by Ward, Marsha
Sweet Ben, you are well away from the fray, she thought. Then she gasped to read he had been wounded, and clutched the letter to her bosom. How like him to discount the severity of his injury. He might have his heart half torn from his body and he would say, it’s of little consequence. She shuddered, and resumed reading where he begged her to restore him to wholeness, upon condition of marrying him.
Her heart bounded with joy. She and Ben had skirted around the topic of a marriage ever since she had regained his trust. She knew from the top of her head to the tips of her toes that they were destined to marry one day, but he had not come right out and asked her until now. This very day. Actually, several weeks ago, but what did that matter? He was asking her to be his bride. No. He was begging her. She wanted to skip down the street, yell her news at the top of her lungs, and scandalize the entire neighborhood. Ben wanted to marry her!
She rejoiced that the sacrifice of her earrings had been for such an excellent reward, as he treasured her likeness as much as the wounded soldier in the hospital had done with that of his wife.
I will be Ben’s wife! The very idea made her want to sing.
She read the final words with a bit less joy. Privation. Such a nasty word. She would not venture to recount to Ben the hardships on the home front. They would dishearten him at a time when she must instill joy into his heart as his letter had, overall, done in hers.
I will be Ben’s wife, she repeated to herself. Nothing could take away the glory of that bright future promise. She took a step that, oddly enough, resembled a skip. How she wished the day were here when they would wed. She desired no friends or strangers to gawk at them, only their parents and families surrounding them with love and gladness to wish them well on their most happy day.
“Accept a kiss and my Everlasting love. Your Benj’n.” She sighed and put the letter to her cheek to receive the kiss she imagined Ben had bestowed upon it. Maybe he hadn’t actually done that. For all his sentimental talk, Ben was, after all, a man. In her experience of soldiers in the hospital, she had observed that men didn’t always follow through with certain actions, especially if other men were close by. She had no idea how much privacy a soldier in camp could command. Perhaps they were crammed together like peas in a pod, arms constrained by the shoulders of comrades in arms.
“Even if you didn’t kiss the letter, I will pretend that you did,” she murmured to a far-off Ben, and hurried down the street, planning what she would write to tell him she would, indeed, marry him.
~~~
Rulon — September 19, 1864
The battle had scarcely begun when Rulon heard bullets whizzing past his ears. Garth Von, riding on his left, rolled out a string of swear words. Most of the invective was directed at him, Rulon.
What did I do? he wondered, parrying a Yankee trooper’s sabre blow with his own blade. He slashed at the next trooper to approach, Von’s curses ringing in his ears.
“... your foppish feather!” Von screamed.
Feather? This animosity is about my plume? Rulon swept a different Federal cavalryman off his horse.
“... think you’re a stinking officer!” Von added.
Dumbfounded, Rulon froze, but his horse shied, taking him just beyond the reach of the blue-coated Yankee whose sabre swished past his ear.
When he finally got his horse under control, Rulon found himself staring at the distant hills full of troopers and infantrymen as the heat of the battle moved elsewhere.
An artillery shell screamed overhead, and Rulon ducked reflexively. Wheeling around, he looked for Garth Von, but the man was not in sight. He rode toward his comrades gathered around the company’s ragged guidon.
My feather. He envies me for that? It didn’t make any sense that the man hated him so for want of a feather of his own.
He thought of Mary’s father, presenting the stylish hat with such pride and pompous words. By now the hat was so bedraggled that he only wore the thing to keep the sun off his head. There was no fashion to it now. And the feather. Great lands! That feather would make the ostrich weep.
The company had been ordered into reserve. Rulon spotted Von in the midst of the pack, but rode silently back into position, keeping distance between himself and the man.
After an hour of waiting, Company “I” was put back into the battle. The squadron rode together, Garth Von among the men strung out in the line. Von hung back a slight bit, and Rulon, sensing danger from the scowling man, did so as well so he could keep the man in view.
