My Vicksburg

by Ann Rinaldi

  "He's yours then," the lieutenant told James. "Here, where do you want to put him?"

  I handed the bucket for the blackberries to James and picked up the ends of my apron, fashioning a bed for the bird. The lieutenant put him in and I closed the ends of the apron so he wouldn't fall out.

  Then the lieutenant stood up straight and did something I never expected. He saluted us. "Thank you from the army of the United States," he said. Then he turned and walked away.

  James was openmouthed. "Wow," he said. "Wait'll I tell Landon."

  "Yes," I returned. Then I untied my apron in back, took it off, and fashioned a sort of bag out of it and handed it to James, cautioning him not to drop it. We picked our blackberries, then found our way home.

  Mama was happy about the blackberries and immediately asked Easter to make some corn muffins with blackberries in them. Everyone exclaimed over the bird and Easter found some cornmeal for it. I fashioned a nest out of an old cloth and it kept James busy all evening.

  I saw several looks pass between Mama and Easter, but I did not know what for. Then, as she sometimes did, Mama asked me to take James downstairs and bathe him in the cistern, that he was the nearest thing to filthy she had ever seen. Robert, who could whittle, had made James a small boat for the cistern and so taking a bath was not such a chore anymore. The chore was getting him out. I let him stay about half an hour before I got him out, and by that time he was exhausted and near sleep when I put him in his pajamas.

  I dried his hair good and carried him upstairs to his little room and put him to bed. No, he hadn't had any supper. At this point sleep was more important.

  As I went down the hall and into the kitchen, Mama was just coming out, holding a tray with a bowl of soup on it. Next to the soup bowl was a dish of white meat. I stared.

  She smiled. "For Robert," she said. "The soup will bring his strength back."

  I don't know what made me realize what had happened. I just knew. Even before I looked around and saw Easter cleaning up the mess of blue feathers on the floor.

  I gasped. "Mama! You didn't! That was James's bird!"

  The smile never left her face. "Oh fiddlesticks, Claire Louise. Come now. You have to grow up sometimes. Anyway, what are we going to do with a bird in a cave?"

  "Mama! Don't you care about anything anymore? That bird was James's new pet!"

  "The cat would have eaten him," she retorted.

  "I don't understand you, Mama. You've become so, so"—oh, I covered my face with my hands and started to cry—"uncaring!" I stamped my foot.

  "Claire Louise! Apologize to Mama this minute! How dare you speak to her like that?"

  Oh God, Landon, come in the front door. I'd heard someone come in, someone set something down, hard, on the floor, but in all my anguish, I hadn't paid mind. I sniffed and wiped my tears. I squared my shoulders.

  "Do you know what she's done, Landon? Do you even care?"

  "I care about one thing, Claire Louise, the way you're speaking to our mother. This war has done a lot of things to a lot of people. Good people. It has torn them apart, questioned their loyalties, turned their hearts, but when it starts turning members of a family against each other, it's time to lay down our arms and think what we're about. Now apologize." His voice was quiet, even, like Pa's.

  He was getting more like Pa every day. Well, I decided, that wasn't such a bad thing to be like, was it? I did as he said. "I'm sorry, Mama," I said.

  She compressed her lips, nodded her head. "So am I, daughter, sorry that I had to do this with the bird. Now just let me take this to Robert, and we can talk about it if you want." She walked past me, out of the kitchen.

  James came running in then, past her. "What you got, Mama?" he asked.

  "Some soup for Robert, so he can get better."

  "Can I have some?"

  Landon was across the kitchen in two strides. He picked up James and held him in his arms. "You wanna see what I've got here, Buddy? Look, I've brought food. All of this is food. For all of us. See? Look, bags of potatoes and corn and coffee, sugar and cans of sardines and pickles and big pieces of cheese and sides of bacon and—"

  "Where'd you get it?" James asked.

