He remembered the crouching Yank who’d drawn Bridger’s attention immediately. A second Union soldier lay sprawled on the ground, one of hundreds, either dead or rendered entirely helpless by his wounds.
Plundering the pockets and rucksacks of the fallen, whether dead or alive, was common enough; he’d seen Confederate infantrymen take boots, weapons, canteens and food from friends and comrades, as well as enemies, no longer in need of earthly belongings. And, although he abhorred the practice, he understood the ugly necessities of war.
The Army of Northern Virginia, like the rest of the Confederacy, was always on short rations, when there were rations at all. Boots, blankets, guns were scarce to the point of desperation.
For some reason, the sight of this one thief, gleefully rifling through the modest belongings of a member of his own army, enraged Bridger, drove him to intercede.
He’d wanted to run the greedy bastard through, pulled out his sword for the purpose.
Instead, he’d given the order to take the man prisoner.
He’d gathered the scattered treasures, placed the letters and framed likenesses inside the Yankee’s coat, set the Bible, rifle and haversack nearby. Realizing the man was alive, he’d given him a sip of water, left his canteen within reach and wished him well.
And that man, he knew now, having seen these photographs, had been Jacob Hammond.
Bridger closed his eyes, drew a deep breath, and opened them again to find that Caroline had retreated a few steps. She was watching him closely, looking bewildered and a little anxious.
“What is it?” she asked very softly, and he sensed that she feared his answer.
Bridger closed the frame, secured the clasp, and handed it back to her, stalling, searching for the right words.
He didn’t find them. Knew he would have to make do with the ones he had.
“I believe I’ve met your husband,” he said.
23
Hammond Farm
August 3, 1863
Caroline
I believe I’ve met your husband.
Caroline did not consider her reply to the stunning statement Bridger Winslow had just made; she simply blurted out, “Were you the one—Did you shoot Jacob?”
Bridger’s handsome, unshaven face paled, though whether this was in response to her disjointed question or to the physical pain she knew he still suffered, Caroline could not have guessed.
He took his time answering, rising laboriously to his feet, a protracted process that was hard to watch.
His eyes met Caroline’s.
“No.” He shook his head. “I did not.”
“When? When did you see Jacob? And where?”
“In May,” Bridger replied evenly. “At Chancellorsville.”
Gruesome images reeled through Caroline’s mind at the mention of that terrible place; she saw smoke and blood, heard the thunder of cannon and the crack of gunshots. Nausea roiled in her stomach and surged, scalding, to burn the back of her throat.
She swallowed hard. “You said you met Jacob. He was alive, then. When you saw him, I mean.”
Bridger looked as though he might collapse, but his gaze was unwavering. “I thought he was dead at first,” he said, his voice raspy, like the blade of a dull saw scraping at hardwood. “Like so many others, he was badly wounded.”
“Why did you approach him at all? He was the enemy, and one of many, as you just said.”
Bridger sighed. “There was another soldier—a Union bummer, not a Confederate—going through his haversack, tossing things around. I guess I’d seen that happen once too often, because the next thing I knew, I was off my horse and moving toward them.”
Caroline realized she’d been holding her breath, exhaled and drew in more air.
“I put a stop to the thieving,” he said, and he seemed to be looking through Caroline now, not really seeing her at all. She knew he was reliving the experience as vividly as if he’d been standing on that battlefield in Virginia, not in her parlor.
She was tempted to put her arms around Bridger, to hold him, for no reason other than that he was a human being and he was suffering.
She didn’t move.
“And Jacob? Did he speak to you?”
Bridger returned from that distant battlefield, shook his head. “I’m sorry, Caroline,” he said. “I don’t think he was able to speak. He was barely alive. There were more Confederate wounded than we could haul away. I gathered your husband’s things, put your letters and those photographs inside his coat, gave him water and put the canteen where I hoped he could reach it, if he had the strength. Then I left. I knew there were Union soldiers close by, rescuing their own wounded.”
Caroline saw it all so clearly, her hopeful Jacob—with all his dreams of family and babies, his ambitious plans for the farm—lying mute and bloody and utterly helpless on the ground. She swayed, groped her way to the settee and sank onto it, sitting with her hands to her face, her body bent double.
She wanted to howl but couldn’t make a sound. Couldn’t even cry.
Bridger came toward her. She felt his hand rest on the back of her head, then withdraw.
“I didn’t know, Caroline,” he said. “Until I saw those pictures just now, I didn’t know.”
She moaned, despairing.
“I’m sorry,” he repeated.
And then he was moving away from her, slowly retreating from the room.
Caroline heard him making his way up the stairs, knew each step was an ordeal for him, but she didn’t follow. Her legs would have folded beneath her if she’d tried, and her head swam.
Presently, she was able to sit up straight. The pain in her heart turned to a curious numbness, one she might have welcomed if it hadn’t made her feel more like a ghost than a living woman.
In time, she stood. Crossed the room, took the little frame Jacob had carried with him when he went to war and put it back in its place on top of the bureau.
She didn’t see Enoch when she left the house. Perhaps he was still working in the barn, or he’d gone to his cabin on the far side of the orchard.