A bugle blew for the charge, and Rulon put spurs to his mount. Again, bullets pinged around him. He felt a tug on his sleeve, but no pain. The ball had passed through the fabric. Then a horse shrieked and a man yelled obscenities as he fell. Rulon didn’t dare turn to check who had lost his horse, for they were among the Yankee cavalry, slashing and parrying and being driven back. Soon they were retreating over ground they had held previously.
When they bivouacked that night up the valley at Fisher’s Hill, Rulon looked around at the diminished company. Owen Leoyd was among the missing.
Overwhelming sadness tore at him. He’d fought beside Leoyd, rode around McClellan at his side, endured three-day vidette duties with him, and learned tricks from him that kept him alive.
It wasn’t long before Rulon learned that Garth Von had survived the battle.
Von flew at him, a fist cocked. “It’s your damn fault my horse is kilt, Owen,” he raged. “Your damn swooping feather makes the Yankees think you’re an officer.”
Rulon fended him off, dancing backwards. “Hold on. The captains never said I was doin’ wrong to look like a cavalier. Why do you object?”
“The damn Yankees shoot at officers,” Von answered, adding extra invective. “Anyone ridin’ near you could be kilt.”
Rulon snatched the now-bedraggled plume off his hat and stomped on it, but he knew the damage had been done long ago.
Von took a swing and missed as Rulon retreated. “You made me a camp dog,” Von said. “I should have shot you dead the day you rode in wearing that ridiculous getup, thinking you was the King of Prussia.”
“That’s enough,” Ren roared, coming up to the argument with a bandage around his sleeve. He pushed his way between Rulon and Von, and turning to Von, said, “Save that ire for the Federals. You’ll need it. We’ve lost a fair amount of men, so go catch yourself a loose horse.” He turned to Rulon. “Stay out of his way. They’re coming for us tomorrow, I’ll warrant.”
~~~
Julia — October 7, 1864
When Clay burst into the front room, screeching like he’d been attacked by a lion, Julia dropped the shirt she was patching.
“Ma! Mr. Bates rode through. The Yankees are coming down the pike.” He rubbed his neck. “They’re takin’ the stock and burnin’ the crops and harvests. Ma, they will surely burn the barn.”
Julia stood. “Son. Quiet down. Let me think.” She walked to the fireplace and put three fingers to her forehead. She tapped them, one at a time against skin and bone, thumping multiple times, the sound echoing like a horse crossing a bridge until her brain engaged and an idea came to her.
She took a breath and looked up. “Here’s what to do. Get Albert and Marie.” She looked at her youngest child, who had followed Clay into the room. “Anna, you go with them. Clay, all y’all drag out the corn sacks. Tie them closed. Put as many sacks on the backs of the cattle as they will tolerate. Tie them on secure. You don’t want to spook them with shiftin’ loads or they’ll run off from you.”
She laid a hand on his shoulder to steady his quaking frame. “When you finish up, take your brother and drive the cows up the mountain. Stay till the Yankees pass. I reckon you’ll be there a few days, so I’ll rustle up provisions for your stay.” She squeezed his shoulder. “Go, you two. Get a wiggle on!”
Clay hesitated. “Mr. Bates said they’re a mean bunch. They burned his house.”
Julia set her jaw. That would not happen here. She shooed her son away and went to
the kitchen. She fried the last of the pork skin to make cracklings, boiled eggs she’d been collecting from the last laying hen about the place, and wrapped corn pone in brown paper she had saved for stationery. No matter. Rod hadn’t received but half of her letters. She would be spared the trouble of making ink from ground walnut hulls and stove soot. She never could achieve the proper fluid mixture to get it to flow smoothly from her nib anyhow.
She gathered the food and stuffed it into a carpetbag that would have to serve. She ran with it to the barn. Far to the south, smoke wreathed above the windbreak trees marking the lanes of their neighbors. The Yankees were coming.
The boys drove the dairy herd across the road and into the fields, riding after them on nearly the only horses left. Julia called after them, “Muffle that clatterin’ bell or take it off.” She and her daughters watched them go into the trees and down the creek bed, heading toward the Massanutten. She hoped her sons remembered the way to the hidden spot Rod used to take them to when hunting. It was their only hope for saving the herd and the corn.
