A Heartbeat Away: Quilts of Love Series

by S. Dionne Moore

  “A pinch of cinnamon and a bit of the hot water,” Gerta nodded toward the kettle, “will warm it up just fine.”

  Ridiculous that tea still soothed on such a warm day, but it did. She inhaled, and the rich cinnamon took her back to another time, years before. Her throat swelled shut as the memories assaulted her afresh. She stared down into the cup. A shell whizzed and shattered. Beth started, the tea splashing onto her hand, the tin mug slipped to the floor and spilled its contents.

  A shout rent the air then. Beth caught her grandmother’s moment of confusion before she wiped her hands down her apron and bolted toward the door. One word spat into the air that explained the sudden outburst. “Joe.”

  2

  Beth held the candle up to see that Joe sat up in bed, eyes wide open as his voice lifted on another wail. Gerta moved past, her voice soothing, her hands placing gentle pressure against the man’s shoulders, encouraging him to recline. But he broke into a series of panicked screams, body rigid, muscles bunched.

  Beth set the candle on the low table and lunged forward to grasp his good arm. She wrenched it down to keep him from flailing and tearing open the wound her grandmother had just mended. She braced her body against his. His struggles forced her to grasp tighter, to join her grandmother’s soft-spoken attempts to relieve him of his terror. Each shout ripped from him. Her ears rang with each scream and still she kept up the quiet reassurance until the muscles in his arms went flaccid and he sank back, his brow beaded with sweat, hair damp. Beth straightened, drawing air into her starved lungs. She glanced at her grandmother, and her mouth went dry when she saw Gerta’s blood-saturated apron.

  “He tore open the wound,” Gerta confirmed, her fatigue showing in the whiteness of her lips. She stroked her sleeve across her brow, sweeping loosened tendrils of gray hair behind her ear.

  Beth assessed what needed to be done and hurried outside as fast as her leg would allow. She yanked fresh linens from the drying line. Arms full, she entered the springhouse as Gerta lit the wick of the lantern and raised it to the hook she’d pounded into the wall the evening the slaves had delivered the wounded man. She blew out the candle.

  At the foot of the cot, Beth dumped the fresh towels beside his feet. Where he’d been wide awake in the grip of his private terror, he now slept. She moved to the table where her grandmother’s scissors lay and placed them in her grandmother’s soft hand. Gerta cut the edge of the material of Joe’s once-clean shirt and ripped upward, laying bare his chest and the long, deep wound, slick with blood.

  “I should have left him bare-chested. Waste of a good shirt.” Gerta rolled a towel and pressed it against the wound.

  “You had no way of knowing this would happen.”

  They worked over the inert form until the sun was low in the sky. Gerta’s head tilted as if she listened for something. “You hear that?”

  Beth caught on to what she meant. “They stopped.”

  Her grandmother’s eyes flicked toward the small window high in the east wall.

  Beth upended the buckets she’d used to haul water into the kitchen for boiling, too tired to think, the pain radiating in full fury. And still there was bread to bake. Gerta, too, moved slower than normal.

  “He should sleep for a while. I worry about having him out here. If he wakes again, we might not hear him.”

  “And someone else might.”

  Gerta cut her eyes to Beth. “You worry too much. He’s a man. He’s shot. He’s helpless.”

  “We’d be helping the enemy.”

  “If we get harassed for that, it’s not us with the problem.”

  Certain in her reasoning, Gerta stepped quite lively toward the wagon. “I’ll get Jim to help us take him inside. Take the wagon and fetch him.”

  “Won’t Mr. Nisewander have a problem with—”

  “He won’t even miss him.”

  Frustrated at her grandmother’s refusal to listen to any argument against her own ideas, Beth released a soft breath rather than the huff of annoyance that would have granted a measure of satisfaction. She decided to walk the short distance to the house, too nervous for the ride. Tension was bottled up in the pit of her stomach. More than anything, she wanted to head into Sharpsburg and gather news on what was happening. Stubborn her grandmother might be, but surely the woman would listen to reason if the troops were rumored to be heading in their direction. If Gerta had made provision for the livestock, she must be worried.