Jubie and Rachel were somewhere nearby; Caroline could hear them laughing and Sweet Girl barking happily.
Inside the kitchen house, she located the last remaining bottle of Geneva’s medicinal whiskey, held it up and saw that it was three-quarters full. She didn’t personally approve of the stuff, but she’d seen it calm men’s pain and ease their anxiety, so she supposed it had its uses.
She took a clean jelly jar from one of the shelves and, carrying it in one hand and the bottle in the other, retraced her steps.
Bridger was back in his room when she got there, sitting in the chair beside the bed, his eyes shut.
“Bridger,” she said, and hesitated. Then she carried the bottle and jar into the room, set them down on the nightstand and returned to the doorway, pausing there, strangely reluctant to go. She was waiting for Bridger to speak her name.
He did.
“Caroline, no one could have saved your husband,” he said.
She remembered her first sight of Jacob in that miserable hospital tent. He’d been so weary, so broken by war, a dead man with a heartbeat.
She’d known then that he was lost to her, lost to Rachel and Enoch and everyone else who cared for him, but she hadn’t been ready to let him go. If he’d recovered, she would have learned to love him properly, as a mature woman loves a man. She would have opened her heart and soul to Jacob more completely, more thoroughly...instead of guarding herself against those intense emotions.
Loving a man, she saw now, was a choice, a decision. It didn’t just happen. You had to choose, and be steadfast, in good times and in bad and, perhaps most difficult of all, in the ordinary times between.
No one could have saved your husband.
“You were kind to Jacob,
” she said. “Under the circumstances, you did all you could for him.”
Bridger’s eyes were full of ghosts as he regarded her, and she knew he was subduing strong emotions, possibly at great cost. “Is that why you brought me whiskey?” he asked. There was no mockery in his tone, no evident desire to bait her. “Because I did what I could for your husband?”
She thought for a moment. Why had she brought him strong spirits?
“I suppose I brought the whiskey because you asked for it,” she said. Then, cautiously, trying not to sound too hopeful, she asked, “Have you changed your mind? About the whiskey?”
“I have,” Bridger said.
“Why?”
He laughed, a short, gruff sound, but turned serious in the next instant. “If I start,” he said, “I might never stop.”
Caroline returned to collect the bottle. “What will you do after you leave here?” she asked.
“Probably wish I could have stayed,” Bridger replied.
“I’m serious,” Caroline said.
“So am I. But, to answer your question, I’ll take Enoch up on his kind offer of a horse, and ride in a southerly direction until I find General Lee’s army.” He paused, watching her reaction, seeing it for what it was. “I’m a soldier, Caroline, and there is still a war to be fought.”
“How can you do that, after all you’ve seen, all that’s happened? You’ve already been wounded once—wasn’t that enough? Must you keep fighting until you’re killed? Is that what you want?”
“None of this is what I want,” Bridger replied calmly.
“Then why not simply go home?”
“When this is over, I will. Until then, I will fight.”
“For secession? For slavery?”
Bridger shook his head. “No. For Georgia. For Fairhaven, where my family has lived for three generations.”
Caroline knew she was wasting her breath; she could not make this hardheaded man see reason, and it was futile to argue. Still, she did. “You can’t win! Don’t you see that, Bridger? You can’t win. Oh, I know your General Lee has often outmaneuvered our Union forces, but how long will it be until his luck runs out? In the end, though, the rebellion won’t succeed because the North has greater numbers. It has railroads and farms and factories. What does the South really have, other than pride?”
“Are you finished, Caroline?” Bridger asked.
“Yes!” He was so damnably unruffled, so detached.
“Good. Then perhaps you would do me the courtesy of leaving me alone with my...pride.”
She stalked to the door. “By all means, wallow in your stupid pride all you want.” She wondered why she’d thought she could have a rational conversation with a Rebel. “See how well it serves you.”
There was a shrug in Bridger’s voice and anger in his eyes. “As long as I have it,” he said, “I won’t give up.”
Caroline stepped across the threshold, seething, slammed the door behind her and barely resisted a primitive urge to smash that bottle of whiskey to pieces against it.
She paced up and down the hallway until she’d expended most of the frenzied and chaotic energies any exchange with the redoubtable Bridger seemed to create in her. Other than anger, each emotion, being part of a curious tangle of opposites, seemed to countermand another.
Her life with Jacob, though not without its many joys and occasional sorrows, like any life, had consisted mostly of quiet agreement on shared objectives, such as which field ought to lie fallow for a year or two, which were to be sown, and with what crop.
When it became more and more likely that the long-standing fissures between North and South would result in armed conflict, Caroline had dreaded the coming war between the States, as most sensible people would, whatever their loyalties. She continued down the stairs, back to the parlor, but she was still too caught up in uncomfortable thoughts to turn her hand to some useful task.
Instead, she moved to the harpsichord. She was not a dreamer, or given to whimsical distractions; in fact, she rarely played, although she loved music, for the simple reason that there were only twenty-four hours in a day, and when she wasn’t sleeping, she was working. Doing productive things.