  "Well, my commanding officer said I could borrow a mule and take him and Rosie down to Chickasaw Bayou, to the river landing where supplies for our army are received. And I could take food for my family. Now and anytime in the future of this siege. So they won't starve. But we're not allowed to tell anybody. Got that?"

  James nodded his head. "Mama cooked my bird and made soup out of it 'cause we had no food to make Robert strong," he said solemnly. "I heard everybody yelling about it."

  Tears were coming down his face.

  Landon wiped them away. "Yeah, but sometimes we have to make sacrifices in a war. Everybody does. Even down to a five-year-old boy," he told James.

  "I'm a little man," James corrected him.

  "Good. I'm glad to hear it. Then you mustn't cry. After the war, I'll make it up to you."

  "How?" James wanted to know.

  "Well, give me a chance and I'll see. Maybe I'll buy you a pony. How's that?"

  James was ecstatic. He hugged Landon, who hugged him back, wholeheartedly. "Now come on, let's get this stuff out of the bag so Easter can make supper," he said.

  Chapter Eleven

  What to do about Robert.

  Robert deserved a second chance, I decided. Everyone did. So somehow he lost or dropped the order from General Lee. Should a person die or be put into prison for life for that? Should a person's life be ruined because of an innocent mistake?

  Of course I could say no, because I was not in the army. It did not have its tentacles wrapped around me. I was not a doctor, with another whole barrel of fish to account for. And if I did what I wanted to do, no shame would come down on my family.

  But first, before I set out to become a heroine, I had to get to know Robert, proper like. I had to at least spend some time with him and find out what he was about.

  We were at breakfast. We had food now, anyway, thanks to Landon. No one was to know it, of course. It was to be shared with no one. This was difficult. No one was to know that Landon had been treated "special" and allowed to bring his family food. For the simple reason, he'd been told by his commanding officer, that the Yankee army believed that the only way it would finally take Vicksburg was to starve its people out.

  Mama said, "The idea of starving our neighbors out, while we eat in plentitude, bothers me, Landon."

  "You want me to leave off bringing food, Ma?" he asked.

  Landon could always come up with a reply that made you stand by your statements and abide by them, even while they squirmed beneath your feet.

  "You know better," Mama said. "I've got to take care of my family."

  Mama looked at him, long and hard. "The Yankees know that's the only way they'll get the city, don't they? Our soldiers can hold them off as long as they want to. We can't be beat with shelling. Only with starvation."

  We ate in silence for a while then. Everyone but Robert. He wasn't eating.

  "Did you decide whether you're going to work at writing those letters for our boys?" Mama asked me.

  I nodded yes. "I've got to do something. I just can't sit around and do nothing," I told her.

  "All right. I'll send a courier with a note to Dr. Bal-four this morning that you'll come."

  "I need you this morning, too," Landon announced. "I've got three patients due in the surgery. You can come over and play nurse and receptionist."

  "I was going to read some Dickens to Robert this morning."

  "Robert can wait." He winked at his friend. "He can have you when I'm finished. All right, old friend?"

  Robert said it was all right. He was tired anyway, he said. Neither he nor Landon knew that this was the day I'd picked to get to know him.

  I didn't mind helping Landon in Pa's surgery. He didn't ask me to do much except take the patients' names and ailments down in the waiting ro
om, then bring them into the surgery in order of their arrival.

  "How's your pa?" they all asked me.

  I told them we'd received only two letters, that he couldn't give out his destination but that he was with General Lee and in good health and said he would write to us soon. They all missed him.

  "Landon's a good doctor," I told them.

  They came with all kinds of ailments, from poison ivy to deep coughs, from sprained wrists to earaches. One woman came, she said, because she had nervous spasms from the sounds of the shelling, and she wanted to see if the young Dr. Corbet was as good as his father.

  Once I had escorted the patient inside the surgery and fetched what Landon wanted, he would not let me stay. About six patients came that Saturday morning, even while we were being shelled and cannonaded and the musketry exploded overhead, and added to this treacherous music was the smashing of windows in nearby houses from the percussion of the explosions.