  But somehow Beth doubted it. She believed there was little that rattled the old woman, a trait both awe-inspiring and frightening.

  As Beth limped into the dense woods, she stepped carefully, imagining the muscles in her leg relaxing. At least moving seemed to ease the stiffness of standing in one place. The little log cabin of Mr. Nisewander’s free field slave came into view. Jim seldom strayed far from Norman Nisewander, age seventy-two, and Norman’s son refused to separate the faithful man from his ailing father. Every morning for as many years as she could remember, Jim went to the big house to care for and be companion to Norman, while the other Nisewander slaves, now owned by the son, worked in the fields.

  The little log cabin stood proudly in that corner of the field closest to the woods, far from the house and outbuildings, but not so far that Jim couldn’t be summoned should Norman need something in the night.

  She raised her hand to knock and jumped when Jim’s voice boomed out behind her.

  “Jim’s not home.”

  She turned, a ready smile on her face. The large man’s coffee-colored skin retained few wrinkles despite his fine crop of silver hair. His dirty knees and the shovel gripped in his hand gave evidence to what he’d been doing.

  “You look well, Jim.”

  “Won’t feel so well if them Rebs have their way.”

  “You’re a free man.”

  “Done begged Mr. Nisewander to let me hitch the wagon and take us on up to Mercersville. His brother’s up there, ya know. But he say no, he too old to be rattling around in a wagon for all that ways.”

  Jim lowered his head a moment, his words softer now. “The leg giving you trouble?”

  Beth felt the familiar poke at the precarious wall that retained her deeper emotions. “I’ve been on it a bit longer than usual.” Descending the step, she put her good foot down first, relieved she did not fall, one of her worst fears. She tried to project a lighter tone. “Grandma has a wounded soldier at our place. She needs him moved into the house and wondered if you could help us.”

  Jim glanced away, his expression unreadable in the low light. “A real soldier? A Union man?”

  She swallowed, wishing so much he hadn’t asked, or that she didn’t have to answer. “A Reb. A band of blacks brought him to us in the night. They were heading north from Middleton.” She shrugged, repeating only what she’d learned secondhand.

  “They risked their lives for a Grayback.”

  It seemed there had been more to the story. “They said him and his brother saved their lives, and they couldn’t just leave him to die.”

  Jim seemed mollified by the news. He shifted his weight to his other foot, lips pooched as he scratched along his short beard. “Reckon it won’t hurt none to help.”

  “She’ll be grateful, as am I.”

  “Hurt bad, is he?”

  She licked her lips, wishing for a cool drink. Jim set the pace at a quick trot that left her struggling to keep up. The limbs and brush clawed at her skirts as the two of them passed along the trail through the woods. She gasped when a prickly branch scratched across her burned hand, drawing blood. She dabbed at the area with her apron and let Jim get ahead of her so that she could rest. She hated weakness. Hated that her leg hindered her so much. Tears burned her eyes, but she widened her eyes and willed them away. Now was no time to feel sorry for herself. Not if she didn’t want others to do the same.

  Jim carried the wounded soldier like a baby at her grandmother’s incessant urging not to jostle her patient. He knelt to lay the man in the
front room on a thick pile of blankets her grandmother had prepared in her absence.

  “Having him in here will work so much better. If we can just keep him still. Jim, if you’ll bring in the cot, I’d rather have him higher. It’ll make it easier to care for his needs and be much easier on Beth’s leg.”

  She frowned at her grandmother, but Gerta didn’t notice as she shifted the man’s haversack against the wall and straightened up, hand to her back.

  “It’ll be easier on you as well,” Beth felt compelled to remind her grandmother.

  Gerta gave an absent nod and flapped a hand at Jim to send him on his way. He returned in minutes with the framework of the cot beneath his arm. At Gerta’s direction he placed it against the wall, retrieved the bedding, then lifted the soldier onto it. Gerta crossed her arms and nodded in obvious satisfaction.