She turned and stared down the pike. The smoke now billowed in black shafts in the distance. The Yankees were coming.
Julianna began to sob, tears coursing down cheeks smeared with corn silk and pollen from her labors.
“Stop that, child,” Julia scolded, wiping the girl’s face with her apron. “Show them your spirit, not your fear.”
The three of them stood in the lane, waiting, watching as the Union soldiers advanced down the pike, marching unevenly as they came. Men broke out of the main body to torch the fields on each side. On they came. The Yankees were here.
~~~
As the Union troops drew near enough that the soldiers started looking their way, Julia spoke in a low voice. “Girls, get to the house. I’m goin’ to put a chair in the doorway and set down in it. Marie, bring me that Sharps rifle your pa left behind. Then you two stay upstairs unless I call you.”
“Yes, Ma.” Marie’s voice quivered, but she turned her back and walked away to fetch the weapon.
“Mama, I’m scared.” Julianna appeared to be keeping her tears in check, but her voice shook worse than Marie’s had done.
“You will both be fine, Anna-girl. Just do as I tell you, mind?”
“Yes, Mama.” She walked backward down the lane for a few paces, then turned and ran toward the house.
Julia walked backward herself for a few steps, then turned her back on the oncoming Union soldiers and strode toward her home, trying to give her daughters confidence in her, even if she barely felt any herself. The girls must not see her knees or her hands shake. Mothers must be brave in the face of danger.
She let the sight of the burning fields and the knowledge that her barn would likely be destroyed build indignation, then irritation, and finally anger in her. By the time she saw the Yankees coming toward her home, she sat in her rocker, holding the rifle down at her side, hidden by her skirt and apron, and she was in a righteous rage. Let a Yankee try to disturb her home. He would think twice before he attacked a southern woman’s abode again.
“Mama!”
Marie hardly ever called her “Mama” these days. Something must be wrong to bring her down the stair in disobedience to instructions.
“Marie?”
“I tied Sheba in the barn. She’ll burn up, Mama.”
“Stay here.”
“I can’t leave her to die!” Marie slipped through the small space between Julia and the door jamb and set off toward the barn.
“No! Come back, daughter.”
Marie glanced over her shoulder, but kept going.
Julia, faced with approaching soldiers bearing torches, didn’t know which she should do first, drive the Yankees away from the house and her daughter upstairs, or get Marie and the dog out of the barn. She turned to gauge how close the soldiers had come. One man was intent upon torching the trees along the lane. She ground her teeth. Those trees broke the wind. They didn’t bear any fruit. This was an unruly bunch. Three more soldiers brought their firebrands straight toward her. Her indecision past, she arose, kicked the rocker backward into the room, raised the rifle, and pointed it at the nearest man.
“Drop your torch. My home won’t burn.”
“Now ma’am,” the soldier under her eye said, “we’ve got orders to take your crop.”
“There’s no crop here. Move yourself back.”
“Ma’am. You do yourself no good turn holding a weapon on us,” he said, his voice a little shaky as he looked down her barrel.
She raised her voice a mite. “Git off my property. Turn around and go!”
“We can’t do that, little lady,” another man said, approaching the first. He edged out of her vision, then broke into a run toward the barn. The third soldier joined him, and the tree-burner came closer by the second.
Julia could feel the heat coming from the trees. The snapping of the fire reminded her of pistols cracking in the distance. She couldn’t contain all the men, couldn’t leave the first man unguarded to deter the others.
“Marie!” she screamed, knowing she dared not turn her head. “My girl’s in that barn,” she told the man under her gun, knowing she was pleading, hating herself for doing so.
“Sam!” he barked. “Let the girl clear out.”
As the man spoke, she noticed several stripes on his uniform sleeve. She had picked a sergeant to threaten. Was that good, bad? He had some part of decency in him, judging from his last words.
“You can destroy the barn.” Her voice sounded strident, but she couldn’t do anything about that. “Leave me my home and my girl.”
She heard the report of a rifle and Marie’s shriek, then a wail. She almost looked in her daughter’s direction, but kept her eyes on the sergeant. If Marie had voice, she was alive.
