The Yankee Widow

by Linda Lael Miller

  “Some of the slaves will undoubtedly choose to remain at Fairhaven, yes,” Bridger said carefully.

  “Why would slaves refuse freedom?”

  “They won’t be refusing their freedom, Caroline. I assure you, they will have their liberty, whether they go or stay. And some of them will stay, because Fairhaven is their home—for many of them, the only one they’ve ever known. They’ve borne and reared their children there. Their dead are buried on the plantation.”

  “Oh,” said Caroline, reflecting now.

  “Yes,” he said. “Oh.”

  Caroline left the kettle of water to come to a boil on the stove top, took a few steps toward Bridger, stopped. Her throat worked as she struggled with what she wanted to say—or not say—next.

  “Are you—” here, her voice dropped to a near whisper “—as you said before, ‘an avowed rake’”?

  “I have been,” Bridger said, with neither shame nor pride. “Oh, I’ve been that and more—a lover of drunken brawls, illicit games of chance and low women.”

  “Why?” Caroline asked, as if baffled. Her tone was almost plaintive.

  “I guess I didn’t see any reason to be otherwise. Not until I became a soldier, in any case.” And until I met you. “If there is anything redemptive about war, it may be that seeing so much pain and death, a man begins to take a tally of things he’s done or not done. He looks at his past, the present being largely intolerable, and the future—well—the future may not exist at all. Around the next bend in the road, beyond the next blast of cannon fire, the next bullet or bayonet, there might be nothing. With luck, all this reflection yields a few sobering insights.”

  “What insights?” Caroline wanted to know. She spoke softly, and without sarcasm.

  Bridger gave a great sigh. “Nothing profound or elevating,” he warned as a preamble. “I simply took note of certain of my personal failings, which, of course, were obvious to everyone else. There was a kind of anger, for one thing. I always felt an inner outrage—my mother died when I still needed her more than I would have admitted, my father was...my father. He always favored my older half brother, Tristan. I was a younger son, and therefore doomed to eternal boyhood, dependent on the old man and, after him, my half brother. That made me a kind of financial eunuch, I thought. Poor, unfortunate me.”

  Rachel peered through the doorway, her small body framed by morning light. “Are we still having mush for breakfast, Mama? I hope not, because I do not favor mush, and Sweet Girl doesn’t, either.”

  With a little smile, Caroline turned her head to address her daughter’s concerns. “That is indeed a pity, Rachel,” she said. “Because you are having mush, and so am I.”

  “I want what the men had,” Rachel wheedled sweetly. “What did they have?”

  “Mush,” Bridger lied.

  Rachel frowned, kicked at the raised threshold with one miniscule foot, then turned back to the fresh delights of tall grass, blue skies and a faithful dog.

  Bridger laughed. “That child is resilient,” he said. “A fairly good checkers player, too.”

  Caroline stood within reach, and it would have been so easy to kiss her.

  There was a wagon out on the road; they both tensed at the sound of it.

  “Stay out of sight,” Caroline said quickly.

  Bridger saluted, started for the nearest window.

  Caroline grabbed him by the arm. “Wait,” she said. “Let me see who it is.”

  A brief deadlock ensued. Bridger had a bad arm, but he was still a man, and not one who hid behind a woman’s skirts.

  “There’s a shotgun in the cellar,” Caroline said. “Behind the flour barrel.”

  With that, she was hurrying to the door and into the yard.

  Bridger started after her, came to a halt when he heard the cordial rise and fall of Caroline’s voice as she greeted someone—a man, from the timbre of the answering voice. A neighbor? Someone from town?

  He went to the window, keeping to one side, deliberating. When he finally risked taking a quick look outside, he saw the road, the gate, part of the yard, then a soldier in a blue uniform.

  He quickly went down the cellar stairs, and shut the door behind him.

  Bridger found the shotgun where Caroline said it would be, but he took little comfort in its discovery. The barrels were dull with accumulated dust, and cobwebs coated the stock, dangled from the trigger guard.

