He blinked, long and slow. “Thank you.”
Heat bloomed and began a slow creep up her neck as she realized how proud of herself she sounded. She dug in his haversack for the Bible and pulled the stool and lamp closer. A crisp sheet of paper slipped out. Joe held out his hand for it. He unfolded it and squinted, lips moving as he read. When he finished, his hand fell to his side, his mouth a firm line.
“Bad news?”
“It’s a letter I was writing.” He turned his face away.
She didn’t know what else to say and decided it best to let the subject go. She thumbed through a few more pages of the Bible. How long had it been since she’d read from the Word? “Where do you want me to begin?”
“Galatians.”
She raised her eyebrows, aware of the way he studied her. For the split second their gazes locked, he seemed at conflict with himself. “Your favorite?” she asked.
“My father used to read it to us.”
Beth turned to Galatians, her fingers on the pages recalling the order of the books of the New Testament. She preferred the stories. She angled the Bible to better capture the stream of weak light and smoothed the page. The chapter introduced Paul, and then the fourth verse flowed and the words sank deep into her conscience. “Who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil world, according to the will of God and our Father.”
Was there anything more evil than war? Hatred that drove man against man?
“It makes me wonder why we’re here,” Joe inserted into the long silence. “Fighting. Dying.”
A sharp stab made her sit up straight. “You are not dying.”
His gaze washed over her, a small smile playing at the corners of his lips. “I’d like to live.” He tried to raise his right arm. “Not much use I’ll be to anyone.”
“You still have a heart to give and a life to live.”
Now his smile broke through. “Very poetic, and I can see that you believe it by what you’re giving to us. The enemy.”
She broke eye contact. Joe was a soldier. Why did his life matter so much to her? She didn’t want to think about it anymore. “My father used to say that war was generated because a man took a stand for what he believed in.”
“It sounds noble.” He swallowed and turned his face away, but not before she saw the lines of sadness mar his brow. “Until you see it up close.”
She closed the Bible. Haunting images, residue from the day’s battle, drifted over her, and she didn’t want to talk anymore. Yet she knew she would not sleep. The oil in the lamp was low. She picked up the lantern and lifted it to blow out the light, meeting Joe’s stare. He wrestled with his own demons, and she had no answers for him, nor the strength nor the will to delve deeper. She would be out on the fields tomorrow trying to understand mercy and love in the midst of pain and despair. Joe’s green eyes burned in her mind. She set the lantern aside and turned down the wick as low as she dared, a sudden need to touch something of home and family rising in her.
“You should sleep.”
“As should you. Rest your leg.”
“I-I won’t be able to. I thought I might work on the quilt.”
Beth stretched out until her fingers could grasp her bundle Jim had set nearby. She unknotted the top and stopped, realizing it wasn’t the clothes or the shoes she sought, but the package from her mother. The quilt and the meaning behind the colors and squares. It was home to her, hearkening to the days when peace was a reality and her childhood innocence was intact.
She matched another square to the three, checked the length of thread, and began. It was work that focused her attention on the length of her stitches and the certainty of the next movement, and the next, never wavering from the routine until another block was added. Guilt edged every stitch as the oil in the lantern dwindled.
She blinked and realized the cabin had grown colder, that Joe slept, on his side, facing her, as if he’d been watching her for a long time.
Reaching out, she touched his tousled hair and smoothed it back from his face. He was handsome. Kind. A Rebel soldier caught in the mire of a war that had stripped him of so much. Only Jim lay awake, the whites of his eyes showing his level of alertness.
“Almost done?”
She held up the five squares. Flexed and relaxed her fingers to relieve the stress of the close work just as she’d seen her mother do countless times. “Not quite.”
She splayed her hand, tracing the outline of her stitches, the subtle yet bold pattern. “Am I keeping you awake?”
“No. Just thinking. Praying. Listening.”
She folded the blocks up and placed them back on the pile of personal belongings, knotting the top again, not knowing if they would be forced to move from their little hideaway in the woods or not.