“Your men will shoot a defenseless girl?”
The sergeant flicked a glance in the direction of the barn. “She’s whole, ma’am,” he reported, looking relieved, but at the same time, disgusted.
“Just tormenting her, then?”
“No ma’am,” he said in a low voice. “He shot the dog.”
Julia heard herself crying, out of control, losing herself in pain.
“Ma’am, you need to lower that rifle and go inside,” the sergeant pleaded. “We have to be about our business.”
Marie was thrust against her then, momentarily throwing off her aim. The barrel of her rifle dipped, and the sergeant took the opportunity to escape toward the barn.
“Mama. Sheba.” Marie sobbed, then leaned against her, gasping and scrubbing the tears from her eyes with balled fists.
“Inside,” Julia managed to say, and shoved the girl behind her. She backed through the doorway, waving the barrel of the rifle from side to side. Once clear of the doorway, she slammed and bolted the door.
“Mama. Why didn’t you shoot them?” Marie asked in a broken voice.
Julia took several breaths, fighting the weakness of her knees until she got the rocker upright and sank into it, laying the weapon across her lap.
“It’s not loaded,” she said, her voice sounding like a raven’s caw.
Chapter 24
Rulon — October 9, 1864
The base of the hill bristled with dismounted men waiting for action behind stone fences. Under a sky lightened by dawn, Rulon watched the skirmishers from the brigade move forward across the meadow toward Tom’s brook. Behind him on the hill, wheels squeaked as artillerymen dragged the guns of the battery around, bringing them to bear on General Custer’s cavalry. Rumor said the Yankees were finally going to fight back.
The 1st Virginia and other regiments in the brigades had harried Custer’s retreating troopers for the last few days. The Union general had not turned his men and given them tit for tat, but had continued down the Valley, relying on his rearguard to keep General Rosser at bay. Yesterday, it seemed that Custer’s patience had finally grown thin enough to let his boys give them a fight, but they had only engaged in a brief
skirmish along the Back Road.
A shell whistled overhead from the rear. The battery had sent a message amongst the horses lined up in the distance, hazy through smoke. On a hill to the north, an echoing gun boomed to hurl disdain their way.
Damn the Yankees! It wasn’t enough they had put in the ground all the decent men he’d served with the past years? Now they had busied themselves burning barns, mills, crops, and even the occasional abode, making his country a barren wasteland under a pall of smoke. How could God allow it?
He heard a groan, glanced at the fellow crouching beside him, then discovered he had made the sound himself. Rulon, find your mettle, he chided himself, but still groaned again. He knew he’d lost a great deal of courage the day General Stuart had been mortally wounded at Yellow Tavern. He ground his teeth to keep from crying out again at the waste. The glorious General gone. He bowed his neck under the pain.
That same day, he had lost his well-trained bay horse, shot from under him as he parried a sabre thrust with the stock of his rifle. Although toppling with the dying horse had saved his life, the loss was much to bear. He’d kept the horse healthy longer than he would have thought possible. Now his mount was a plow horse, ill-fitted for battle.
He took a deep breath to settle himself, then regretted it as he went into a spell of coughing to clear smoke from his lungs. When he had finished, he shivered as though a ghost had stepped on his grave. Has God turned His face away from my country?
Gone were the men who had ridden alongside him, fought beside him, shared a tent, tended fire, cooked rations. First Owen Leoyd had fallen, then Ren Lovell. Good old Ren. He shook his head. He doubted he would have survived his first days in the Troop without him. All were gone save one. Garth Von.
He almost let loose with a mighty curse, but managed to restrain himself at the last moment. He hated the loathsome, evil man.
Thinking about Von, one hand went to his head, to the once-fine hat Mary’s father had presented to him with great ceremony. He jammed the filthy head-gear tighter onto his head, glad that he’d stomped the plume into the dust. If he had known the trouble it would bring him, he would have torn off the feather the second he left Mary behind. He remembered the strong emotion on her face as he and the company paraded through Mount Jackson in their splendid array, horses lined up just so, backs straight, heads up, off to beat the Yankee foe.