by Denney, Hope
“We will talk tonight and I’ll answer your questions so long as you honor one condition.”
“What is it?”
“After our conversation, I want you to leave me alone about it, never speak of it again. I try to live in the present, Somerset. The girls, the liquor, drowning myself in manual labor—it all goes to serve a purpose. I don’t need to live in the past. I don’t want to think about the hundreds of people I’ve killed, and I don’t want to think about how I’ve lost someone I should have been able to save. I don’t need to think about rotting in Elmira or how I nearly died when someone clubbed me over the head or when a tree fell on me. You and Fairlee are more alike than you give yourself credit for, my dear. The only difference is that you aren’t pushing to change me for my health. You accept me warts and all. So, what will it be? If I talk to you tonight, will you leave me alone about it afterwards?”
“I’ll leave you alone about it forever, Joseph. Just answer my questions and don’t treat me like you think I’m a hysterical female.”
“Fair enough. You have a deal.”
Somerset settled back in her chair, tugging his robe around her and knotting the sash. She sought a conversational thread for an easy starting point. She didn’t want to begin with an idea that made him feel pressured from the start.
“We talked about this when you returned, but I want to revisit the story of what happened the day Eric died.”
“Go ahead.”
“I need to hear what happened, Joseph. I want a summary of the events when you all were ambushed.”
Joseph reached behind him on the console and grabbed a cigar. He lit it with expert knack and cracked the window behind him, exhaling smoke in its general direction.
“We were on a mission on the Chickamauga. We’d gotten some information through one of our spies that Rosencrans was constructing something monumental on the Chickamauga. Initially we scouted out the area and hoped to find high-ranking officials within shooting range. Assassinating a general for the enemy camp seemed thrilling to all of us and also a good way to demolish any battle plans for the enemy side.
“Needless to say, we didn’t find any generals, but we did run across some enemy scouts. They were familiarizing themselves well with the area and drawing up plans for a barricade. We thought they would be easy pickings. They weren’t, though. We lost them a humiliating number of times in the hills. Looking back I see it was part of the trap. Their appearances deceived us. As young and inexperienced as they were, as loud and uninhibited as they were, they should have been easy to kill. We didn’t know we were being set up.
“They were bait in an intelligent game, and we were being herded like mindless cattle. Those scouts would pop up at the base of a foothill and disappear again at the start of a bluff only to reappear again at a stream. It went on and on. It was the only time we were taken in by someone smarter than we were. We had grown arrogant and careless by that time, Somerset. We thought we were unstoppable. Although those men were no one important and their work was only of minimal importance in the long run, we refused to let them go. It would be easy to blame Theodore for continuing to track them because he was our leader, but we all wanted them dead. We imagined ourselves as foxes stalking rabbits, but it was actually the other way around.”
Joseph stood and reached for the decanter behind him. He thought better of it, and as if deciding he needed to be completely sober, he shook his head and returned it to its base.
“We got to a point where we split up far apart in order to get a better scope of view and a better chance of killing them. I think they planned that for us, too. Sawyer and I climbed a tree. Theodore went up on a ridge far above us all where he could see everyone. Eric stayed concealed on the ground. By all accounts we had them surrounded, and Eric was well within shooting distance. He gave his signal to Theodore, and by then Theodore had seen the other men so he cautioned Eric to wait. We couldn’t see what he saw and were confused. The two scouts started walking as if back to camp and they were coming right at Eric. Theodore was trying to figure out how to remedy the situation, how to take out the enemies before they could kill us. He kept ignoring Eric’s call and Eric wound up in a situation where it became kill or die. Eric and I killed the scouts cleanly, one shot each. Then there was shooting everywhere. There weren’t two men. There were five. One was up high with Theodore and two were in the trees facing the tree Sawyer and I were in. Theodore took care of the soldier on the ridge, but by then Eric was shot. Sawyer and I killed the troops in the trees. Sawyer was worse positioned on his branch than I was. When he fired his gun, the recoil knocked him to the ground. He was unconscious for a time although he was fine. I leapt to the ground and started running at Eric, and Theodore started descending from his post.