Lying down next to Gerta, she settled her skirts, raked her fingers through the knots of her hair and braided it into a long tail that snaked down her back. Morning and the continued fighting would come all too soon.
16
September 18, 1862
Joe felt like he was melting from the inside out. Judging from the darkness, he guessed it must be night and he wondered what woke him. Or who. He gazed around the interior of the room and worked hard to place where he was. Memory came back in slow stages as he recalled the house, the wounded. Gerta and Jim. Beth. She sat beside him and leaned into his line of vision.
“Bad dream?”
He ran his tongue over dry lips. Every move felt like he’d been out in the blazing sun too long.
Beth dipped a cloth into water and wrung it out. Water trickled back into the basin. Joe could only think how good the water would taste. He was so hot.
The coolness of the cloth felt like a chill winter breeze against his skin and he welcomed it even as gooseflesh rose on his arms. Meredith would not welcome such trivial tasks. She would hate caring for the wounded—really, for anyone other than herself.
Joe tried to place the name with the face, and how he would know such a personal thing about someone. Details danced just out of range of his throbbing head. He tried to raise his hand to his head but his fingers touched something stiff. Paper. In the semidarkness, he raised the single sheet and a flood of memory came back as he recognized the paper as the letter he’d been writing home to Meredith.
The debutante intent on defying her father by marrying a man below her station. He’d been flattered and awed by her fragile beauty. Her father thought him an opportunist taking advantage of his wayward daughter’s affections.
Dearest Meredith,
The war is nothing as I thought it would be. I’m sure there are many other men who feel the same. Ben and I camp tonight in a meadow outside of Frederick. Tomorrow we move out toward a gap in South Mountain and on toward Hagerstown.
As I’m sure you do not want to hear the details of daily life, I’ll exclude them from this letter.
It was as far as he had gotten, not knowing what else to say. She was lovely, but shrewd and cunning and he suspected he was more a toy for the spoiled girl to cling to in spite of her father’s demand to surrender it, than a man to be loved and honored. Around campfires when there was nothing to do and another battle was imminent, the men talked of home to keep their minds off the possibility of death that stared them between the eyes. He’d heard his friends speak of their girls, the love and longing evident in their voices. Why didn’t he feel like that? How was it he had so easily forgotten who should be the most important person to him?
He didn’t need to linger too long over the question. Meredith had been a mistake. He’d known it when he was penning the letter just as he realized it now. He’d known for some time the reality of the relationship. Realized that Meredith didn’t really expect a proposal nor want one—she simply adored the attention and stirring her father’s anger.
Compared to what he saw in Gerta and in Beth, Meredith’s pledge of love lost its value. She would expect a lifestyle he could not provide and she would come to hat
e him, or demand that he acquiesce and go to work for her father.
“Would you like me to put that away for you?”
He rolled his head toward Beth. “It’s a letter.”
“I see that.”
“I need to finish it.” The very words he’d spoken were like a benediction. He folded the letter and rested it on his stomach, wondering what he would say. How to say it . . .
“Are you right-handed?”
Beth provided the very excuse he needed. He would release Meredith knowing she would not endure a man rendered a cripple.
“I can finish it for you.”
He knew it was the right thing to do, but doing it, actually breaking off the relationship with Meredith, left him with nothing. Not Ben. Not his mother . . . He closed his eyes and swallowed against the surge of emotion. “Maybe later.”
I’m all alone.
The cloth was on his face again. His neck. His cheeks. It felt so good. He opened his eyes briefly and caught Beth’s soft gaze. She was disheveled and tired-looking, but her eyes held such a kindness and understanding. As if she could read his heart and mind. Her hand stilled and she drew back, sitting up straight. Joe’s heart pounded harder and he wondered if it was the fever, or his mind playing tricks on him, but when Beth’s hand slipped into his, he didn’t feel so alone anymore.
