A Heartbeat Away: Quilts of Love Series (2 page)

She hadn’t realized she’d stopped to stare until her grandmother’s voice broke into her thoughts.

“There go the Roulettes.”

Beth’s gaze followed the bend in the road that ran in front of her grandmother’s farm and led northeast to Hagerstown.

“Going to the church, no doubt.”

“Aren’t
you
worried, Grandmama?”

“You wanted to train as a nurse and the good Lord saw fit for those slaves to bring you your first patient.” Gerta turned
back toward the house. “We’ll have more than we can handle if the fighting keeps up.”

Not quite done with the conversation, she traced her grandmother’s path into the generous kitchen. “You think they’ll come this way?”

“They’ll be all over the place. Harper’s Ferry is a threat that they’ll have to deal with.”

“And you’re not afraid?”

Gerta snorted. She dipped water from a bucket into a kettle and set it to heat. “I’m seventy-nine years old, sharp of tongue, and knowing more than all those Rebels and Yanks put together—”

“All of them?” Beth couldn’t help the smile.

Her grandmother shot her a grin and flattened her lips like the bill of a duck. A comical, mischievous expression Beth had seen frequently on her father’s mother’s face, hard times or not. “Well, most of them. Goodness knows there’s nothing much to fear at my age except dying and going to the wrong place, and I’ve had that one settled for years.”

“But what if they steal or force you to leave or . . . ?” She shuddered, her mind going to the worst possible scenario.

Scooping tea leaves into her favorite cup, Gerta raised another, empty cup, eyebrows lifted in question. Beth nodded.

Gerta measured out tea leaves, her bright, dark gaze unflinching. “Nothing bad will happen, Bethie.”

She pressed her lips together, the truth stinging afresh. “Already so many have died.”

“And there will be many more who will need our help.”

Nursing, she meant. It was the one dream that Beth had clung to in the days since leaving her parents’ home to stay with her grandmother, intending to join with the Army of the Potomac and Clara Barton. A dream that had waned a bit as rumors circulated of the coming troops. But the blacks had
come under cover of darkness the night before, bringing the soldier and igniting the need to be of more use than sitting and stitching or cooking.

Gerta had never been able to understand why the blacks had come to her instead of the town doc, other than her reputation for helping the ailing despite the color of their skin. The small town’s doctor had southern sympathies.

Gerta slid the cup of tea toward her. Dutifully taking a sip, Beth couldn’t help smiling. No one made a cup of tea like her grandmother, or maybe it was so good because it was made by someone who knew her as well as her grandmother did.

“You’re limping.”

She covered the sigh by blowing the air onto the tea. Her leg. Her ankle. Always a problem. “I want to help anyway.”

“Your mother gave you jobs to keep your hands busy so you could rest your leg.”

Beth didn’t meet her grandmother’s gaze. Gerta, of all people, knew exactly how much she despised being relegated to tasks that made her sit and rest. “It’s not going to be a problem.” She lifted her chin, pleased to see not an ounce of pity in Gerta’s eyes.

“Then we should get to work.”

Beth took a long sip of tea, dreading another day of baking. Perhaps her pride should be swallowed instead of the tea.

A sagging flour sack beckoned, as did the twenty something loaves of bread already baked, awaiting the inevitable hungry mouths of the enemy, whose goal must be to reach Hagerstown and join the rest of the Confederate army. They could hide the loaves. Save them for the Union troops that were even now engaging the Rebs. She hoped the enemy wouldn’t decide to loot the Union-held garrison at Harper’s Ferry that would take the Confederates through her grandmother’s small town. Sharpsburg would be ravaged by the thieving monsters.
She feared her hopes were already dashed though, as reports of the Confederates in that part of Virginia had already filtered back, putting the townspeople in a vise of fright, hemmed in on three sides by the enemy.

Allowing herself to be carried off to a more peaceful time by the familiar work of adding water to flour to form dough and inhaling the yeasty sourdough scent, Beth did her best to blank her mind of the worries that nagged. When she finished kneading enough dough for four loaves, she began another batch, until perspiration dampened her neckline, flour dusted the front of her bodice, and her bad foot sent shards of pain shooting into her leg. She dragged up a stool and continued the work. Wiping the flour from her hands, she heaved a heavy sigh when the sticky flour mess mussed her skirts instead of the apron she should have been wearing to protect her clothes. She brushed at the mess and decided it best to let the moist flour dry before picking it off her skirt. She tied on her grandmother’s worn calico apron with the pretty stripes. The striped material would have been a little wild for her mother’s taste, but it fit Gerta’s personality to a
T
. The thought tugged a smile from her as she plunged her hands into another batch of warm, sticky dough.

The yard door rattled open behind her. Gerta opened and shut the door quickly. “The flies are terrible.” She set a cup of tea down on the work surface. “I wanted him to drink some, but he fell asleep again.” She surveyed Beth’s work with a sharp eye that belied her deteriorating eyesight. “You’ve quite enough there. Add more flour to the sourdough for tomorrow’s baking. I’ll start on some pies while you rest.”

Beth finished the dough, placed it in a bowl, and covered it to rise. A long line of bowls lined the work surface in front of her.

“Biscuits would be good as well. Maybe a meat pie.”