“I was sitting vigil with Eric when someone tried to kill me by hacking off the back of my skull with a rifle butt. It unnerves me to think he was so close to me that he couldn’t afford to make the noise to try to shoot. I guess it was lucky for me. By the time I was conscious again, Theodore and Sawyer were putting me on a makeshift stretcher, and it wasn’t long before I was back at Orchard Rest for a couple of months to recuperate.”
Joseph changed his mind and took the decanter from the console again. He didn’t bother with the glass. He swigged directly from the pretty cut-glass receptacle. Somerset held out her glass for more, and he refilled it, liquor sloshing to the brim.
“I don’t know who was behind the plot to take us out. There is a sixth man out there who knows more than I do, but I doubt he thinks much about it. Those days were war times and more went on than met the eye. He likely doesn’t remember our names. Someone was very familiar with our habits, the way we worked. I get some grim satisfaction that we were being plotted against and still managed to take out five men. I do pity those two young scouts. They probably thought they were going to come out of the situation unscathed and with promotions, but whoever cast them as bait knew they would wind up dead. It’s sad. Eric is lost forever and I nearly died. Theodore and Sawyer could have died, too. So much loss, all in the name of states’ rights, slavery, and a whole host of arguments that don’t help any of us now.
“The rest you know, Somerset. We’ve lived it together, more or less.”
Somerset drained her glass and watched the night breeze whip Blanche’s curtains into a frenzy. She knew the rest as thoroughly as most priests knew their catechisms. Things turned unfortunate in a hurry after the ambush and they had never really been able to reclaim lost ground.
Joseph spent two months in a hospital recovering from a head wound. He spent two months at Orchard Rest and then returned to the front, only to be captured and shipped to Elmira Prison. He’d starved and been disciplined in every way imaginable. Theodore and Sawyer waited for him in New York to accompany him home after his release.
Theodore was already a married man with a family. He returned to Charleston and ran a profitable indigo foundry. Somerset was never his pet after he married Amelia, but she seldom gave him much thought beyond her mother’s obsessive love for him. Helen and Theodore were members of a world she had never taken part in. Somerset did not know what it meant to be young and wealthy or to have every wish fulfilled all because of one’s name. She found it appropriate that she had grown close to Joseph and Victoria while her two oldest siblings were vague impressions of people, almost like characters in a novel.
Sawyer met her in Atlanta, sacrificing a furlough, when he passed her at the depot when he was slated to return home. He spent two weeks searching through the wounded with her, making sure she ate, and otherwise protecting her in a time when the town went into upheaval. They inquired at jails, searched cemeteries, and sorted through the dead on battlefields only to come up empty-handed. Somerset kissed him at a moment when her emotions were verging on the hysterical, but he was a gentleman about it and never brought it up again until years later when they fell in love.
Yes, she knew it all. The story he had told her before was as familiar to her as
any nursery story she was told as a child because she never stopped replaying it in her mind. As the alcohol burned within her tender stomach, she felt her thoughts shifting and her tongue loosening.
“Thank you for telling me all that again,” she said. “I need to bring something up to you, though, something I’ve never said. This is the part where I’m afraid of what you’ll think of me.”
“After this night, I fail to see where you would fear judgment from me. What is it?”
“Could Eric still be alive out there?”
“No.” Joseph’s answer was confident.
“There was no body, Joseph. His grave is empty. Doesn’t that strike you as odd?”
“There are lots of empty graves in this country now, Somerset. Lots of bodies never made it home.”
