The Yankee Widow

by Linda Lael Miller

  “I can hear one of them Rebel boys through the open windows,” she said, “and he’s begging to hear this song. He won’t be with us long, from the looks of him.” Awkward though it might be, Caroline knew there were Southerners, although not many, in a few of the tents. Everyone, from the surgeon to those who took care of the wounded, seemed to treat them with a kind of practical compassion.

  Caroline took the song book, a volume well used.

  She peered at the music, drew yet another deep breath, and began.

  The strains of “Dixie” bloomed around her, filling the parlor, drifting into the yard and the tents erected there.

  The music filled her with yearning for the peaceful time when the North and South were still one country, undivided.

  “No more,” Caroline said brokenly, when she’d finished. “No more.”

  With that, she rose from the bench, leaving Rachel in Jubie’s care, and walked. She walked fast, weeping as she went, not knowing where she was headed until she reached the quiet place under the tree where she’d buried Jacob only a few weeks before.

  She dropped to her knees beside his grave, bent double with grief. She cried for herself and cried for Jacob and cried for the loss of peace and graciousness and all civility. She sobbed, rocking back and forth, thinking of their Rachel, fatherless now, the child Jacob would never look upon again, never hug again.

  Sorrow welled within her, too great to contain, and she wailed with the agony of it, the unfairness, the pure cruelty of all the years that were unfairly lost to Jacob, and to so many men like him on both sides.

  She cried for mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, sons and daughters. She cried for Mr. Lincoln and the devastating burdens they bore, day by day, night by night.

  She wept for the nation she loved so dearly, forged in the fires of hardship and hope and courage in the face of impossible odds, only to lie broken and bleeding less than a century later.

  Finally, she was spent.

  The weight of a hand, calloused and strong, came to rest upon her shoulder. “It’s all right, Missus Caroline,” Enoch said hoarsely. “It’s gonna be all right.”

  Caroline couldn’t speak. She allowed Enoch to take her arm, help her to her feet.

  She nodded, acknowledging his presence. Made no attempt to wipe the wetness from her face.

  Enoch held her by the elbow. “You come on back to the house, now,” he said, his voice both gentle and gruff. He seemed to know that, although she could not utter a word herself, she found great comfort in his quiet talk. “You been too brave, that’s what. You lost a mighty good husband, and now you’ve got men dying right outside your door, and if ever a woman had reason to cry, you do.”

  Caroline listened, stumbling along beside Enoch, thankful for his friendship and the strength of his hand, holding her upright.

  “And you did a fine thing, playing that music a while ago. It soothed those poor boys plenty, it did. Took them home.”

  Caroline nodded again, still unable to speak.

  “Did my heart good, too.”

  She longed to ask Enoch what she should do about the soldier Bridger Winslow. She dare not mention her unexpected attraction to him. She wanted to ask how on earth she was going to raise her daughter in a world torn asunder by war. She knew that if she tried to talk about any of this, she’d just fall apart again.

  The question of Bridger Winslow would have to remain unresolved for now.

  She returned to the house, and to Rachel, and remained there until her grandmother came in, exhausted. As Geneva sank into a chair in the parlor, she took her great-granddaughter onto her lap. And Caroline went back out to tend the wounded.

  The work seemed endless—so much need, impossible to meet. Caroline functioned by rote, like a person in a walking stupor. She smiled, stroked their hands and foreheads, brought water to their lips and took down letters to distant loved ones. Each one could have been her Jacob.

  And when she could go on no more, she went on anyway.

  * * *

  Early the next morning, after a deep and blessedly dreamless sleep, Caroline arose, washed and dressed, and finding Jubie up and around, asked her to stay with Rachel and to do what she could to dissuade Geneva from going about her nursing duties without having breakfast first.

  Jubie nodded her acquiescence, but said little. Like everyone else, she was exhausted. But she was also pregnant and her uncharacteristic silence worried Caroline.

  Caroline paused. “You’ll rest when you can? Put your feet up?” she asked.

