horse and rode out in front of us, and just as we started the snow stopped. The flakes quit falling all at once, like somebody had given an order. The sky was so dark it was almost black, but the air was clear. Everything was covered with snow, the pine trees, the bushes, the road. The world was clean as linen.
The snow on the road made it hard to march, and the uneven ruts and mud under the snow made it even harder. As we trampled the snow the mud stained through and by the time the end of the line came along the ruts were nothing but mud, red mud. The road looked like a bloody wound opened between the snowy woods. The carts and wagons lurched and banged on rocks and puddles behind us. Even where the ground had frozen it thawed under the hundreds of stamping feet. Soon my pants and overcoat and blanket were splashed with mud.
If it hadn’t been for the laudanum I don’t think I could have kept going. The laudanum gave me strength and made my belly quiet. As we kept walking the sun came out almost ahead of us. We were marching into South Carolina. The sun got bright and the snow started to melt. Hunks of snow fell off trees beside the road.
It was so strange to be marching with the men, I wondered if I was dreaming it all. I wondered if I would wake up and find I was back in the cave or back in the cabin on Pine Knot Branch.
“We got mud up to our arse,” a man in front said.
“We’re walking through red shite,” a man behind me said.
“Shut up,” Gudger said.
We crossed the Broad River around noon on rough log rafts. It must have taken an hour for all of us and the wagons to get across. I counted thirty-four in the company besides myself. “I never thought I would cross the Broad River,” T. R. said.
“Nobody cares what you thought,” Gudger said.
As we kept marching I began to feel numb. It was like my feet were walking but I had no control over them. I was so tired I think I nodded off while marching. My feet were sore but they felt like somebody else’s feet, wrapped in the leather strips. A man in front of me did go to sleep while walking and stumbled into a pine tree, and then I stumbled over him.
Gen. Daniel Morgan’s camp at Grindal Shoals was spread out along the Pacolet River like a hunting camp. There must have been five hundred or six hundred men there. I figured I was the only woman in miles. I looked everywhere to see if I could catch sight of John, which was a strange thing to do, since I was almost certain he was dead. Yet when I looked at a gathering of men my eyes searched for him. It made me sick that his last memory of me would be of our quarrel.
There must have been a score of cooking fires in the woods mixing smoke with morning fog along the river. Little bands of volunteers like ours kept arriving and joining up until it didn’t look like there was room for more. And it didn’t seem like anybody that came had brought their rations, any more than we had.
General Morgan sent out parties to gather hog and hominy. They bought rations and they traded for rations and they just plain stole rations. Gudger took me and a man named Gaither out to gather supplies. We opened people’s smokehouses and potato holes and took apples out of cellar holes and barn lofts. We got soup beans and cornmeal. But mostly what we found was grits. It was after hog-killing time and a few places had fresh meat. I stayed close to Gaither. When we took hams and shoulder meat we would feast until we ran out again and had to think of finding more.
ONE RAINY MORNING, after we had been at the shoals about a week, we were low on grits and coffee, and out of any meat. Gudger looked me in the eye and said, “Come with me, Summers.”
“I have a chill on my stomach,” I said. I’d just taken some laudanum and my belly was quiet.
“Come with me, private,” Gudger said. With Captain Cox listening, and everybody else listening, I didn’t have any choice. Being alone with Gudger was what I had dreaded most. I looked around at the captain and then took a step toward the sergeant.
“Bring your rifle,” Gudger said, and handed me a tow sack.
Following Gudger, I took short steps, as if I could slow him down, or slow time down. But Gudger cradled his rifle on his arm and strode into the pine woods.
“We’re not following the road?” I said. I thought I’d be safer on a public road.
“You want to be caught by a Tory patrol and tortured?” Gudger said. “Besides, the road ain’t nothing but mud.”
As I followed Gudger I thought how easy it would be to shoot him in the back. I’d already killed one man that shamed me. I might have to kill another. If I shot Gudger I’d have to run away into the woods where nobody would ever find me. We crossed a field of gray cornstalks and briars and then entered the oak woods.
“Don’t shoot me in the back,” Gudger said, and laughed.
A deer bounded out of the brush, and ran for a ways into the woods and stopped. I could see its head through the limbs. It didn’t have any horns. Gudger raised his rifle and fired. The deer reeled back into the leaves and lay still.
“We’ll have venison tonight,” he said.
Now while Gudger’s gun was unloaded was my best chance to shoot him. I raised my rifle and almost aimed it at him. But I couldn’t do
it. I couldn’t shoot anybody in the back, even Gudger.