Beth sat back, flushed. As soon as Joe’s eyes closed, she chided herself for thinking something had changed in Joe’s warm, green eyes. He was feverish. Delirious, more than likely. Yet he’d been talking clearheaded . . . She quashed the errant flow of her thoughts even as his fingers squeezed hers and his breathing evened out as evidence of sleep.
It meant nothing.
She sighed and slipped her hand from his. Her eyes landed on the single sheet of paper and curiosity drew her to unfold it. He seemed to dread the idea of finishing it and she wondered if she should simply sit down and write it for him. Let the person know that he was recovering from a wound that had left his right hand weakened.
My dearest Meredith
The words jumped out at her, accusing. She tamped back the panic. Meredith could be anyone. A sister. The rest of the letter didn’t mention anything that would give a clue, though she couldn’t help the spark of satisfaction that it, at least, didn’t seem overly personal. Maybe Meredith was nothing more than a family friend.
She folded the letter back and felt the first spike of heat in her cheeks. She’d had no business reading something so personal without his knowledge, even if he had seemed open to the idea of her finishing the letter. She smoothed the stiff paper, then put it back in the haversack for safekeeping.
Jim returned as the sun grew hotter with an armful of produce, fresh from the ground judging by the mud clinging to the carrots. The women didn’t ask and neither did Joe, where Jim had gotten the food or the berries. They ate with thankfulness and need, the women making sure Joe and Jim had the bigger portions. What they didn’t eat Jim stored under a floorboard, along with a fresh supply of willow bark.
Beth made Joe drink a tea made of the bark. He felt no better than before, but no worse either. Just weak and sick. Not even the little bit of food Gerta forced on him seemed to relieve the weakness. Gerta fussed over his shoulder for a long time. After taking off the bandage, she’d frowned over the wound and he feared what the dark look meant. He didn’t ask.
Silence stretched long as tension pulled at each of them. They rested, waiting for Riley to arrive, expecting a shell to destroy the blessed silence accompanied by the rattle of guns and screams of war. Already worn nerves stretched tighter.
Joe pushed himself to stay awake. He needed to get stronger. To force his muscles to work as they should. Jim fashioned another crutch, notching the crosspiece and he offered to help. He found that though he couldn’t grip the wood, his arm could trap it and hold it still while his left hand worked. The work was tedious and frustrating but he forced himself to do it for much the same reason he suspected Gerta had gone in search of more herbs and Beth huddled over the quilt blocks, her needle rising and falling. Work was normal and a diversion from worry.
He rested against the wall at his back and let himself enjoy the weak sunshine and quiet. “Where are we?”
Jim stopped working on forming the long, smooth stick. “In the woods northeast of Sharpsburg.”
Beth continued to sew, oblivious to his stare or his question. He admired the way her dark hair shone in the stream of sunshine. He smiled at the messy braid that lay over her shoulder. She was beautiful. An angel. Her selflessness matched that of her grandmother and he wondered if it was that easy to become enamored of a nurse.
Joe turned his head and saw Jim’s sober expression merge into a sly lifting of the corners of his mouth. Joe ducked his head. It wasn’t hard to know what the black man must have thought catching him staring at Beth like that. He smoothed over the wood caught beneath his right arm, determined he would not look up again.
“You’re feeling better?” Jim asked, a trace of amusement in his voice.
“Some.” And he did. Just the act of sitting up had helped. He still felt hot, but determined to help Jim instead of sleeping. He tried to lift his right arm. What had been numbness the previous day in his arm had become a burning sensation today. He wondered if Gerta’s care of the wound had helped.
“I’ve known about this cabin for a long time. Knew it would be a good place to go,” Jim offered.
“Why didn’t you leave me back with the rest of them?”
Jim’s eyes widened, his glance back at Beth seemed to say something. “You’re not in uniform and you saved the others. Didn’t seem right to leave you when staying might mean you’d lose that arm.”
He suspected Jim’s reasoning left a deeper story untold but he didn’t press.