  Jubie nodded again. “But we all have to do what we can for those poor men,” she added. “Our needs are nothing compared to theirs.”

  Men were suffering and dying in her yard, Caroline thought as she was getting ready to go out. She expected Captain Winslow to be in decline, too, given the severity of his wound. Just the same, thinking about him for those few seconds touched something intangible within Caroline, leaving her feeling briefly light-headed.

  For a moment, the two women gazed at each other in silence, and it seemed to Caroline that an understanding passed between them. It was then, Caroline would think much later, that she and Jubie moved beyond helper and helped, protector and protected, to become true friends.

  Jubie smiled, and the expression brightened her face. “I’ll go see to Miss Rachel first. And later I’ll help in the tents, take over from you for a few hours. Oh, and Miss Caroline, Enoch tells me Captain Winslow got a fever in the night.”

  Caroline was hardly surprised. But buoyed by this young woman’s strength, as well as her quiet smile, she said, “I’ll go there right away. But please, Jubie—don’t call me ‘Miss’ anymore. I’d rather you used my given name.”

  The request obviously gave Jubie pause, but she recovered quickly. “I might have to get used to that...but thank you, Caroline.”

  Caroline felt a smile take shape on her own mouth, before she again remembered the wounded men in the tents outside, and Captain Winslow’s fever.

  They went their separate ways, Jubie heading upstairs to look in on Rachel, Caroline out the side door to go to the kitchen house and check on the men there. She felt nauseated, taking in the stench of blood and sickness, then hurried past the tents. She refused to feel sorry for herself, whatever her trials, while so many around her had to endure suffering on a scale she could not have imagined before the war.

  The kitchen house door stood ajar, and as she entered, she saw Rogan standing at the stove, gaunt and still unshaven, clad in remarkably clean uniform trousers, a cotton shirt and braces. He was cooking, frying side-pork, fresh eggs and potatoes in familiar skillets, and he seemed competent at the task, even well practiced.

  “Good morning, Captain McBride,” Caroline said, coming to a stop several feet from him.

  “I thought we agreed to use our first names,” Rogan commented.

  She leaned in slightly, in search of Winslow. She found him on his pallet on the far side of the room, a fitful shadow. “Enoch says Captain Winslow has developed a fever,” she murmured. “Jubie told me. You’ve...met her? She’s been helping soldiers in the tents out there.”

  Rogan paused in his cooking duties and nodded. “We’ve spoken a time or two. Jubie’s...extraordinary.” Then he glanced toward the restless patient. “Yes, Bridger’s very ill,” he said gravely, before turning his head to face her again. “His skin’s hot as one of these skillets. Maybe if we bathed him in cold water—?”

  Caroline swallowed anxiously and felt her cheeks warm. Raised in the home of a physician, she knew how quickly disease could spread. Her own parents and sister had fallen gravely ill in a matter of hours, seemingly fine in the morning and dead before sunset. She did not want to expose Rachel or Geneva to such a risk.

  Children and the elderly were particularly vulnerable to the horrors of cholera, typhoid, smallpox and scarlet fever, am
ong other maladies, though of course anyone could get sick. Some of the wounded had already succumbed to infections, while others had contracted pneumonia. However, she assumed that in all likelihood, Captain Winslow’s fever was the result of an infection in his wound and therefore not contagious.

  Rogan seemed to be reading her every thought, just by watching her expression and comportment. “If you’ll tell me what to do,” he began, his voice ragged, “I’ll take care of Bridger myself. Maybe you ought to keep your distance, just in case.”

  Caroline braced herself. “I would think it’s too late for that kind of precaution,” she said, with as much good cheer as she could manage. For all her reluctance, a part of her was drawn to Bridger Winslow and, disturbingly, to Rogan as well.

  What in heaven’s name did that mean?

  Drawing on every ounce of resolution she possessed, Caroline crossed the room and knelt beside Mr. Winslow, then touched his forehead with the back of her right hand.