  “That will do quite nicely. Thank you, Jim.” When the black man had left, Gerta did a quick examination of the wound and the bandage, pressed her hand against the man’s face, and nodded in silent approval. “Time will tell.”

  “Go to bed, Grandmama. I’ll stay with him awhile.”

  Gerta’s bright eyes swept over her from tip to toe. “You should rest as well. Elevate your leg and put some honey on your hand.”

  She’d forgotten the burn, but Gerta’s sharp mind never forgot anything. Beth rose to fetch the honey, but her grandmother motioned her to stay put. Gerta fussed over the new scratches that covered the burn, insisting Beth sit in the rocker as she coated the area with honey. “Now,” Gerta straightened, “the pain should ease somewhat.”

  “Rest, Grandmama,” she said, trying to put a note of authority in her voice.

  Gerta tilted her head as if considering. “Yes. I think you’re right. There won’t be much opportunity for rest if the war is to have its way.”

  Without her grandmother’s spritely presence, darkness stretched its arm closer to Beth. She let her eyes roam over the placid form of the sleeping Rebel, no longer seeming so menacing without the uniform as a reminder. It seemed strange to have him so close. From where she sat in the rocker, Beth could see the side of his face and trace the shadows along his eyes and jaw. Hollows she had no doubt her grandmother would dearly love the chance to fill out with plenty of hot food once the danger of death had passed.

  She leaned forward in the rocker, drawn to him. His stillness worried her. She’d been here before, watching someone on the edge of death. Her heart squeezed with dread. She didn’t want the man to die. Confederate or not. Losing him to death would be like losing Leo all over again. If it was within her power to make this man well, she would do that, just as Gerta had vowed to help others all those years ago. Beth stared at her clasped hands, fighting the burn of tears. But the great drops of saltwater came anyway and splashed onto the stiff brown paper of the package in Beth’s lap. Great dots of wetness that soaked into and swelled against the wrapping.

  3

  Beth started the rocker with a push of her foot. The brown packaging crinkled in the unnatural silence, foreboding when compared to the cacophony of shelling and gunfire that had bombarded them throughout the day, leaving the stench of gunpowder swirling in the air. She could feel the troops’ nearness like the fetid breath of a stranger down her neck. She closed her eyes. Jedidiah might be among the Union men. Seeing him again would be worth the Confederates’ raid into the North. But the next moment she changed her mind. Juxtaposed against the reports she’d heard from Frederick, seeing her brother would not be worth the pain and suffering the men were made to endure. Indeed, if Jed returned, he would return to her mama and papa, not here, to his grandmother’s. Disappointment drew an agonized sigh from her lips. Yet things were as she had wanted them to be after the accident. She had wanted to be alone and away from the watchful eyes of her parents. She felt their concern, but didn’t understand it. She was fine, she would not let her bad foot hinder her, and she just wanted to help others by pursuing nursing.

  She stared at Joe’s profile, grateful he slept soundly. Her time to pursue nursing would come. The war would move on to another location, and she’d be free to start her training.

  Having the battle close would at least give her experience.

  The brown package felt curiously light in her lap, a fact she’d mentally noted on many occasions when the tug of longing for home tried to take hold. She enjoyed the guessing game as to what the package held. Her mother had assured her nothing perishable had been packaged. Then what?

  Stretching out to the table at her side, she slid the lantern closer. It was time to see what her mother had sent with her. The tiny knot securing the paper would need to be cut. She examined her nails and considered savoring the package a bit more by forcing herself to work the knot loose, but her fingernails were broken from the constant stream of work. Not that she minded. Not many women she knew had the leisure to grow long fingernails.

  She pinched the knot between the index finger and thumb of both hands and did her best to work it loose. She squinted and turned the knot to pluck at the most prominent strand, finally able to loosen it a bit. Ripping the paper off would be so much fun, like returning to her schoolgirl days, when every rare gift was received with the knowledge that she had little time to spare for play with the contents before chores would be required of her. She’d rip the paper open and have the gift to savor as Jed worked his knot with patient solemnity. Even knowing they had probably received the same gift never dissuaded her brother from his solemn task.

