A Heartbeat Away: Quilts of Love Series

by S. Dionne Moore

  “They’re hitting close.”

  “That was what got the Mister convinced.”

  “The caves would be safer, even up north with his brother.”

  “He still ain’t wanting to leave town, but I got him to see that your grandmama needed the help. He’s said as long as he could see his house he’d be content.” He lowered his voice. “Done had me go hide his money in the stone wall.”

  Beth glanced over her shoulder. Joe still watched them from the floor. “Can you get Joe settled?”

  “Done got another cot to bring down, then the Mister. Me and Emma will set things straight while you fetch what you gotta.”

  Joe could hear no more than the deep rumblings of the black man and Beth’s murmured responses. He could see the woman quickly glance in his direction. Saw her say something more, then turn to leave. His spirits sagged. He didn’t want to be alone. Loneliness nipped at him, hollow and cold. Ben should be here, but, no, Ben was gone. Shot. He squeezed his eyes shut to try and remember the dream, or was it a vision? Every fiber of his being stretched to bring into focus the wayward images that danced along the periphery of his mind but never quite came into focus. He was hot, perhaps the images were nothing more than the result of his fever, of the wound in his shoulder.

  And then there was his arm . . . tingly, numb. He couldn’t feel it, but it hurt to move it. Even bunching his muscles sent out pulses of pain. A surgeon would amputate it. He’d seen it done hundreds of times, had heard the agonized screams of the men when medical supplies were low and chloroform in short supply. Arms, legs, hands, feet, it mattered not the part or pain, and all for the sake of saving the soldier’s life. Joe shuddered and turned his face to the side. He tried again to make a fist and though his fingers curled some, he couldn’t get them to tighten into a fist. It was all the Yankees’ fault. The war. The blackness of war coated his soul.

  What good would he be back home? His arm would render him useless. He would be alone and lonely. Sue, she would be there, wouldn’t she? It was so hard to think, to remember . . .

  The black man cast a shadow over him, and Joe turned with a gasp.

  “It’s time. I’ll lift you to the mattress.”

  “I can walk.”

  The black man moved aside as Joe did his best to scoot into a sitting position, cursing the weakness and the heat that seemed to suck strength from him. He sat for a few seconds to steady his world, then swung his legs around. A groan slipped from his lips and the blood drained from his head. His shoulder began a steady thrum of pain. His legs burned. He felt himself slipping away, when strong arms lifted him and the icy chill of the cellar cut through the warmth generated by the cocoon of blanket left behind.

  Cradled in the black man’s arms, Joe could do nothing more than grit his teeth at the pain of his injured shoulder grinding against the man’s chest. Once he was lying down again, the man stood over him.

  “You the one who helped my people.”

  Joe heard the man’s words through the haze. But the statement didn’t make sense. Nothing did, and he knew, as hard as he tried to fight against it, that he was slipping away again. Weakness was winning, and fresh fear that he wouldn’t wake up again clutched at him.

  9

  He’s weak,” Jim said, as he settled a chair next to Joe’s cot.

  “The fever is taking him.” Beth withdrew her hand, disappointed to find Joe hotter than he was an hour previous.

  She felt Jim’s presence at her back. “Weak as a newborn chick.”

  “He needs to eat.”

  “They’ll be time for that. The good Lord will watch over him.”

  Beth tensed, gaped up at the black man. “Why him and not all the others?”

  Jim stared down at his feet. “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away . . .”

  How many times had she heard that? It droned through her head like the hail of minié balls being sprayed right outside the door. It didn’t make sense. None of it. “He’s your enemy.”

  “Not mine. He’s the one that came in with those slaves. They brought him in ’cause he saved their lives. Risked everything for that.”

  She recalled Gerta telling her of the night Joe was delivered to them. The story of three black people, but . . . “How did you know?”

  Jim’s eyes widened. “Done said enough.”

  “Jim?”