  Bridger softened the tension in his arms and shoulders, laid the shotgun across the lidded barrel. It was probably useless, anyway; if Caroline called for help, he’d use the thing as a club.

  He wanted to go outside, make sure she was all right.

  But he heard the horse and buggy making a slow retreat to the road, and a moment later, heavy footsteps sounded overhead.

  The cellar door creaked open. “That army fellow is gone,” Enoch called from the top of the cellar steps.

  Bridger reached for the shotgun, thinking it might be salvaged if the firing mechanism hadn’t rusted over, and went up.

  Caroline was back inside, muttering as she poured cornmeal into the kettle on the stove. “That man went on so long,” she complained, “I thought sure this pot would boil dry.”

  “Is anybody going to tell me what he wanted?” Bridger said.

  Enoch took the shotgun from Bridger’s hand and examined it, frowning. “He wanted to let Missus know there’ll be some men along, in the next day, to gather up those poor dead boys and see about getting them back to the home folks.”

  “And he took his time doing it,” Caroline fussed. She sliced some bread, buttered the pieces and handed two of them to Rachel, who had just come in with her dog. “Here, sweetheart. I bet you’re hungry.”

  “I am,” Rachel said. “And Sweet Girl is, too. Can I share my food with her?”

  “May I,” Caroline corrected fondly. “And yes, you may.” A slight frown creased her brow. “Where is your sun bonnet, Rachel Hammond?”

  A cloud overtook Rachel’s entire countenance. Then she made her confession. “It’s under your bed, Mama. Sweet Girl chewed it up, and I thought you’d be mad, so I hid it.”

  “You have others,” Caroline pointed out. “Eat your bread, and then go and get one.”

  “Shall I get one for you, too, Mama?” she asked.

  Bridger bit the inside of his lip to keep from laughing.

  Enoch smiled. “I reckon she has you there, Missus,” he said.

  Pretending she hadn’t heard, Caroline shook her head. “Yes,” she said, cheeks pink. “Please fetch a bonnet for me as well.”

  Rachel started for the door.

  “Stay in the shade while you’re eating,” Caroline called after her. “That sun will turn your skin to leather if you don’t.”

  When the child and the dog had gone, she turned, and the pink had faded from her cheeks. She looked directly at Bridger and said, “I guess you wouldn’t agree to hide in the cellar again, or under the—inside the house.”

  “No, Caroline,” Bridger answered, sorry he couldn’t stay. Sorry for so many things he was unable to put into words. “I’ll leave tomorrow, before dawn.”

  She nodded and looked away.

  “This shotgun,” Enoch interjected, a little too loudly, “might do more damage to the one who fires it than it will to the target.”

  With that, he sat down at the far end of the table and began taking the gun apart, piece by piece. He muttered as he worked, got up to fetch oil and soft cloth and a length of heavy wire for a ramrod.

  Bridger left the kitchen house, feeling unaccountably low in spirits. Ensuring he wouldn’t be seen from the road, he made for the creek, thought he’d follow it a ways, see where it led. He tired sooner than he would have liked, considering the long ride ahead of him. Eventually he found a boulder partially shaded by a copse of trees, and sat down, tossing pebbl
es into the water and brooding.

  He had to let Rogan know where he stood somehow, tell his friend he had strong feelings for Caroline. He didn’t know what Rogan’s intent was with regard to her but he needed to make his clear. They were used to competing, and that went back to their days at school and summers at Fairhaven. But this was different. The stakes were too high.

  He’d always wondered whether Rogan and Amalie had feelings for each other—feelings beyond the playful affection they’d shared in earlier times, when Rogan used to regularly visit Fairhaven. Bridger knew the two of them still occasionally exchanged letters. Did that mean anything, other than the continuation of a friendship? Back in their youthful days, Amalie’s company certainly hadn’t interfered with the competition between him and Rogan.

  Bridger gave a rueful snort at the memories, tossed another stone, watched it splash and sink. Before every contest, every dance—where there’d be pretty girls aplenty—they’d shaken hands and agreed to a sporting challenge, always with the tacit understanding that there were no holds barred.

