American Dreams Trilogy

by Michael Phillips

  She hit the ground hard to the side of the rails, rolled over several times, hardly feeling the pain shooting knives up from her ankle, then crawled to her feet and looked around for her bag.

  Twenty seconds later she had it in her hand and stood in the middle of the tracks. A faint metallic echo from the rails was all she heard of the train she had left as it receded in the distance.

  She stood a moment bewildered and in shock from the vision she had seen and then her sudden jump and fall. Had she imagined what she thought she had seen? She was delirious from the days looking at wounded men. By now they all looked the same.

  A whistle blew from the direction of town. Its sound brought everything back in a rush of fearful panic.

  She had to get back to Jefferson’s Crossing before the train left the station! She couldn’t let it leave… she had to know what she’d seen.

  She picked up one edge of her dress and tried to run. But her ankle hurt from the fall.

  The whistle sounded again. She crested a slight rise. There was the steeple in the distance. She kept on and the station came into sight.

  The train began slowly to inch away. “No!” she cried. “Stop… wait!”

  In desperation she hurried on. But the engine continued to chug into motion and the giant wheels slowly turned and gained speed. She could never get there in time.

  “Wait, please… stop!” She yelled again. “You can’t—”

  Suddenly Cherity froze.

  Descending from the platform and now hobbling awkwardly toward her as fast as he was able on a single crutch across the railroad ties, was definitely no illusion nor mirage.

  “Oh… oh!” she cried, gasping for breath. “Oh, no… how can… oh, no… oh, Seth… Seth!”

  Cherity’s carpetbag dropped from her hand. She ran, babbling, tripping and stumbling, all the rest of the way until she fell into Seth’s arms, a mass of tears and hair and kisses smothering his face.

  “Oh, Seth, Seth… what are you doing here…? How did you…? But I was so worried… I knew something had happened… I thought you were dead… I… I didn’t know what—”

  At last the moment overcame her and she broke down in heaving sobs, completely collapsing in his embrace.

  Seth had managed to keep hold of his crutch more than Cherity her carpetbag. Steadying himself by it with his right hand, he held Cherity tight with his left, her head buried on his chest weeping, until the tempest of her emotion began to subside.

  “It seems that it is me who should ask you what you are doing here,” said Seth at last, speaking into her hair, flying about in the breeze over his face as her head lay against his shoulder and neck.

  The sound of his voice so close in her ear was the final proof that she was not dreaming. Cherity burst into a fresh round of sobs.

  A minute later she eased herself back, then smiled and wiped at her eyes.

  “I can’t believe it’s you!” she said, shaking her head and beginning to laugh and cry all at once. “I can’t believe… What were you doing on that… and how did you know… did you know it was me? Why did you get off… you weren’t going to Jefferson’s Crossing!”

  “Which of your questions do you want me to answer first?” laughed Seth.

  “All of them! Oh, Seth… I can’t believe it. I am so happy to see you!”

  “You couldn’t possibly be any happier than I am to see you!”

  “Don’t be too sure! But what are you doing here?”

  “I am on my way home… at least I was until I jumped off the train at that station there just as it was starting to move. No, I wasn’t on my way to this town—what did you call it?”

  “Jefferson’s Crossing.”

  “Well, whatever it is, I was on my way home. But the instant I saw you I knew I couldn’t just keep going. So I hopped off. Then the train left and there I was all alone and I realized maybe I’d been stupid. But how did you get off that train up there?” he said, pointing along the line behind Cherity.

  “I jumped!” giggled Cherity. “That reminds me, my ankle hurts!”

  “Jumped! Are you crazy?”

  “I did go a little crazy when I saw you. I thought you were a dream. You are really Seth Davidson… aren’t you?”

  Seth leaned down and kissed her gently on the lips.

  “I guess you are,” she smiled. “No dream can do that!”

  “So… what are we going to do?” said Seth, looking about. “We’re out here in the middle of nowhere.”

