The Yankee Widow

by Linda Lael Miller

  “It was the happy part,” he replied, reaching for a mug.

  “What’s the sad one?” Jubie persisted, handing him a potholder when he burned his hand on the handle of the coffee pot and drew back with a hiss, shaking it.

  “I oughtn’t to say,” Enoch said, using the potholder now and pouring brew into his cup. He didn’t have much in the way of household goods, not yet anyway. Just one of everything needful, and few enough of such things as that potholder, since he’d always taken his meals down at the kitchen house.

  Jubie gave him a hard poke in the ribs, nearly causing him to spill the coffee halfway to his mouth. “If we’re going to throw in together,” she informed him, “you can’t have secrets from me.”

  Enoch looked at her over the rim of his mug, saw her through a wisp of fragrant steam. “Is that so? Then I guess you know you’ve got some talking to do yourself.” He shook his head. “There’s a little too much I don’t know about you.”

  “Didn’t I tell Miss Caroline all about Missus Templeton and how she treated me?” Jubie challenged. “Didn’t I give out that awful woman’s name and everything, knowing it could get me killed?”

  Enoch sighed. “I’m not going to let this go, and don’t you think I am.” He paused, reluctantly set his coffee aside. “You understand me, Jubie-gal?”

  She gave a short, grudging nod. Smoothed the baby’s tiny head, resting against her bosom as it was. The baby made sweet murmuring sounds as he slept, content in the soft sturdiness of his sling.

  “I believe Captain Winslow took a piece of the Missus right along with him when he left from here,” Enoch allowed, trying to convey by his lowered brows that he was keeping track of confidences exchanged. “That’s the sad part.”

  “That man’s a Rebel,” Jubie pointed out, though not as saucily as she might have. “When Miss Caroline’s ready to marry up again, and that won’t be for a long while yet, she’d be better off taking up with Captain McBride. He’s a Northerner, and a good-looker, too.”

  “Why is that better?” Enoch asked, honestly curious. “Captain Winslow isn’t ugly, and when this war’s over, there won’t be Yankees and Confederates anymore. We’ll all be Americans, same as before.”

  The baby stirred, whimpered.

  Jubie went to the table, sat down and opened her dress, put the child to her breast.

  Enoch looked away, felt his face burning.

  For a few moments, there was no sound but the baby’s suckling.

  “I don’t guess one is any better than the other,” Jubie admitted with a sigh. “Truth is, with all those men out there shooting at each other, Miss Caroline isn’t likely to lay eyes on either of them again, not in this life. She’ll marry some other man, but when she does, I bet she’s gonna take up with somebody from around here.”

  “I hate to think that,” Enoch grumbled. “Anybody like that will be looking to get himself a good farm, and if he gets a pretty wife into the bargain, all the better. But the other two, Bridger and Captain McBride, they love her.”

  Jubie rocked in her seat, holding the nursing baby so tenderly that the sight made Enoch feel bruised inside. “Sometimes,” she said quietly, musing aloud, “I still think you love Miss Caroline, too, Mister-man.”

  “I guess I do,” Enoch said at some length, “but not in the marrying way. More like I cared for Jacob and his folks. I told you that before.”

  Jubie’s dark eyes searched his face. “You might care a whole different way, though, if her skin was the same color as yours.”

  “It isn’t,” Enoch said, aggrieved at having to state the obvious. Then, sterner still, he added, “There’s no point in thinking such thoughts, no point at all. And I tell you now, Jubie, that although I’m not a man for lording it over my woman, I am a man. And I will not be nagged and pestered over things that might have happened, but never did.”

  Jubie was not cowed, that much was obvious, and Enoch wouldn’t have wanted her to be, but he was quite confounded by the glow that came to her eyes, and the soft set of her mouth. “When do you figure I’ll be able to lie down with you proper, Mister-man?” she asked. “It don’t seem right to me, you sleepin’ on the floor of a night, and me all alone in that nice bed.”