  And now there was Caroline.

  He shouldn’t have been surprised, really. But everything would have been a hell of a lot easier if he’d never set eyes on this particular woman.

  The odds now, of course, were in Rogan’s favor. He was a Northerner and, when the time was right, he could court Caroline freely, without the risk of capture. He would write long letters, each one a little more personal than the last, send her gifts, like that songbook she liked so much. Furthermore, Rogan would probably be a better husband, a better provider, too, with his law degree and his fine military record.

  Still, Bridger had stirred Caroline to passion; he knew that one kiss had shaken her, just as it had him.

  He’d been tempted to use every trick he knew, no denying that, but he hadn’t, for exactly the same reasons that might have compelled her to give in—her loneliness, her sorrow, her vulnerability.

  He wouldn’t have been able to live with himself afterward if he’d taken advantage of Caroline. She was the kind of woman a man married, loved into frenzies on clean sheets, fathered children with—and cherished forever.

  He ought to bow out, wish his friend well and move on. Finish this stupid war, and go home to stay, do his utmost to resurrect Fairhaven. Find himself a pretty Southern wife who’d be proud that he’d fought for the Confederacy, win or lose.

  If he had any sense at all, he’d do those things.

  The problem was, when it came to Caroline, he didn’t have a lick of sense.

  His love for her was a reckless thing, dangerous and unwieldy, but he could not turn away from it.

  No, he’d find a way to square things with Rogan, if they could be squared. Make his intentions clear. Anything less would be dishonorable.

  It was decided, then. He, Bridger Winslow, the most unsuitable of second husbands for a staunch Yankee widow, was willing to make a fool of himself, and chance losing his finest friend in the process, to have Caroline by his side and in his bed. For now and for always.

  26

  Hammond Farm

  August 12, 1863

  Caroline

  They met in the side yard at dawn the next morning, where the tents had been, and stood in the dew-dampened grass, beside the dead slave catcher’s horse, Bridger handsome and bearded in the crisp blue uniform of his enemies, Caroline in an ordinary dress, a shawl pulled tight around her shoulders against the chill of the last hour before dawn.

  Bridger’s rucksack contained his few personal possessions, as well as a few civilian clothes, once Jacob’s, that Caroline had given him. When he reached the South, he’d change into them; it would hardly do to be seen in Union blue.

  Instead of the relief she’d anticipated at his leave taking, Caroline ached with a sorrow so profound she thought the very structure of her heart might collapse, every pillar and beam, like an old house. She had so much to say, and for that reason, she dared not speak.

  Bridger’s eyes seemed luminous as he looked at her, and it seemed to Caroline that, in those moments, no words would serve.

  She would not weep. Her tears were like the mouth of a powerful river, barely contained, ever surging forth, seeking to break free; she might well be swept away on its treacherous current, spun round and round—to drown or wash up on some dreaded shore, her own ghost, useless to everyone who needed her.

  Bridger was the first to move, first to speak; he raised one gloved hand, the gelding’s reins resting in the other, and laid his palm gently to her cheek. “Caroline,” he said, in a tone of bleak wonder. “I think I would rather die than leave you.”

  “But you must go,” Caroline managed, although the words came out sounding tremulous. “You must go.”

  He touched his lips to her forehead, very lightly and very briefly.

  “I know,” he murmured, his face so close to hers that she felt his breath on her skin, the tickle of his red-gold whiskers against her eyelids.

  Caroline drew back, though only a little way, for she could bear to go no farther. No, she wanted the small grace of standing within the warmth of his body, the scent of his skin and his hair. Surely, it wasn’t too much to ask.

  “Jubie’s owner,” Caroline whispered, for something good had to come of this parting. “Her name is Mrs. T. A. Templeton.”

  “Ah, yes,” Bridger said, his mouth a fraction of an inch from Caroline’s face. “Delia Templeton. We’re acquainted.”