  But the man was headed up the steps, probably in search of Mr. Nisewander, and she didn’t press the issue. That Joe had risked his life for slaves . . . and him a Reb. But if Jim said as much, if he’d had contact with the blacks who brought Joe to Gerta, then what he said would be the truth.

  As for the other, the unanswered question . . . She sat down and dug her fingers into her eyes to relieve her tension from the pounding of activity outside. Shouts, screams, the constant monotony of shells as dusk fell, as if both sides vowed to sling the last shell.

  Gerta appeared in a swirl of warm air and the smell of rain. The skin around her mouth was gray, her lips pale. Beth watched as her grandmother asked Emma to take her place. The black woman’s nod was reluctant, but she left. Beth rose to help Gerta into the opposite chair, beads of wetness caught in the silver strands of her hair and damp spots along her shoulders evidence of the rainfall. Gerta said nothing but pillowed her head on her arms and was asleep in seconds.

  Beth tucked the loaf of bread and vegetables she’d brought for Joe beneath the cot and took up her sewing, settling in to the relative quiet, nerves drawn taut. Still, she would never be able to sleep. She dared to wander outside, filling her lungs with air riddled with smoke and the sharp odor of powder.

  The air burned her eyes and spilled tears down her face. She blinked to relieve the sting. There was nothing new to be seen. No men in blue nearby to ease the worries filling her head. She retreated back down the steps to the safe huddle of humanity in the corner. Joe. Gerta. Drawing the chair closer to the light of the lamp, Beth spread salve on the rough ridges along Joe’s lips. She would have had him eat the carrots and cucumbers and bread with a spread of last year’s apple butter. Now it would have to sit until the next time he awoke. At least he slept soundly.

  The relative quiet only lasted until Jim appeared, Mr. Nisewander at his side, mumbling as he had always done. She just hoped the crotchety man didn’t worry and fuss away Joe’s strength in his times of wakefulness, or peg him for the enemy and spew the bitterness that had lived in his heart since the death of his only son at Bull Run.

  “Not staying here,” the old man protested. “Who’s he?”

  Before Jim could answer, Mr. Nisewander, spry in spite of his advanced years, darted away and pounded back up the steps into the night.

  Jim gave a shrug and followed.

  She reached for the quilt blocks, needing to be lost in something that reminded her of better times. Before Leo’s death. After her ankle had healed, she’d done her best to help out, to play the part of the dutiful daughter, yet she’d caught her parents’ shared looks of distress. Only with the passing of time and the witnessing of several of these exchanges did she realize their distress was over her.

  Her fingers traced the outline of the maroon triangle against the black background in the quilt block. The next triangle was lighter in color, more red than black, the next one more orange, and the final one, yellow-orange, with the square in the middle a beautiful golden yellow. She pulled the thread taut and felt the symbolism of the colors pointing to something bright. Hope? she wondered bitterly. She’d had hope once. Love. Peace.

  Worries crowded in. How much more could her grandmother take? Emma? She would not allow herself to be stuffed into the cellar with Joe tomorrow but would venture out to the parlor and help as best she could. She chided herself for allowing herself to be pampered and petted. She wanted to be a nurse, and yet she had cowered in the face of duty. She would invite Emma to help her coax her grandmother to trade places with her. Gerta could care for Joe while she and Emma worked among the wounded.

&nbs
p; Beth plunged the needle into the fabric again, forcing herself to focus on the menial task. Gerta always said there was no use borrowing trouble. They could only work with what they had, nothing more, nothing less.

  A grim smile pulled at her lips as she wondered if her friend Teresa Kretzer had taken down the Union flag she had so proudly spread across the narrow main street of Sharpsburg for every Reb to see. Worry ate away the smile as an image of the flag being destroyed, the family held prisoner for the deed, bloomed in her mind. Her grip tightened on the material. The shimmer of light flickered and guttered. She smoothed the blocks on her lap. Three were joined together now. Each block’s web of triangles pointing to that center square of bright hope.

  A message to her from her mother. The darkness would fade as we journeyed toward the light. She knew what light her mother referred to. It was a promise she had once believed.