  Landon dismissed me before noon to go and have lunch. But first I took him a tray fixed by Clothilda. He was as if lost in that surgery, time frozen for him.

  When I returned to the cave, Mama asked me to take a tray to Robert. I watched him eat. He liked rice and mushrooms, and Mama had made him his own concoction. But he didn't eat much.

  "Your brother is convinced I have brain fever," he told me quietly, "but the only fever I have is to go home."

  "I can understand that," I said.

  "Suppose the quinine won't break the fever. You think your brother will let me go anyway?"

  I had no way to answer. Landon told me, only last evening when we were putting away the food he'd brought, that he'd decided he had to turn Robert over to Pemberton. "It's the worst thing I've ever had to do," he'd said, "but it's the only thing I can do in my position."

  "Your mother was in here this morning giving me a decoction of sprigs and leaves from the hemlock spruce tree," Robert was saying. "She asked your brother first, of course. He said yes. I think I'm feeling better. But how will we know whether it was the quinine or her remedy if the fever breaks?"

  I smiled. "My mother often has that problem with Pa," I told him. "They always decide it doesn't matter as long as the patient gets well."

  He then asked me to tell him about Pa, so I did. He listened carefully, then told me about his pa, a plantation owner, now under the Yankees, since Jackson, Mississippi, was captured a while back. He told me about his own little sister, Cassie Lea, who could ride better than he could, and about his brother, Billy, who had been in a military academy before the war and now, at only seventeen, had joined up with the army and had a thirst for Yankee blood. He told me how he longed for some of his mammy's biscuits and ham and chocolate cake.

  "My pa hates the Yankees with a passion," he told me. "Wait'll I tell him that my new friend is a Yankee and how he saved me."

  I went solemn.

  "What's wrong, Claire Louise? Did I offend you in any way?"

  I shook my head. He really did think Landon was going to save him.

  The realization came down on me like a mortar shell, exploding in shards and lights all around me. The noise made me unable to focus. Robert was mouthing some more of his truths.

  "Did Andy give you any money?" I asked him outright.

  He looked startled at first, then he understood. "Yes. He hired himself out and worked for it and gave it to me. How did you know?"

  "I was there when he asked my brother if he could. He said it was for your trip home."

  "Yes, I have enough, thank you."

  "You'll need some food to take along. And someone to accompany you on the way out of town. To show you the best way, where you won't be hit by shells and bothered by people. Eight o'clock at night is the best time. Everyone is out then and one more person seen 'round and about won't be noticeable."

  "You sound as if you discussed this with your brother. Did you?"

  I picked up his lunch tray from the bed. The book Great Expectations lay there next to it. I admired the gold title on the cover. We hadn't even opened it.

  "No, we haven't discussed it," I said. I took a deep breath. It might as well be now, I told myself. And so I told him.

  "You won't like this, Robert. And you won't believe it. But it's true. Your friend, Landon, isn't going to help you escape. He's going to turn you in to Pemberton before he reports to Milliken's Bend hospital. I heard him tell Mama. He doesn't want to. But he can't do anything else in his position as a doctor and a captain in the Yankee army. You see, you're his prisoner, technically. He told me that if he helps you escape, he's an accessory to your running away and could be court-martialed."

  He just stared at me. His eyes were so blue, and into the blueness now came tears, but he kept them in check, he wouldn't let them overflow.

  "Claire Louise Corbet, are you funnin' me?" he asked.

  "No, sir. No. I'm not. I wish I were. I've been thinking about it, you see, and I decided I want to help you escape. I want to help you get home. To your own mama and pa and Cassie Lea and those biscuits and ham and that chocolate cake. Even if the Yankees there make you a prisoner. Because it'll all end soon, and if you're a prisoner of Pemberton's it won't end, ever."

  The silence stretched between us like we were pulling taffy. He was taking it all in. I could tell by his eyes, by the way he was slowly nodding his head.

  And then he said something that summed it all up. "You love that brother of yours, but you're making your own decision, because you know it's the right thing to do," he said gravely. "I hope someday my sister, Cassie Lea, will have the sense you have."