  “Oh, that’s easy—I know lots of people here. There’s a boarding-house with lumpy beds and mice. There’s Mrs. Walton’s farmhouse where we could stay.”

  “What are you talking about?” laughed Seth. “You sound like you live here! What are you doing here? How long have you been here?”

  Cherity laughed with delight at Seth’s bewilderment.

  “I came looking for you,” she said. “When we didn’t hear from you I thought you’d been hurt in the railway accident. So I came here and have been searching all the wards where they took people. I looked everywhere and was about to give up and go home. Oh, Seth… I was so afraid!”

  “But home is in the other direction. That’s where I was going.”

  “I was going see if you were in the hospital at Jonesborough. Then I planned to go home.”

  “Well, if I’d have waited another day to leave, you’d have found me. That’s where I was. I was banged up pretty good, broke my leg and two ribs. But I was lucky. Quite a few didn’t pull through at all.”

  “But why did they take you to the hospital? I thought it was only for the severe cases.”

  “I don’t know. It was all mixed up and confusing after the accident—people coming and going and yelling and some trying to help and others injured and others dead. Once the people from the towns came to help, they just put us wherever there was space and I wound up at the hospital. They did think at first that my leg might have to be cut off.”

  “Oh, Seth… I can’t bear the thought!”

  “But a surgeon there splinted and set it and said he’d keep an eye on it and see how bad the infection got. After a couple weeks, he said he thought it was going to heal and that I could keep my leg after all. Then yesterday he finally said I could start walking on it with a crutch. I was on my way on the very next train.”

  “What about your equipment?”

  “It was all destroyed. I’ve got to talk to McClarin and see what he wants me to do. And this war may be over soon. Who knows, McClarin may be through with me anyway.”

  “Why didn’t you write us and tell us what had happened and that you were all right?”

  “I did. You didn’t get my letter?”

  “No. We heard nothing.”

  “Oh… now it begins to make sense. No wonder you were worried. But what are we going to do now? We need to get home. How often do the trains come through here anyway?”

  “Once a day,” answered Cherity. “We’ll have to wait until tomorrow. Oh, but I can’t wait to tell Mrs. Walton! You can meet her for yourself!”

  Suddenly Cherity remembered their last meeting, and became serious.

  “Seth…,” she began, “I hardly know what to say… I am so sorry for the way I was back at Greenwood. I should have trusted you. Can you ever forgive me?”

  “After what we’ve both been through, it hardly seems important anymore. But yes… of course I forgive you.”

  “Your father explained to me… and we saw the article about you and Veronica in the newspaper. I am so sorry.”

  “I feel awkward to ask,” said Seth sheepishly, “but… with the article and all, do you know… is Veronica all right?”

  Cherity smiled. “You don’t need to worry—it’s all right if you talk about her,” she said. “Actually, I went over to visit her and… believe it or not, she and I have become quite good friends.”

  “You and Veronica!” exclaimed Seth in astonishment.

  Cherity nodded.

  “That’s…
that’s unbelievable. But I think it’s terrific. How in the world did it happen?”

  “I went to visit her, after the article… she explained everything to me about how you helped her. She asked me to teach her to ride.”

  “Veronica!” laughed Seth.

  “We rode all around together. I think I’m actually going to miss her.”

  After the happiest evening imaginable together at Mrs. Walton’s farmhouse and a morning spent joyfully helping her again with her wounded, Seth and Cherity made their way together again to the Jefferson’s Crossing station. This time, adding all the more to the bewilderment of the station boy, they purchased two tickets east to Columbia, South Carolina.

  Never had the jostling of the train clattering along beneath them felt so good to Cherity as when they pulled out of the Jefferson’s Crossing station and began to gain speed. To be sitting with Seth at her side, on her way back to Greenwood, on her way home, was just about the best feeling in all the world.

  As the train slowed into Bend, Cherity rose and went in search of the conductor.

  “How long is the stop here?” she asked.