  Now she understood that need to savor the gift more than the need to play. There were a lot of things she understood so much better now than she did then.

  Excitement battled against the spring of unexpected tears as she peeled back the brown paper, smoothed it, and only then allowed herself to peek at what lay inside.

  The slaves? Those ebony faces, fear visible in the glint of their dark eyes. Joe remembered the woman’s frantic words as the group had shrunk against the back wall of the cellar. The big man holding the old, frail one, the one whose delusional shout had revealed their hiding place.

  Ben’s frown.

  And then there was a forest, the blacks sliding away into darkness. Ben’s frown again.

  The glint of a rifle. The bark and then strike of the charge into his flesh. Joe had grabbed at his shoulder. Ben’s face, his expression twisted into horror, staring at him, then his scream and a stream of words Joe did not hear. He was falling. Ben left. He was alone. His fingers slick with warmth. He held his hand up and saw the darkness spread on his palm. His fingers white against the night sky, except for the blood.

  Ben?

  Joe woke with a start and pain greeted him. He arched his back against its clutch and felt a soothing warm hand on his brow, then coldness. He withdrew, not understanding what it meant. Not caring. But the dream pulled at him. Gnawing like the rats that had plagued their campsites, drawn by the slops. The hand. His brother . . . ?

  “Ben?”

  Silence greeted the question. He forced his eyes open. Darkness surrounded him. He didn’t want to be alone. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew there should be others with him. Where were they? Was he dead?

  A shuffle and a rustle yanked his attention. He stiffened, winced, and tried to see. When a light flared, a woman’s face hovered in the circle of the bright glow for a few seconds before the wick was raised and the chimney lowered. Light spilled over him, over her, and he saw the smooth line of her jaw, the hazel eyes, more green than brown. Beautiful eyes and dark hair that caught the light and reflected the length of the glossy strands.

  She smiled and he felt warm inside. The tension building in his mind eased.

  “How do you feel?”

  “Sore.” It wasn’t the word he’d been thinking, but it was the word that came out. He tried to order his thoughts, but his focus turned to the feel of her warm fingers against his forehead, then his cheek. He wanted to tell her not to quit. To touch him. It was reassurance that he was not dead. Pain
pulsed in a biting wave, and he gasped and bit down against the fire that ate at his right side. He turned his head away. Maybe he was dying.

  “My grandmother worked on your wound. She’s good with herbs and knows lots about them. She’ll be here as soon as she wakes.”

  He lifted his left hand, intending to clasp hers, but it felt swollen and heavy and would not obey his mind’s request. He licked his lips, rough with dryness, winced when he felt a sharp stab and tasted blood. “It’s me.” He blew out a sigh, cross with his inability to speak what he was thinking. Why wouldn’t the words in his head come out of his mouth?

  “Let me get balm. You need to drink something. Can you?”

  He wanted to sit up, to hold her hand and hear her voice. To be normal again. Back home with his brother and father, a humble man if not a rich one, enjoying life as he had until the war started and Sue was killed. He nodded at the woman’s request even though he wanted nothing. It pleased her, for it coaxed a smile that was both soft and sweet.

  “I’ll be back.”

  She stepped into the shadows beyond the circle of light and was lost to him. Someone else was lost to him. The idea twisted and turned in his mind, but he couldn’t make sense of the who or when, or even the where. He touched his leg with his left hand and felt the rough wool of trousers. He was dressed and lying down. His shoulder fanned an angry burn and he couldn’t make his left hand rise to massage the pain away. Throat raw with his helplessness, he waited for the woman to return.

  When he opened his eyes next, she was there, lifting his head and holding a tin cup to his lips. The liquid was cold, bitter. It hurt his throat when he swallowed and blazed a chill down to his stomach. He took another gulp, then another. Weak. “Wrong. It’s me.”