  Enoch went rock hard, and he turned away from Jubie, so she wouldn’t see. “I don’t know,” he said, and was out the door in a few strides. “When you’re ready. When...when you’ve recovered from having the baby, I guess.”

  Once he’d cleared the cabin, he walked even faster, considered changing course, heading for the stream to give himself a dunking in that cold, cold water.

  He decided against the idea right away, since it would only cause him more vexation, having to go back to the cabin, fetch himself dry clothes, and then go outside again to put them on, so Jubie wouldn’t see.

  Instead, he prowled the orchard, waiting for his desire to relent.

  Such was his wanting, so intense was his desire, that he might never have had relief if he hadn’t heard the sounds, just then, of at least a dozen wagons coming from way down on the road beyond the main house. Horses, too.

  That was all it took to turn Enoch’s mind, and thus his body, in a whole new direction.

  He made for the edge of the orchard, stood behind the broad, gnarled trunk of one of the oldest apple trees in Adams County, squinting into the distance.

  Sure enough, the Yankees had come back for their dead. Three riders were at the head of the procession, all wearing blue, and sitting up soldier-straight in their saddles.

  One of them dismounted to open the gate, led his horse through and got back on, adjusting his kepi as he settled in again. The other two riders followed, and the wagons streamed in behind them.

  Enoch, already running toward the house, counted ten buckboards, each drawn by a team of four gleaming, muscular horses, none of them matched. Most of the wagon beds were empty, though two were loaded with rolls of what looked like tent canvas.

  Seeing the Missus come out of the kitchen house, drying her hands on her apron, Enoch wanted to run even faster, but prudence ruled, and he slowed his pace.

  The sight of a man charging toward them like a bull might just inspire one or more of those Union soldiers to draw their pistols or reach for their rifles.

  They were bound to be skittish, since they were here to dig up the moldering bodies of fallen comrades, wrap them in canvas and haul them for miles, over rutted roads, bedeviled by flies every inch of the way, and gagging on the stench of decomposition.

  By the time Enoch reached Caroline’s side, all the wagons were in.

  “You go inside, Missus,” Enoch said, breathing hard. “Look after Miss Rachel.”

  She looked up at him, blinked, as though startled to see him there. “I was kneading bread dough,” she explained.

  Enoch studied her, a little shaken. “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “You finish now. Is Miss Rachel in there, too? In the kitchen house?”

  Just like that, the Missus came back to herself. “Yes, of course,” she said. She cast an anxious glance toward the wagons, which had stopped, as the drivers awaited instructions. Some were glum of countenance, others chewed and spat tobacco, while still others leered at her. “Of course.”

  With that, she hurried back inside the kitchen house and shut the door.

  Enoch hoped she’d latched it, too, but he knew it would be unwise to hurry over there to grasp the handle and make sure. These were Union men, yes, but that didn’t mean the women and children were safe around them, didn’t mean they were all honorable—and such a move would surely draw their attention.

  He wanted them to forget about the Missus.

  Forget everything about this farm, in fact, except for the corpses buried in the fallow field soon after the battle in early July.

  Let them tend to the task they’d come here for and then go.

  One of t
he riders approached, removing his hat as he came nearer. He looked down from his tall horse, a thin, solemn man, probably in his forties, his skin cratered along one cheek, evidence of a childhood case of smallpox or a youth of cystic pustules. His eyes were gray, hard and sharp, like the blade of a hunting knife.

  “I assume,” he said, “that the lady is not your wife.”

  Enoch kept his face impassive, not because he was frightened, but because this kind of impertinence and cold contempt, which, luckily, he’d rarely encountered since he’d come to Pennsylvania with the elder Mr. Hammond years before, made his hackles rise.

  He wanted to grip the soldier by his fine coat, drag him down off that tall horse of his and fling him to the ground. Put one foot on his throat and press just hard enough to make his eyes bulge.

  He could not afford to do any such thing, of course, but he wasn’t going to grovel, either. He was incapable of obsequiousness, even when it might have been smarter than a steady, level gaze and an implacable tone.