I thought we would stop and skin the deer and cut it up in pieces, but Gudger said we would come back for it later. We had other things to gather. He slit the deer’s throat to bleed it, and we stumbled on.
We came to a pasture and hid in the sumac bushes at the edge. There were no cattle or horses in the pasture, and no sheep. But a curl of blue smoke lifted from the chimney of the house beyond the pasture. There was a log barn and well sweep in the yard.
“Where there are people there is hominy,” Gudger said.
“Will we buy it from them?” I said.
“With a lead coin,” he said.
Gudger said we’d stay out of the pasture and approach the barn from the woods. If we were quiet we could fill our sacks and they would never know it.
The rain made everything feel close, and the wet air made every sound loud. I heard a woodpecker knocking, and two trees rubbing together, and thunder crumbled in the distance. Winter thunder meant the weather was changing. Every drop on the leaves looked fat and tall.
“I figured out what you are,” Gudger said, as he looked across the pasture. I didn’t answer him, and I dreaded what he would say.
“I’m from Pine Knot Branch,” I said.
“You don’t need to be afraid of me,” Gudger said. “It will be our secret.” He put his arm on my shoulder and I didn’t pull away.
Gudger made me walk ahead of him as we skirted the edge of the pasture. I stooped under limbs and slid between bushes. My pants got soaked like I’d been wading a creek.
“I can be your friend,” Gudger said. “You’ll need a friend.”
We stopped while he reloaded his rifle. He kept looking me in the eye and I avoided his stare.
“The other night in the snow didn’t mean nothing,” Gudger said as he drove the ramrod into the barrel. “I was just a-teasing you.”
I was more afraid of Gudger than ever. But he was trying to act like my friend, and I had to play along.
We kept the barn between us and the house as we came out of the woods. We climbed up to the loft, and found nothing but hay and some old harness. I looked through a crack and saw the corn crib between the barn and the well sweep. Gudger said I would fill my sack at the crib and he would stand guard.
“What if they see me?” I said.
“I’ll cover you, sugar,” Gudger said.
The crib was just like the one at home where Mr. Griffin had locked me in. I slipped as quietly as I could down the ladder from the loft and around the side of the crib and opened the creaky door. There was a pile of shucked ears on the floor, but no shelled corn. I began to fill my sack with the naked ears. The sharp kernels scratched my hands.
When the sack was about half full I heard a voice. Through the slats of the crib I saw a boy come out of the house. He looked about twelve years old and he carried an old musket. “Get out of there!” he yelled.
I didn’t know whether to take my rifle and run or just stand still. The boy came closer and pointed the gun at the crib. “Get out of there,” he yelled again.
“Don’t shoot,” I said.
“You get out of there!” he hollered.
Gudger stepped around the corner of the barn, walking so slow and quiet the boy didn’t hear him until it was too late. Gudger knocked the boy down with his gun butt and took the musket away from him.
“He’s just a boy,” I cried.
Gudger dragged the boy to the porch, and as the boy cried and pleaded Gudger took a pocket knife and a shilling from his pocket.
“I ain’t no Tory,” the boy said.
Gudger shoved the boy aside and entered the house, and I followed. There was a fire stroking in the fireplace, but nothing to eat except a little cornmeal and a slab of fatback. A jug sat by the hearth and Gudger pulled out the stopper and sniffed, then took a drink.
“Don’t you take Pa’s drinking liquor,” the boy said, and followed Gudger out to the porch.
“This liquor is your Pa’s contribution to the war,” Gudger said.
“Pa will hide me with a whip,” the boy said.
Gudger made me finish filling the sack with corn, and we took the cornmeal and the fatback. We left the boy crying on the porch. His shirt and pants were patched all over, and snot mixed with dirt and tears on his chin.
“You ought not to have taken his knife,” I said.
Gudger made me carry the cornmeal and fatback and the boy’s musket. He took a long drink from the jug and carried the jug in his left hand after he slung the sack of corn over his right shoulder. I followed him back into the rainy woods and he took two more drinks before we reached the deer. The liquor made him cheerful and friendly.
“I won’t tell nobody about you,” Gudger said. He made me take one hind leg of the deer and he took the other. We dragged the deer through the dripping woods.
“You women are all whores,” Gudger laughed. He stopped and took another drink from the jug. “My wife ran off with a sergeant of the Tories. I reckon she liked the size of his bayonet.”