“I don’t see it that way. Why did Eric’s body disappear while you were left to die? There were four of you together, and two of you were dead from any man’s reasonable perspective. Sawyer was knocked out from his fall. Theodore had to run down the ridge for quite a stretch to even get to his rope to make it down. There were the two of you lying dead together in the brush, and only Eric’s body disappeared. He might have dragged himself to safety. He could have forgotten who he was and wound up in a new life anywhere. He might be in a home for veterans or he might be out west somewhere. Think how many men started over in the west. He could have even been captured and taken to prison and died there. The possibilities are disturbing. All I know is that my darling’s body is not here and I would be amiss not to ask why.”
“I understand your perspective, Somerset, but listen to mine. There was only one other man involved in the ambush. He knocked my head in. He wouldn’t possibly have been able to drag off both of us in the time it took Theodore to get down and Sawyer to come to consciousness. So it strikes me as a little personal. Eric was the first of our party to be injured and only his body disappeared. I don’t mean to intimate that we all have a dark enemy out there and we should all fear for our safety. What I mean is that whoever murdered him probably did it in retribution for a kill Eric made. Some wealthy socialite or powerful officer lost a husband or brother to Eric and decided that he would have to die as payment. A lot of things happened to enemy bodies in those days. We don’t really want or need to know.”
“You were hit before you could see him die. You don’t know that he died.”
“He had a terrible wound, a neck wound—I’ve told you. People who get shot in the neck die. They bleed to death or their neck is broken. They don’t survive and go on to reconstruct a meaningful life. Let’s say he did survive and crawled away into the river. It snowed that day. The temperatures were dropping while we were out fighting for our lives. He would have died from exposure to the elements.”
Somerset shook her head.
“You haven’t examined all the angles, Joseph. You admitted that it seemed a little personal to you. What if whoever shot him wanted Eric alive? He might have been taken in for questioning to learn more about your sniping practices. He might have died in custody or been sent to a prison. It struck me as bizarre when you were the only one out of the group who was captured and sent to prison. What if you were captured based on what Eric said about you to the enemy? Maybe he didn’t have the enemy. Perhaps you did.”
“That is a fanciful but intelligent hypothesis,” agreed Joseph. “I’ll say something to refute it, though. Maybe it was far more personal than I can grasp. Maybe it was me who had the enemy after all. You’re concerned with whether Eric is alive and the answer is no. He would have died in captivity quickly. Even if he was only taken to prison, his odds were slim to none. I don’t talk about prison for a reason. If it can kill a healthy man, it will eat up a wounded man before anyone knows he’s there.”
“But if you all were of interest to the United States government—”
Joseph threw up a hand.
“Somerset, good grief! We weren’t that important. The armies on both sides were full of snipers like us. I know we wrote home and made it sound adventurous and grand like something out of a dime novel. Believe me, sometimes it was, but shooting a gun is shooting a gun and the fate of the Confederacy didn’t rest on our shoulders. I know Theodore polished up the stories so that you girls felt like we were powerful, but he really only said those things to keep you from worrying so hard about us. He thought you’d all have time enough to grieve if something really happened and didn’t want you so distracted you couldn’t function when you had animal husbandry and crop planting to learn.”
“Fine,” she acquiesced, “but what if he is alive in a hospital for veterans or someone’s home? He might be so addled he doesn’t know who he is. He might be in a bed, unable to move and dreaming of home.”
Joseph rubbed his finger along the rim of his glass so that it began to sing. He looked thoughtful, as if he was weighing every word before he placed it in his sentence for effect. It was a long time before he spoke again, and when he did so he spoke to give all of his words due measure.
“I’ll say it again. People don’t usually survive the type of wound Eric received. Let’s say you’re correct, and there was an ulterior motive at play. Let’s assume that he went to prison for questioning by the U.S. government.”
Joseph stood up and turned so that his back was on full display. He held the lamp so that the rosy light reflected on a multitude of scars that Somerset averted her eyes from. She’d always suspected he’d been flogged. The scars on his back attested to the fact. There were indentations and gouges as deep as two of her fingers held together. There was scar tissue woven into scar tissue in a pattern so grotesque that he was covered in a flesh tapestry of his own suffering. She made a noise of revulsion before she thought. Joseph topped her glass off again.