  It was like touching a glowing ember, and she flinched, withdrawing instantly. Then, shamed by her skittish reaction, she carefully raised his loose-fitting shirt and tugged aside the seeping bandage to inspect the shoulder wound beneath.

  The smell seemed to intensify now. Yellowish pus filled the gash, and streaks of red radiated from it.

  * * *

  “I shall need plenty of very hot water,” she said, and the words had a distant, echoing quality, as though they’d been uttered by someone else. “Clean bandages and carbolic acid, as well. The supplies are in the cellar. You can manage the step?” she asked. She sensed Rogan’s approach, felt him standing just behind her. “Caroline,” he said hoarsely, as if preparing to object or send her away.

  “Please,” she said, closing her eyes for a long moment while she collected herself. “I can ask someone else to help, if you aren’t up to it.”

  He made a sound of mild exasperation. “I can do it,” he said as he crossed to the cellar door, opened it and descended the stairs.

  Caroline remained on her knees beside Mr. Winslow, gently smoothing his matted hair from his forehead, touching his beard-roughened cheek. He stirred, groaning a little, but did not open his eyes.

  Just as Rogan returned from the cellar, bearing the items Caroline had requested, the main door swung open and Enoch entered, with Geneva close behind.

  Geneva hurried over, although she didn’t kneel. “Mercy,” she said, “I had quite forgotten the smell of infection.”

  Caroline looked up at her grandmother, struck by the older woman’s composure.

  “I was about to change the dressing and disinfect the wound,” Caroline told her.

  Geneva turned to address Enoch. “This man must be moved into the main house,” she said. “In his condition, he ought to be in a proper bed, not on a hard floor.”

  * * *

  “But where would we put him?” Caroline asked. Geneva occupied the spare bedroom upstairs, and Jubie slept in the back room off the parlor.

  “Why, in Rachel’s room, of course,” Geneva replied briskly. “She’s been sharing your bed. We can move her playthings into your room.”

  “Very well,” Caroline agreed. Although the idea of a strange man taking his rest in the bedroom next to her own was, while clearly necessary, still unsettling.

  “I’ll move to a cot in one of the tents,” Rogan said.

  But Geneva had other ideas. “It would be much better,” she announced, “if you shared your friend’s quarters. You’ve suffered injuries yourself and, besides, this gentleman should not be left unattended during the night.”

  There was only one small bed in Rachel’s room, but Caroline didn’t point that out, knowing her grandmother would dispense with any objection she raised. When Geneva Prescott set her mind on a specific course of action, she could not easily be dissuaded. They would just add a cot there.

  “Captain McBride,” Geneva continued, proving Caroline’s unspoken point, “perhaps you could ask one of the guards for a stretcher and then prevail upon Mr. Alderman and Mr. Pickering to carry the patient into the house?”

  “Yes, Ma’am,” Rogan replied.

  Enoch, meanwhile, stood in attentive silence, no doubt anticipating orders of his own.

  “Captain McBride was kind enough to prepare breakfast,” Caroline said, adopting some of her grandmother’s brisk authority. “Why don’t you sit down, Enoch, and have something to eat?”

  He hesitated, though his gaze trailed in the direction of the stove, where the meal Rogan had assembled was rapidly turning cold. Then, with a slight motion of his head, indicating the tents just outside, he said, “Plenty still to do, Missus.”

  Caroline proceeded to disinfect Winslow’s wound and rebandage it while he waited to be moved.

  “You’ll be no good to anyone, Enoch Flynn,” she said as she worked, “if you don’t take proper nourishment.”

  She paused, studying her friend, this good man who had come to rescue her from despair the previous day at Jacob’s grave.

  “Sit down, Enoch,” she added quietly.

  By then, Rogan was outside, accompanied by Geneva.

  Caroline moved to the stove, where a small amount of hot water steamed in a kettle. She poured it into a basin, reached for the soap and lathered her hands thoroughly.

  Enoch stood in the same place as before, his expression uncertain.

  “Sit down,” Caroline repeated. “You look as though you might fall asleep on your feet, and you must be half-starved.”