“You are married?” I said.
“Not anymore,” the sergeant said. Gudger laughed, and he kept laughing while we dragged the deer over the wet leaves.
• • •
I COULDN’T HAVE MADE it through those days without the bottle of laudanum the captain had given me. Every morning I took a spoonful, and it kept me from getting sick and puking. Gudger watched me and poked me. I had noticed that men like to push things at you. They like to prod and shove with guns and bayonets or fists, or their members. They like to shove things out and drive them into things. Gudger scared me. I was sure he’d do me dirt when he got a chance. I tried not to give him a chance. I kept my eye on him and obeyed orders.
One problem at the camp was a lot of the volunteers had brought their horses and kept them tied in the woods, and the horses had to be fed same as the men. It took almost as much time to gather corn and fodder for the horses as to forage for the men. We hadn’t brought any horses except for the one Captain Cox rode himself and the ones that pulled the wagons, and that turned out to be a blessing. It was a hardship to have to walk, but in camp we only had to feed ourselves. The woods were full of horses and the mornings smelled like a stable.
There was a smell the camp had, of horses and the latrine, of mud that’s been chewed up and spit on, of burnt wood and sweaty men. But the worst smell was the wet boots and dirty socks. It smelled like everybody’s feet were rotting. My own feet stayed wet and raw in the leather bindings. I took them off at night to dry by the fire.
WE CAMPED ON the Pacolet for about two weeks. Captain Cox joined us up to Major McDowell’s North Carolina militia. We drilled every day, on frozen frosty ground in the morning and on thawed mud in the evening. We practiced loading and shooting our rifle guns only twice. I learned to pour in the powder and push down the bullet and patch and pack them with the ramrod. I learned to fire by sighting along the bead. Those with muskets just had to take a paper cartridge from their box and bite off the top, then stuff it in the barrel. But we who had rifles had to pack the powder and patch and bullet in separately. My shoulder got sore from the kick of the rifle.
There was trading going on at the camp all the time. Boys would swap knives for bearskins, a powder horn for a pair of socks. There was always somebody playing cards and losing their rifle gun or winning a jug of liquor. Major McDowell tried to stop the men from gambling, but it didn’t do any good.
While we were camped on the river, peddlers came by with wagons and you could trade for anything. They sold knives and cloth, harness and gunpowder. A bootmaker came out and set up his shop in a wagon. He would make a pair of boots for a few shillings. But I didn’t have any money. The coins I had stolen from Mama had burned up in the cabin. There was a peddler that had two girls in a wagon that sold themselves for a shilling. I only saw them a few times when they came out of the wagon to go to the river. They were fat girls with lots of black hair; everybody wh
o could afford it went to them.
Rumors ran back and forth through the camp about where Tarleton and his dragoons were. Cornwallis was marching his big army down the east side of the Broad River on his way from Charlotte. They were foraging and looting and burning the countryside. But nobody knew exactly where Tarleton and his Green Dragoons and legion were. They said General Morgan had sent out scouts and learned Tarleton had crossed the Tyger River to the south, and the Enoree. But his dragoons moved too fast to track for long. Col. William Washington’s cavalry had fought them in skirmishes near Fort Ninety Six and at Hammond’s Store and then broken away and come back to the Pacolet.
Every day there were more stories in camp. We heard that Colonel Pickens and the South Carolina militia would join us from the west. One time it was said Colonel Sevier and the Overmountain men that fought at Kings Mountain would be arriving from the northwest. But they never did come. They said Gen. Thomas Sumter and his patriots were camped just a few miles to the east of the Broad River, but we never saw any sign of them. After we’d camped in the damp woods by the river for two weeks, the most common rumor was that we were going to retreat. Cornwallis’s army was on the way and there wasn’t anything we could do to face that many redcoats. It was said Cornwallis had twenty cannons. You could hear anything in a camp.
“If Morgan crosses the Broad again I’m going home,” Gaither said.
It felt like the woods were full of Tarleton’s Green Dragoons, but we couldn’t see them. Every pine bush and cedar seemed like a dragoon. Every shadow seemed to hide a saber. It’s what you make up in your own mind that scares you the most. And when you don’t know where the enemy is you think he might spring out of the trees any second. It wears you out to be scared every day. In the January cold it was like the thickets were haunted. I looked across the river and expected to see horsemen appear. You couldn’t go out in the woods to do your business without fearing to see a green uniform like they said Tarleton’s dragoons wore. Every tree seemed to be hiding somebody.
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