  “The lady is not my wife,” he confirmed, his voice even. “My name is Enoch Flynn, and I am the hired man.”

  “Flynn?” the soldier repeated. A mocking smile lit his flat eyes. “You’re Irish?”

  “I’m an American,” Enoch replied. “Like you. And,” he added, “I’m a Union supporter, too.”

  The soldier reddened slightly, and set his back teeth. “We have business here,” he said briskly. “According to our records, there are Union remains interred on this property.”

  “Yes, indeed,” Enoch said.

  He was thinking of Jubie and the baby and the Missus, but the man he’d killed and reburied in the same field as the dead soldiers hovered at the edge of his mind. Once again, he was relieved that he hadn’t moved the body a second time; after much deliberation, he’d decided to leave it where it was rather than call attention to newly broken ground.

  Whatever happened would happen.

  For now, all he could do was take the next step that seemed right to him, and those after it, one by one.

  A second rider came up alongside the first, a young soldier with the cream-and-coffee skin of a mulatto. He kept his expressionless dark eyes on Enoch as he took a small packet from the inside pocket of his coat and handed it to the other man.

  A map, Enoch figured. Hand drawn, rather than printed, sketched in haste by one of the soldiers who had done the burying. He wondered if they’d taken an accurate count, those reluctant grave diggers, and hoped they’d been in too much of a hurry to bother.

  Wondered, too, about the young soldier gazing at him now. He might be a friend, but he might also be a foe. It would have been a consolation to know which.

  The steely-eyed rider, having studied the paper thoroughly, refolded it and gave it back to his companion, who put it back inside his coat. All this time, the young soldier never looked away from Enoch’s face, never spoke or gave any indication of what he made of all this.

  Nothing, maybe. Just another day in the hard, sorry life of a soldier.

  Enoch stared back, just to show he wasn’t going to flinch.

  “Let’s get this over with,” the first rider said. He raised one hand, the leather of his glove rein worn and stained with old sweat.

  When he nudged his horse into motion, the third rider and then the wagons followed, moving slowly. The second soldier remained, controlling his paint pony without perceptible use of his knees or hands.

  For several minutes, he and Enoch looked at each other in silence.

  Enoch was the first to concede. He could hold out as long as anybody when it came to a stare down, but he needed to keep an eye on the shovel men, see if they’d find the slave hunter’s carcass, and what they’d think about it if they did.

  “I suppose we ought to lend a hand,” Enoch said, with a gesture toward the departing wagons. Soon, they’d be crossing the creek at the shallow place, following the well-worn trail that wound past behind the cabin.

  The young soldier finally opened his mouth. “Go and tell the Missus to hide herself till we’re gone,” he said. Nothing changed in his face, although he gave a slight nod in the direction of the riders and wagons. “Sergeant Baylor up there, who was just talking to you, he’s a bitter man. Figures he ought to be a lieutenant, and he’s mad as hell that he isn’t and that instead he’s been given the detail of digging up the dead. If he gets the chance, he’s likely to take his anger out on the lady, tell himself he’s owed something for his sacrifice. I’ve seen him do it before.”

  Enoch nodded, solemn faced.

  The young soldier introduced himself as Corporal Morris, then rode on, willing his deft little pony into a trot.

  Enoch waited, right where he was, until the last of the wagons rolled out of sight. Then he sprinted to the kitchen house.

  Caroline had latched the door, and he had to pound on it, call out to her.

  She opened it, her eyes wide, Rachel clinging to her skirts with both hands, while the dog whimpered just behind them.

  “You’ve got to get yourself to that hiding place inside the main house,” Enoch said. “You and the child. I want you to stay there, no matter what you hear outside, until I come for you. I’ll take the dog, tie her up in the barn.”

  Caroline was prone to argument, especially when anybody told her what to do and how and when to do it, but this time, she merely nodded.

  Enoch quickly led the way across the yard, ever watchful.

  Once they were inside the main house, he could breathe better, not so fast and deep as to make his head spin.