“It was outlawed supposedly, but I’ve been flogged,” said Joseph, replacing the lamp and reclining once more. “I’ve been flogged, bucked and gagged, and before they released me, they branded me. I’ve starved. I’ve slept in a rank bed with corpses, and I’ve slept in my own filth. I’ve had dysentery and the measles. Prison was the longest year of my life, and I’ll never be imprisoned again.
“I’m telling you this because I want to you to know some things, and I want you to hold them at the center of your being. I try on a daily basis to survive my past. You see me as your handsome, dashing older brother, the mischievous one who likes his fun. I play the part because it keeps me from settling back into my coarse nature. Drink keeps me in the present. Hard work helps me know that I am useful and haven’t been completely degraded. If prison did all of this to me and they ultimately released me, can you imagine what they did to Eric if your theory is correct?
“I’m telling you to take a good, hard look at who I am and accept that if he is out there somewhere, you don’t want him. If he’s alive after any of the outcomes you suggested, then he truly loves you because he had sense enough not to come home.
“None of it is true, though. I’d wager this wounded leg that I’m so wild to keep that he’s dead. You’ll come out of this better if you blindly believe it. I know you wish there was a body. So do I. One isn’t going to turn up.
“I want you to go to bed and think about what a good man loved you. He was true to you in every way. I’m wild about Fairlee and I can’t say the same. Most women can’t boast the type of love that you had. It might not be enough for you now, but it’s far more than most get. You aren’t ruined like Victoria, and you aren’t a drunk like me. You still have a chance. You can go into Mother’s annals a raging social success.
“I don’t know about this man you love now, but I’m not completely out of tune with women. I have my guesses. Don’t debase yourself by begging to be with any man who doesn’t want to be with you. As Mother would say, you’re a Forrest and a Marshall, and that counts for something. Don’t tell her I agreed with her, please. We’ll blame it on the liquor just this once. If you’re curious if I know anything about the sudden change of interest, no, I don’t. I also a
m not going to get involved so don’t ask.”
Somerset rose from her seat. She grabbed the console, finding herself swaying on her feet. The full effects of the alcohol were settling in and she got the dim impression she should go drink some water. She hoped Cleo or Bess had a pitcher in her room.
“I’ll think about everything you said tonight if I can remember it all in the morning,” she said, her words sounding thick. “Thank you for listening to me, for treating me like an equal whose thoughts matter. I don’t know if I’ll come to agree with you on every point, but you’ve given me plenty of information. I loved him. I still do. He’d go to the ends of the earth for me. Why shouldn’t I do the same for him?”
Joseph went to reply but, realizing he wasn’t certain who exactly she was speaking of, he passed over the remarks. He limped across the room on a damaged leg that was starting to show the full extent of pain he felt and held the door open for her.
“I want you to remember our deal,” he said and she weaved passed him into the hall. “I talked to you man to man like you wanted, when I prefer to go forward not backward. I’ll never speak of it again. Don’t ask. I want you to leave me alone about it. The war, the day Eric died, Elmira, all these ideas you’ve troubled yourself with—none of them will change any of our circumstances now. Get up tomorrow and live a day that you’d be proud of instead of trying to please everyone around you. I’ve played that game and I was never happy at the end of the day. Just remember, I’m not talking about it anymore.”
He shut the door against her and left her standing in the dark hall. The emptiness of his words reverberated in her chest. She saw the murky blue light beginning to tinge the edges of the draperies and retreated to her own quarters but did not sleep.
***
Chapter 6
Fairlee’s engagement ring arrived at Orchard Rest by the end of the week. No note or return address accompanied it. Somerset knew this spiteful event never happened before in seven years of courtship. He took the news better than Somerset guessed he would. When Franklin put the square box into Joseph’s palm, Joseph didn’t bother to open it. He tested the weight of the box in his open hand, and he turned and gave the ring to Blanche.