  Enoch frowned, folded his brawny arms across his chest. “It isn’t right, Missus, you serving me my food.”

  Caroline rinsed her hands, dried them on a dish towel, then took a plate from one of the nearby shelves. “Nonsense,” she said. “You’ve been working hard, and you’re tired and hungry. So, please sit, unless you mean to eat standing up.” She brought the meal to the table, and set it down at Enoch’s usual place. “I’m not going to tell you again, Enoch,” she finished.

  The big man lowered his hands to his sides and sighed heavily, but there was a glint of weary amusement in his eyes. “Well, in that case,” he said, unbending at last, “I reckon I’d better do as I’m told.”

  With that, he drew back his chair and sank into it.

  Rogan returned, followed by Alderman and Pickering, the two of them carrying a crude stretcher, filthy with blood and who knew what else.

  Geneva, already spouting instructions, brought up the rear. “Be very careful,” she said. “You mustn’t jostle the poor fellow about too much.”

  Her gaze came to rest upon Enoch, seated at the table with a meal set before him, and narrowed when he started to rise. “Stay put,” she ordered. “We’ll need your assistance in a little while, and it won’t do if you’re too weak to lend it.”

  “Yes, Missus,” Enoch said, though he looked mighty uncomfortable retaining his seat at the table in the presence of ladies.

  He thanked Caroline, took up his fork and began to eat.

  In the interim, Alderman and Pickering laid the empty stretcher alongside Bridger’s pallet and, with plenty of advice from Geneva, shifted him onto the soiled canvas.

  Though still unconscious, Bridger cried out once. Caroline stiffened, hearing it, and her hands trembled as she poured coffee into a mug for Enoch.

  Now, Geneva took the lead ahead of the stretcher bearers and Rogan. “Have a care—don’t drop him—do watch out for the doorjamb.”

  Once the way was cleared, Caroline moved to follow the others, then paused in the door and looked back at Enoch.

  “Thank you, Enoch,” she said. “For yesterday, I mean.” She blushed. “And for everything else you do, of course. I truly don’t know how I could manage without your help.”

  Enoch made to stand once again, and Caroline raised a hand, palm out, then turned and hastened out of the kitchen area, into the bright mo
rning sunlight, hurrying after the small group crossing the yard, moving around tents and a few ambulatory soldiers toward her house.

  Glancing over one shoulder, Rogan saw her and slowed his pace until she caught up to him. After a quick look around, to make sure no one was within earshot, he met her eyes and spoke in a near whisper.

  “Have you decided?” he asked, his eyes earnest and intensely watchful. “About turning Bridger in, I mean?”

  Caroline felt a stab of emotion. “I don’t suppose I will,” she said, her tone mildly defensive. “I haven’t spoken to my grandmother or Enoch, however, and I feel I must do that. But I can’t promise they’ll cooperate, once they understand what they are being asked to do.”

  “Keep a badly wounded man from wasting away in a prison camp?” Rogan retorted with a barely perceptible edge in his voice.

  Caroline bristled. “Or,” she countered, in a sharp whisper, “aiding and abetting the enemy and virtually assuring that he’ll return to the Confederate forces at the first opportunity to take up arms again and kill our Union soldiers! Who happen also to be your fellow soldiers.”

  Rogan seemed taken aback, though surely he must have known to expect some sort of reaction. In fact, he came to a halt at the base of the steps leading to the side door, through which Geneva, Bridger and the other two men had just passed.

  Caroline stared at him and waited stubbornly for his response.

  It came soon enough. All vestiges of his former consternation had disappeared, replaced by steely determination.

  “All I can say for sure,” he told her, “is that I can’t and won’t let my best friend rot or be hanged in some hellhole of a camp up north, no matter what.”

  Caroline gestured toward the tents, where men moaned and wept and sometimes screamed in agony, around the clock. “What about them, Captain McBride? Do you feel any kind of loyalty toward these men, torn to pieces by Confederate cannon and minié balls—or the thousands of others like them?” Like my Jacob?