  She moved her hand over her progress, a lump of longing rising in her heart. Her stitches would never be as small and perfect as her mother’s, but they would do.

  Beth leaned forward to blow out the guttering flame, hesitant to leave them in pitch blackness. Placing the blocks beside Joe, she picked up the lamp. “I’ll be back,” she whispered to the unconscious man.

  A vise of panic squeezed Joe’s insides. He couldn’t see. Blackness engulfed him. Ben was there. Moving beside him through the open field, gun at the ready. Flames belched from the rifles in front of them and men on either side of him fell to the ground. He glanced to the side. Ben still ran with him, keeping pace, his face a mask of pain and resignation. He knew that face so well.

  Another flash of light. Brighter. His body was shoved by an invisible force, and his gun fell from frozen fingers seconds before he fell, gasping in great mouthfuls of the green grasses. He wanted so badly to see his brother’s face again . . .

  “Ben! Ben!”

  A hand pushed at his chest. “Joe.”

  It was the voice of the woman. He blinked and a whimper quaked from his throat. “He’s dead.”

  “Shh . . .”

  “He’s gone.”

  “Drink this.”

  He didn’t want to drink. Or eat. He wanted to escape to a place where Ben would be alive again.

  “Joe. I need you to drink this. Please?”

  He turned his head, stared into those clear hazel eyes and the tentacles of the dream released him with every breath. Ben was gone. He could not go where his brother was. He squeezed his eyes shut.

  She touched his hair. “You’ve had a dream, but you’re awake now.”

  “You know me.” He closed his mouth over the dryness, worked his jaws. “I don’t know your name.”

  Her mouth curved. “Elizabeth. Beth, or Bethie if you’re my mother.”

  There was humor there, dancing in her eyes. He drank it in, but like a man drinking too fast in order to quench his thirst, his stomach rebelled. Reality slapped back at the brief levity. “Did you see him?”

  “Your brother?”

  He nodded and lifted his hand to cover his mouth as another groan escaped. Tears scorched his throat. The dreams had brought it back. Pieces that he could fit together enough to guess the truth. He’d fallen to the ground. Shot. The Yankees . . . Ben had slammed him down flat and dragged him to a barn.

  Her hand touched the back of his hand, turned it, and grasped it between hers. “I am so sorry.”

  “He didn’t bring me here.”

  She hesitated. Shook her head. “No.”

  “Then how . . . ?”

  “I was asleep.” She shifted but tightened her grip on his hand. A warm hand. Soft. “My grandmother heard something, I guess. She found three blacks, you were with them. They wanted her to care for you. Said you were shot, but that you’d saved their lives.” Her smile flattened. “I don’t know details.”

  Ben wasn’t with them, and he knew his brother was dead. The focused answer of how, when, and where eluded him. He’d dreamed something about Ben, but it, too, slipped the grasp of his mind.

  “You should eat something.” Her hand lay flat against his forehead, smooth and cool. The dark room beyond the circle of light revealed nothing of where he was. He felt strange. She was his only connection to life. As if it were only the two of them wrapped in a world of frozen dreams.

  She didn’t wait for an answer, instead uncovering a basket of bread and a jar of apple butter. As he watched her rip off a piece and spread it with the glorious sweetness, his appetite stirred and grew into a raging beast. Only manners, coated with a heavy dust of disuse, kept him from picking up the remainder of the loaf and biting into it like a starving animal. He accepted the morsel she handed him, forced himself to take measured bites, savored the sweetness on his tongue.

  He drank the water she handed him, feeling the stream of cool liquid slide down his throat and fill his empty stomach. Cucumber slices and carrots tempted his tongue, but he filled up on the bread, taking only nibbles of the vegetables.

  Her fingers stroked his forehead, and he couldn’t help wondering if he looked as terrible as he felt. “Beth,” he whispered.

  She paused, her gaze catching his in the flickering light of the lantern. “You’re still warm.”

  He raised his hand, touched the soft part of her upper arm. “What is happening?”

  Her eyes flared with an emotion he could not define, then the tautness of her expression cleared. “You mean the war?”