“It might be wise for you to stay here with him, Jim.”
Joe swung his head toward Beth, gulped at the picture of loveliness she made, haloed by the light. He lowered his eyes. This was no time to mire his emotions with another woman. Not when he still had to decide about Meredith. And then there was Ben’s death . . .
All at once, he lost what little strength he’d had. He could feel the room begin a slow spin. Jim was beside him, guiding him down. Beth, too, fussed. Her hands against his cheeks. He didn’t want to think anymore, but when he closed his eyes the trickle of images became a torrent.
He was being dragged by Ben, wounded, bleeding. They had sought refuge in the woods in a dilapidated structure not more than a shack with a narrow loft. They’d huddled there, Ben working over his wound when they heard shuffling, muffled voices, and a man’s tormented scream. They had stumbled upon the hiding place of three blacks—a woman, a man, and an older man who was losing his mind and slowing them down. They were lost and fearful and so close to the North. Ben had sought to reassure them that he could help them.
In the dark of the night, they’d led them from the shack. A figure loomed up in front of them, gun aimed at them. Ben backed up a step, grunted his name and rank, but shots rang out, catching Ben. Twisting him. His face contorted and Joe’s muscles tensed as he reached to catch his brother. There was a wrench of pain in his shoulder as his own wound did not bear the stress and broke open. For a brief moment he’d stared up at the shooter. One glimpse before the man turned and walked away.
Joe gasped and stiffened, the memory shattering. He cradled his head in his hand, a cry stabbing from his throat.
“Joe?”
He opened his eyes to Beth’s concerned face and didn’t know what to say, even as the image snapped into place, heavy with truth. A Confederate had killed his brother. Shot him dead right before Joe’s eyes. He drew air into his lungs, unable to speak. Felt himself lifted, or was he falling?
“Joe?”
Beth hovered over him, those beautiful eyes filled with anxiety. Her hands smoothed over his face and he longed to grasp them, to still them so they could not distract him. He had to think. The last piece of the puzzle was ther
e. Out of reach, slipping away even as he tried to rein it closer and force it to yield its secret. “Why didn’t you shoot me?”
“Sh.”
His hand clamped down on Beth’s wrist. She had to understand. “Why didn’t he shoot me too?”
Confusion marred Beth’s features, or was that pain? Jim’s hand peeled his fingers from Beth’s wrists, pressed him back onto the ground. “You’ll not be hurting, Miss Beth.”
Hurting? Had he hurt her? He hadn’t meant to, it was just that the memory cut so deep. He turned his face away from them both.
Gerta leaned over Joe, eyes missing nothing in her quick assessment. “He should sleep now.” She sat back on her heels. “I agree with Beth, Jim. The less you’re seen the better.”
Beth rubbed at her left wrist, shocked both by the tightness of Joe’s grip and the desperation in his voice. Who should have shot him? It was like he saw her but didn’t see her.
“Fever does this sometimes. Makes them see things that aren’t there. And he’s been through so much . . .” Gerta said as she rolled to her knees. Jim aided her to her feet. “Sometimes dreams trap a person.” Her expression filled with compassion as she watched Joe’s sleeping form. “We can only imagine the horrors these men have witnessed.”
A squeaking rattle came from outside. Riley was approaching the shack. Beth didn’t want to leave Joe. But the grim expression on Riley’s face, coupled with Gerta’s tizzied roundup of the herbs she’d collected that morning, reinforced her will.
“Riley?” Gerta’s question wore heavy on the man, demanding an explanation for the distress pinching his features.
“It’s much worse than we thought. The heat of day will not help and we cannot move fast enough. Some are dying where they lie.” Riley averted his face and Beth could see his fight to retain his composure. With slow movements, he came to the side of the wagon and offered his hand to Gerta. “They torched the Mummas’. The house and barn are gone. Along Hog Trough there is nothing but . . .”
A Heartbeat Away: Quilts of Love Series Page 10