  “Just a few minutes, ma’am,” he answered. “Sort of depends on if the mail’s got to the station or not. Sometimes we gotta wait five or ten minutes. But as soon as it’s here, we’re off again.”

  The moment the train was stopped, Cherity jumped out. Seth followed her from the car. The mail pouch had not yet arrived.

  “I’ll be back in less than five minutes,” Cherity said to the conductor. “Please wait for me.”

  She turned to Seth. “There’s one of the wounded men I want to say good-bye to, and tell him I found you. I’ll just be a few minutes. Don’t you go anyplace without me!”

  She dashed off the platform, through the station, and into Bend. It seemed so long ago that she was here, when in fact it had been a mere few days. She ran all the way to the farmhouse where she had first encountered the horrors of the train accident and the war firsthand and where her search for Seth began.

  She knocked on the door but did not even wait for an answer and walked right in.

  “Hello, Missy!” she said to the sad-faced girl who was on her way to answer her knock. “I came to see your mother again.”

  Without a word, Missy reached up and took her hand and led her back into the sick ward. Cherity walked in. Nothing had changed other than her own increased capacity to cope with the sights and smells that had overwhelmed her on that first day.

  “Oh, come back to help after running out on me, I see,” said Missy’s mother irritably. “Well, get a towel and some hot rags—you know what to do.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Cherity, trying to smile. “I’m not here to stay. I’m on my way home. I just came by to see the man again… down there at the end,” she added, glancing along the row of invalids, though at first glance she did not see him. “Uh, you remember… the man with no arm.”

  “Oh, him… he’s dead. Didn’t make it another two days after you was gone. He asked about you, though, if that’s makes you feel any better… something about telling you when I saw you again that the angels was coming, but I couldn’t make out half of what he was talking about.”

  Cherity turned and tripped her way out of the house, holding back her tears until she was alone. She then broke into sobs as she walked in a daze back to the station. She hardly heard the urgent whistle of the train, nor Seth’s shouts when he saw her.

  She stumbled into the station where Seth was waiting.

  “Oh, Seth… he’s dead,” she whimpered as he nearly scooped her up with his one good arm and hurried her to the waiting train. “And I realized after I left,” Cherity went on, “I realized… that I… I didn’t even know his name.”

  Sixty-Six

  Seth and Cherity arrived back at Dove’s Landing two days later to great rejoicing. Seeing him wounded and hobbling on a crutch, Seth’s family was more bewildered than anxious and was full of questions. Cherity now came clean about her misleading them about a visit to her sister, which, she said, she still did want to make, after Seth was better. Then followed the complete story of Seth’s accident and Cherity’s search.

  There was no question of Seth’s returning to work anytime soon. Never was such a happy convalescence endured by so happy an invalid. He telegraphed Mr. McClarin saying a detailed letter, which he began that same day, would follow.

  The tumultuous events which consumed Greenwood during the final months of 1864 completely overshadowed the November elections north of the Pennsylvania border. As the year drew to a close the momentum of the war lay all on the side of the Union. The Confederacy had not won a battle of significance since the summer. Even then their only victories had been in forestalling Grant’s juggernaut around the city of Richmond. And Sherman’s taking of Atlanta and march across South Carolina to the sea in the late fall of the year, as hated as it made him throughout the South, so buoyed optimism in the North that Lincoln was easily reelected in November.

  The cause of the Confederacy was lost. Yet still Lee fought on against Grant around Richmond, the two armies encamped for months within but a few miles of the city.

  The two Davidson brothers, now grown men of twenty-four and twenty-two, spent many long hours discussing the relative merits of the war and its causes, and grew yet more angry at their father’s friend and his fellow Confederate generals for their stubbornness in prolonging the war in the face of inevitable defeat.