As any good wife and mother would.
Today, she made an exception. She smoothed her skirts, sat down on the narrow bench and uncovered the ivory keys, which were chipped in places and had faded over time to a yellowish beige. She cleared her throat delicately, and opened the songbook Rogan had sent to “Flow Gently, Sweet Afton,” squirmed a little, to settle herself, and began to play.
At first, the notes were tentative and awkward; as familiar as the piece was to Caroline, she was out of practice, and she hadn’t attempted it before.
The effort was calming, however, and her frustration began to subside. For a while, Caroline surrendered to the music, allowed it to carry her far away, into a realm where there was no war, no injustice, no regret.
After the first tune, she played from memory—familiar hymns, passages of Mozart and, finally, sentimental ballads. With these last, however, fragments of lyrics came back to her, all of them sad. Lines about lonely maidens vowing never to wed, descriptions of remembered sunsets and the shores of home fading into ghostly mists, noble lovers lost to death and, finally, empty cradles.
What had consoled Caroline in the beginning seemed unbearably maudlin now, but she needed the music and the making of it, so she resorted once again to the songbook.
She chose a camp song with a sprightly tempo and pounded it out with exuberance, purposely ignoring the lyrics, which were probably bawdy.
It was only as the last notes were vibrating toward silence that Caroline made the obvious connection and was ambushed by thoughts of Rogan.
He was certainly handsome, particularly in his uniform. The gifts he’d sent had delighted everyone, though he might not have acted purely out of generosity—after all, he’d practically forced Bridger on her, and then had the audacity to add a dog.
Not that Caroline minded Sweet Girl; she was such a joy to Rachel.
Yes, Caroline decided. She could forgive Rogan for the dog; forgiving him for inflicting Bridger upon her, however, might be more complicated.
He’d awakened something inside her, changed her in ways she couldn’t begin to understand, turned her entire conception of who and what she was upside down and inside out. And he had managed it so easily.
To him, their kiss had been a mere dalliance. Once he’d gone, he’d probably never think of her again.
She, on the other hand, would remember him. She would feel his mouth on hers at unexpected moments, when her defenses were down, when she was lonely or discouraged or weary after a day of hard work.
Whether she married again, or lived out the rest of her life as a widow, running the farm and raising her daughter, she would remember that, in the summer of 1863, she had buried her young husband, and had listened, horrified, to the near-constant roar of guns as a great battle raged all around. She had tended grievously wounded men, in her own side yard and in the nearby town, heard their cries, looked on helplessly as they died. She would recall the hasty burials, all over that part of Adams County.
At least she would not be alone in this; countless others would remember those first three days of July, the unspeakable brutality, the incomprehensible price paid by so many. The earth itself, gouged and scorched, stained with the blood of thousands, would bear witness to what had happened in and around the little town of Gettysburg for a very long time.
Sufficient unto the day, the evil thereof, Caroline thought bleakly. She, like her friends and neighbors, would carry the burden of these memories until she went to her own grave, most likely alongside that of her husband.
“Mama?”
Caroline looked up, saw Rachel standing in the parlor doorway, the dog beside her. She rose from the bench in front of the ha
rpsichord, alarmed by the pinched expression on her daughter’s face, the pallor of her skin, the very stillness of her small body.
“What is it?” she asked, already moving toward the child. “Are you ill?”
“It’s Jubie,” Rachel said, her voice trembling. “She said to come find you, and be quick about it, because her baby is coming.”
Dear Lord, Caroline thought, panicked. For Rachel’s sake, she pretended to be calm. “Everything will be all right, darling. You mustn’t fret.”
“I’m scared, Mama. Jubie’s holding her tummy and rolling all around, and she’s making noises like she’s sick.”
Caroline took her daughter gently by the shoulders. “Where is Jubie?”
Rachel shook her head, and tears welled in her eyes. “We were in the orchard, Jubie and Sweet Girl and me. And then she started feeling bad, and she told me she needs you to help her.”
“I will,” Caroline said. “What about Enoch? Where is he?”
“I don’t know,” Rachel replied. “Tell me what I’m supposed to do now, Mama.”
“You’ve already done all you can,” Caroline told her. “Now, you and Sweet Girl stay right here in the house. If Enoch comes in, ask him to ride to town and get your great-grandmother, in case we need her.”
“All right,” Rachel agreed, with a nod. “But I’m still scared.”
Caroline bent, kissed the top of the child’s head. “I’ll hurry back,” she said. “I promise.”
She heard the rhythmic thump of Bridger descending from the floor above, as he called out, “Caroline? What’s wrong?”
Caroline moved to the foot of the stairs and looked up at him. “Jubie’s in the orchard, and she’s in labor. I’ve got to get to her right away.”
Bridger nodded, making his painful, deliberate way down the stairs.
“What are you doing?” Caroline protested. “Go back to bed immediately. I don’t have time to argue with you!”
“No, you don’t,” Bridger said, and he kept right on coming. “So go. Do what you need to do. I’ll stay with Rachel and Sweet Girl in the meantime.”
The Yankee Widow Page 29