  Caroline drew back again, suddenly, jolted by an unbecoming flash of jealousy, a thing she had no earthly right to feel. She had no claim on this man, and it frightened her how much she wished she did.

  “Oh,” she said.

  He made a chortling sound. “Caroline,” he said again, and it struck her as a wonder how much he could communicate simply by saying her name—assurance, humor, tenderness, anger, sorrow. A world of feelings.

  “Go,” Caroline pleaded, because she wanted to clutch and cling, to stand on the toes of his boots, wrap her arms around him and hold on tight. “They’ll be here soon. The soldiers.”

  “Yes,” Bridger replied, but he didn’t move to turn from her, mount his horse, ride away into the glimmering shadows of night becoming day. “Caroline—”

  She lifted her hand, pressed the tips of two fingers to his mouth. “No, Bridger. Please.” Oh, please.

  Go now.

  Stay, for always.

  Very slowly, he stepped back. Nodding once, turning to swing deftly into the saddle. She saw his throat work, but he did not say the word she had heard too many times.

  Goodbye.

  He lifted his cap, gazed at her for a long moment, and then he reined the horse toward whatever fate awaited him.

  Caroline stood still in the gathering light and watched as Bridger rode to the open gate, then onto the winding dirt road. She watched as the growing distance melded horse and man into a single form.

  Watched until there was nothing more to see.

  27

  Hammond Farm

  August 19, 1863

  Enoch

  How the Missus had pined, that second week in August, after Captain Winslow started south.

  She tried her considerable best, being who she was, to tuck her grief away, out of sight, but Enoch knew her too well to be fooled; young Mr. Jacob had courted her for a long while before he’d finally brought her to the Hammond farm as his bride, and she’d often been there before that. Used to go along with her grandfather, old Doc Prescott, when he made his rounds in that ancient buggy of his, even as a little bit of a girl, and they’d stop in sometimes, the two of them, so the Doc could water his mule and bide a while with the last Missus to make sure her rheumatism wasn’t plaguing her too much.

  Seemed like Jacob, just a lad himself, took to her right off. He’d follow her about, tug at her pigtails, show her a newborn ca
lf or a litter of kittens out at the barn, pretend he meant to toss her into the creek, ruffled dress, patent leather shoes and all. She’d get indignant and call him ten kinds of rascal, say she wasn’t coming back, ever.

  The next time Doc rolled in, though, there she’d be, right beside him on the buggy seat.

  Enoch tried to stay clear of the house when there was company, but often little Miss Caroline Prescott would find him anyhow. She’d ask if he wanted to borrow the book she’d just finished reading, chatter on about the last one they’d shared. She always had plenty of questions, that one, about the crops and the farm animals and the weather, and she’d confide in him, too. She’d say she couldn’t for the life of her reason out what made Jacob Hammond act like such a fool.

  “Reckon he’s one of those, all right,” Enoch recalled telling her once, when she was thirteen or fourteen. He’d been digging potatoes on a muggy Saturday in late September, and she’d stood at the edge of the garden patch, watching him work, having somehow evaded Jacob for half a minute. “You just wait, though, Miss Prescott. That boy will get more sense as he grows up.”

  Enoch smiled at the memory, standing at the cabin stove that hot morning, waiting for the coffee grounds to settle in the pot.

  Jubie, who was up and around by then, though a week or two short of being ready to marry, took notice and said, “What you smiling about, Mister-man, looking sad and happy both at once?”

  He liked her calling him “Mister-man,” though he’d never told her so. “I was recalling the Missus when she was a girl, coming to the farm with her grandfather.”

  “Is that the happy part, or the sad?” Jubie wanted to know. She’d fashioned a kind of sling for the baby so she could carry him around with her as she went about her day. She had an instinct for mothering, knew when to keep the boy close and when to let him lie in the wooden crate that served as his bed. Enoch was building little Gideon a proper cradle, fine as any to be had, but that was a secret, for now; he wanted the gift ready to sleep in before he showed it to her.