  Reaching the parlor, he went straight to the harpsichord, pulled the little rug aside and raised the trap door.

  Caroline lowered herself into it, and Enoch handed Rachel down after her.

  Only then did Caroline, standing down in that hole, her upturned face a white oval in the darkness, ask, “Enoch, what’s wrong?”

  “No time to explain,” Enoch replied. In his mind, he was already on his way to warn Jubie to stay inside the cabin and keep herself and the baby quiet. “I’ll be back for you, soon as I can.”

  “All right, then,” she answered.

  Enoch lowered the trap door and moved the rug into place.

  He left the main house and hurried to the barn, using a rope to secure Sweet Girl to a stall. Then he ran to the cabin at a speed he wouldn’t have dreamed he could reach or maintain.

  He found Jubie at the stove, stirring something in a kettle.

  He told her there were men in the field just yonder, Yankees come to fetch the bodies waiting to be claimed. He said he had reason to believe there were no-accounts among the soldiers just come, and she was to stay put and keep herself and the child quiet. Lower the latch as soon as he went out, too.

  “But if they’re Union men—?”

  “Just do as I say, Jubie,” Enoch broke in. “And if somebody knocks at that door, don’t you open it. If you even think soldiers are prowling around in the yard, you get under the bed, you and the baby, and if he fusses, let him suckle.”

  Enoch strode back to the door, shut it behind him.

  Waited until he heard the heavy bar brought down inside.

  By the time he got to the field, Baylor’s men were digging while he sat his horse in the deep shade of an oak that had probably been as old as the seven deadly sins long before George Washington took command of the Continental Army and commenced to lead the Revolution.

  Morris, the soldier he’d spoken with earlier, was off his pony and right there in the midst of the digging.

  Some of the bodies had already been unearthed, and they made for a gruesome sight, those dirt-caked cadavers, still in the process of decomposing. The crew worked fast, rolling them up in lengths of filthy canvas, stacking them in the wagons.

  The smell was thick and cloying, amplified by the heavy heat, and most of the soldiers had tied t
heir bandanas over their noses and mouths. One of the youngest was bent double, spewing up his rations, while a few of the others taunted him, calling him “Nellie” and urging him to get back to work.

  Enoch stayed clear of Morris, lest Baylor see them together and decide they were in cahoots, both of them being “colored” and thus suspect in the mind of a man like that.

  “Say,” one of the other soldiers said. “This one over here, he ain’t wearin’ the uniform.”

  Enoch broke out in a sweat, wiped his brow with his handkerchief, but did it slowly, so he wouldn’t look nervous. He watched as the soldier laid aside his shovel and went over to stand at the edge of the hole and examine its contents.

  Enoch knew he ought to be doing something instead of standing there like one of the pillars in Samson’s temple, but he couldn’t move. Couldn’t even draw breath.

  Morris glanced his way, but only briefly, then turned back to the hole and the boy-soldier who’d dug it.

  “Roll him up and put him with the others,” he said. “Must’ve been a roustabout or a scout.”

  The younger soldier didn’t ask any questions, didn’t hesitate. “Yes, sir,” he said, then called out for a canvas. When it was brought, the two soldiers lifted the corpse out of its resting place and laid it down, wrapped it in its rough shroud, and went on to another grave.

  Enoch felt a rush of sweet relief so intense that it nearly buckled his knees. When he figured he could walk properly instead of stumbling, he helped load the wagons.

  The work went on for the better part of an hour; it was hot, ugly labor, and the stench was terrible. There were maggots, and foul fluids seeped through the bundles of canvas, dripped to the ground through the cracks between the slats of the wagon beds.

  Enoch thought of sowing corn or grain or hay on this ground, and almost did some heaving of his own. If the Missus agreed, he’d leave the field untilled for a year or two, give the weather time to cleanse it of all that death.

  When those poor dead soldiers had been rolled up in cloth and stowed, Baylor rode idly out of his shady haven and told Morris, “There should be twenty-seven bodies, according to orders.”