  “I—” It stuck in his throat. War. The sounds of his dreams, the running and belches of fire. He’d been a soldier. He stared down the length of himself, but the blanket held its secrets. His right hand seemed weak, hard to move, and pain pulsed through his chest from his right shoulder. None of it made sense, but the pieces were all there. Waiting for him to put them all together.

  10

  Joe watched the woman pick up a piece of dark material and fold it together with another piece. All traces of mirth were gone. He saw fatigue in the planes of her face, the shadows of her eyes, and the slow, methodical motions she used to fold the material she held. The deeper part of him wanted to demand that she give him every bit of information she could, but looking into her eyes, his need melted away. She had already shared what she knew. By the creaks from the floor above their head and the rumbling of voices and the unmistakable moans of the wounded, it was clear that the war rambled on, leaving broken bodies in its wake.

  “My grandmother might be able to tell you more about those who brought you here.” Her face lit and she snapped her fingers. “Your satchel!” He gave her his full attention as she stood and rushed into the darkness beyond the reach of light. In her absence, the darkness pressed closer. He wanted to follow her and cursed his weakness. Just as he thought he might try to sit up, she returned and set a dirt-caked bag beside him. His haversack. He recognized the ragged strap, and another memory nudged at him. Ben throwing it to him after they bivouacked for the night. The haversack’s light weight slapping against his shoulder. Only his most prized possessions within it. He’d seen men cast theirs aside over time when in the heat of battle, but he kept his close. The little book of poetry. A Bible. A picture of Sue in her wedding dress.

  Ben had kept his haversack close, too, but somewhere along the march to Fredericksburg, he’d given it up, or lost it, Joe couldn’t recall which. And then the battle had erupted at South Mountain and they’d been spread so thin, the Yanks nipping at their heels. He tried to hang on to the memory and force his mind to grasp more details, but they spun away. “I can’t remember.”

  “We’ll work on it together.”

  It was Beth who lifted the flap of his haversack. She withdrew the Bible first and handed it to him. He ran his hand over the softness of the leather cover, worn, cracked by age, lightly caressed the pages, made buttery from wear. Inside the front cover, a list of births and deaths. The first births written in his mother’s flowing script, the deaths written in the same hand, the letters more loosely formed, and he knew his mother must have cried through eac
h of those entries.

  “A box.”

  Joe accepted the slim wooden box Beth handed him. A smile crept up his cheeks as he opened the lid, knowing exactly what lay within. “My fishing hook! Ben always teased me about this, but he stopped when we didn’t have anything to eat but were able to catch fish.” The memory came easy. He tugged out a “housewife,” the sewing kit. Two buttons lay in the bottom. He’d never sewed them back on. Too tired. Not caring at that point. A handkerchief filled the corner next to the buttons, its initial, stitched in blue . . .

  “A woman’s likeness.”

  He held out his hand for the familiar item, his throat closing at the sight of Sue’s creamy complexion and slight smile. He absorbed her expression and felt the fist of grief slam him hard.

  Across Joe’s features marched a display of emotion. When his features pulled tight at the sight of the picture, Beth’s heart sank. When Joe closed his eyes and pressed the likeness to his chest, despair washed over her. She leaned back in the chair and balled her hands in her lap, wondering why she felt such disappointment. She understood his emotions at seeing the beautiful woman. His wife, no doubt. Deep down anger bubbled up. Why did it matter? He had someone to love. All that they had shared was nothing more than the product of his need and the strain they were under. Nothing more.

  She felt bereft, just as she’d felt the day they’d buried little Leo. His mother’s muffled sobs had felt more like an accusation. She had tried to rescue the boy and failed. She could still hear his screams of terror as the fire raged. She’d plunged inside without thought for herself, turned back by the thick smoke, choking, unable to see Leo, confused by the roar of flames. She’d retreated until, right at the door, the beam had fallen and caught her leg. Only the quick response of a neighbor lifting the beam away had given her time to escape the collapse of the entire house.