  "So you'll let me help you then?"

  "Have at it, Claire Louise. What would you have me do?"

  "You've only to be dressed and ready. I'll give you a sack of food and a Colt Navy revolver that was Pa's from the house. I'll walk you as far down as the spring where we met, where I was picking blackberries. I'll draw a map that will take you east from there."

  "When?"

  I paused only a moment. "In two nights," I said. "At the eight o'clock respite from shelling. Landon will likely be in Pa's surgery then. It's when people come. All right?"

  "He'll punish you when he finds out."

  "He won't find out. The lie is that you left on your own. You just picked up and skedaddled. I know how to lie, don't worry. I have to go now. Get plenty of rest and try to eat good between now and then."

  He was perplexed, taken with the audacity of it. For one of Lee's officer's, I thought, he was powerful innocent. He must have come reluctantly to new plans.

  I left.

  Chapter Twelve

  I had a little scare late that afternoon when Landon called me aside and asked me why I had spent so much time with Robert after lunch.

  The look of surprise on my face was real. How did he know? Had Mama told him?

  "I hope you're not getting overfriendly with him," he cautioned.

  "What is that supposed to mean?"

  "I think you know."

  "Well, damn."

  "Don't use foul language with me."

  And there he was, in an instant, up on his high horse. And there is nothing you can do about it when Landon gets up on his high horse, except wait until he is ready to get down.

  "You were the one who said we were supposed to make him feel at home."

  "His spirits are low, Claire Louise. And with good reason. He misses home. He doesn't know what's coming next. He's like a man drowning. He'll accept any rope thrown to him. Right now I'm that rope. Don't take it away from him."

  Whatever that meant, it was an order as if it had come straight down from General Grant. And the look in Landon's eyes was the seal on the order. I nodded and we parted.

  Maybe, I thought, maybe I should do it tonight. I allowed the idea to tantalize me until I could stand it no more. And then, with no other purpose in mind, with the eight p.m. reprieve in the shelling, and with Mama's permission, I walked over to our house.

  To my surprise the place was quiet
in the evening of a late June day. With no shelling I could hear the birds, the cicadas, and, in the distance, the tolling of a church bell. It all sounded so nice. The chickens in the yard clucked to me. I was surprised. Did we still have chickens? Then I heard movement and voices from the barn.

  "She just come flyin' in, Massa Landon," Andy was saying, "stirrups aflappin', reins jumpin', just as pretty as you please, and then just as she gets here, I come out the back door an' she sees me and neighs and comes over and she says hello."

  "What time was that?" my brother asked.

  "Couple hours ago, suh. I give her food and water and she happy as a pig in mud. Doan seem to mind the shellin', suh. I guess she used to it."

  I stood in the barn door adjusting my eyes to the dimness inside.

  Sure enough there was Jewel. My horse, come home!

  "Jewel!" I near screamed it, startling both Landon and Andy. Both turned and stepped aside as I ran forward to the front of the stall and reached up and hugged her. She knew me, of course. She whinnied and nuzzled me and I hugged her around the neck for a long time. "Oh, Jewel, you're home."

  "Did no one come looking for her?" Landon was asking.

  "No, suh. Nobody. I think she jus' skedaddled from wherever she wuz and come back to her own barn. And them Yankees, excuse me, suh, but them Yankees too dumb to know where that is."

  Landon tried to control a smile. And then I saw she was wearing a Yankee saddle and blanket. And so I went around and into the stall and unfastened the saddle, without saying a word. And I took off the blanket. Landon and Andy watched me. Everything was all right until I fetched one of our own blankets and saddles and put them on her.

  "What do you think you're about?" Landon asked.

  I didn't answer.

  "Take that off. She isn't to be ridden for a while. Give her a rest."

  I ignored him. I intended, you see, to have her ready for whenever I took Robert down to the stream. It wasn't a long way, but I might have to take him well beyond.