  Though Seth was recovering and was on his way back to full strength, he was not anxious to leave Greenwood. He wanted to be with his family and with Cherity and was weary of following the war about with a camera. Whether Mr. McClarin sympathized or not, Seth wasn’t altogether sure. But since Seth was firm in his decision, and was also by now recognized as one of the best photographers in the country, the editor did not raise too many objections. He did send him replacement camera equipment in hopes that when Seth was feeling better he would change his mind.

  Thomas, however, was more involved in the war effort than ever, though in a way he would never have foreseen.

  They were all surprised to see Veronica appear at Greenwood one day. Her husband had just left for New York for two weeks and Veronica had come south. Her visit was welcomed joyfully for she had become a family friend to all. She was greeted with hugs all around as if they hadn’t seen her in years. After a brief visit, however, they were surprised to learn that Veronica had actually come to see Thomas.

  As a way to fulfill his duty to state and country, Thomas had dedicated himself, for as long as the war lasted, to caring for wounded and helping blacks to escape oppression, whether at Greenwood or elsewhere. He and Veronica had both become increasingly active in medical work in recent months. They had been in touch by telegraph and had made plans to go into Richmond together to work at one of the large hospitals for war wounded. Hearing of their plans, and after her own experience on the outskirts of Atlanta looking for Seth, Cherity asked if she could join them.

  Veronica returned to Washington after two weeks, continuing her volunteer efforts there, while Cherity and Thomas remained in Richmond another month. Richmond, Seth, Sydney, and the two Shaw boys, meanwhile, planted far more acreage during the spring months than Greenwood had been able to sustain since the start of the year.

  And still… Robert Lee refused to give in.

  Defeat followed defeat until his army was finally driven away from Richmond into south central Virginia. Grant pursued him with his entire army, finally surrounding what was left of the Confederate force near the small town of Appomattox.

  Hearing that surrender was imminent, Seth hurriedly packed up the new equipment and left overland by horseback, with Thomas, who had by then returned from Richmond, as his assistant. They reached the scene in time to photograph the historic encounter between Lee and Grant at Appomattox Court House on April 9, as 28,000 young Southerners like themselves laid down their arms, and Robert E. Lee signed documents of surrender to Ulysses S. Grant.<
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  They had only just returned home when on the 16th of April came shocking news—sweeping through the North and South by telegraph: Abraham Lincoln had been assassinated the night before by a Confederate sympathizer named John Wilkes Booth. Though some in the South rejoiced, unwilling even at the end to concede the extraordinary virtue of the man who had suddenly become a martyr, all in the Union mourned, and most within the dying Confederacy were stunned and sobered by the news.

  A week and a half later, General Johnstone surrendered his Confederate army to the Union’s General Sherman at Bennett Place outside Raleigh. Though one last Confederate general had not yet surrendered, the war was finally over!

  Two months later, as a lasting legacy to Abraham Lincoln, Congress added to what it had begun in February with the 13th Amendment to the Constitution prohibiting slavery, by passing the 14th Amendment which guaranteed to freed slaves the right of citizenship in the United States of America.

  Cynthia returned to Jeffrey who was stationed again in New Haven. Tears were shed on all sides, both mother and daughter especially were grateful for the opportunity, given to few, to be together again as adults for an extended period of time. They knew it must end eventually, and therefore when the time came Carolyn’s and Cynthia’s gratitude overshadowed their sadness of parting.

  Shortly after Cynthia’s departure, there arrived at Greenwood a letter from McClarin in Boston.

  Dear Seth, it read.

  I appreciated the Appomatox photos. That was a nice surprise.

  Not knowing your postwar plans, I have a proposal I would like to set before you.

  I realize that with the war over your vocational interests may now change. I know that photography provided a means for you to fulfill your duty to country without joining sides in the fighting. I consider it an honor to have worked with you. You did your job well and demonstrated great skill, as well as courage, in carrying it out. I sincerely believe that you have an aptitude for photography, and, should it fit in with your plans I would like to offer you a permanent position with the Herald, at a significant increase in salary, which would also include a further upgrading of your equipment with the latest that is available.