“Are you going to have Harold take the milk cow, chickens, and horse to safety?”

Gerta measured out lard and turned to the flour sack. “He’s driving Mrs. Knicks’s cow, too, and said adding more wouldn’t be a problem.”

Beth sighed. At least the animals would be safe should the soldiers come their way and pillage. She’d heard stories of the damage they’d done at Frederick. Finished with the bread, Beth wiped her hands on the apron and picked up the tea she’d left mostly untouched. She tasted it and frowned.

“A pinch of cinnamon and a bit of the hot water,” Gerta nodded toward the kettle, “will warm it up just fine.”

Ridiculous that tea still soothed on such a warm day, but it did. She inhaled, and the rich cinnamon took her back to another time, years before. Her throat swelled shut as the memories assaulted her afresh. She stared down into the cup. A shell whizzed and shattered. Beth started, the tea splashing onto her hand, the tin mug slipped to the floor and spilled its contents.

A shout rent the air then. Beth caught her grandmother’s moment of confusion before she wiped her hands down her apron and bolted toward the door. One word spat into the air that explained the sudden outburst. “Joe.”

Beth held the candle up to see that Joe sat up in bed, eyes wide open as his voice lifted on another wail. Gerta moved past, her voice soothing, her hands placing gentle pressure against the man’s shoulders, encouraging him to recline. But he broke into a series of panicked screams, body rigid, muscles bunched.

Beth set the candle on the low table and lunged forward to grasp his good arm. She wrenched it down to keep him from flailing and tearing open the wound her grandmother had just mended. She braced her body against his. His struggles forced her to grasp tighter, to join her grandmother’s soft-spoken attempts to relieve him of his terror. Each shout ripped from him. Her ears rang with each scream and still she kept up the quiet reassurance until the muscles in his arms went flaccid and he sank back, his brow beaded with sweat, hair damp. Beth straightened, drawing air into her starved lungs. She glanced at her grandmother, and her mouth went dry when she saw Gerta’s blood-saturated apron.

“He tore open the wound,” Gerta confirmed, her fatigue showing in the whiteness of her lips. She stroked her sleeve
across her brow, sweeping loosened tendrils of gray hair behind her ear.

Beth assessed what needed to be done and hurried outside as fast as her leg would allow. She yanked fresh linens from the drying line. Arms full, she entered the springhouse as Gerta lit the wick of the lantern and raised it to the hook she’d pounded into the wall the evening the slaves had delivered the wounded man. She blew out the candle.

At the foot of the cot, Beth dumped the fresh towels beside his feet. Where he’d been wide awake in the grip of his private terror, he now slept. She moved to the table where her grandmother’s scissors lay and placed them in her grandmother’s soft hand. Gerta cut the edge of the material of Joe’s once-clean shirt and ripped upward, laying bare his chest and the long, deep wound, slick with blood.

“I should have left him bare-chested. Waste of a good shirt.” Gerta rolled a towel and pressed it against the wound.

“You had no way of knowing this would happen.”

They worked over the inert form until the sun was low in the sky. Gerta’s head tilted as if she listened for something. “You hear that?”

Beth caught on to what she meant. “They stopped.”

Her grandmother’s eyes flicked toward the small window high in the east wall.

Beth upended the buckets she’d used to haul water into the kitchen for boiling, too tired to think, the pain radiating in full fury. And still there was bread to bake. Gerta, too, moved slower than normal.

“He should sleep for a while. I worry about having him out here. If he wakes again, we might not hear him.”

“And someone else might.”

Gerta cut her eyes to Beth. “You worry too much. He’s a man. He’s shot. He’s helpless.”

“We’d be helping the enemy.”

“If we get harassed for that, it’s not us with the problem.”

Certain in her reasoning, Gerta stepped quite lively toward the wagon. “I’ll get Jim to help us take him inside. Take the wagon and fetch him.”

“Won’t Mr. Nisewander have a problem with—”

“He won’t even miss him.”

Frustrated at her grandmother’s refusal to listen to any argument against her own ideas, Beth released a soft breath rather than the huff of annoyance that would have granted a measure of satisfaction. She decided to walk the short distance to the house, too nervous for the ride. Tension was bottled up in the pit of her stomach. More than anything, she wanted to head into Sharpsburg and gather news on what was happening. Stubborn her grandmother might be, but surely the woman would listen to reason if the troops were rumored to be heading in their direction. If Gerta had made provision for the livestock, she must be worried.

But somehow Beth doubted it. She believed there was little that rattled the old woman, a trait both awe-inspiring and frightening.

As Beth limped into the dense woods, she stepped carefully, imagining the muscles in her leg relaxing. At least moving seemed to ease the stiffness of standing in one place. The little log cabin of Mr. Nisewander’s free field slave came into view. Jim seldom strayed far from Norman Nisewander, age seventy-two, and Norman’s son refused to separate the faithful man from his ailing father. Every morning for as many years as she could remember, Jim went to the big house to care for and be companion to Norman, while the other Nisewander slaves, now owned by the son, worked in the fields.

The little log cabin stood proudly in that corner of the field closest to the woods, far from the house and outbuildings, but
not so far that Jim couldn’t be summoned should Norman need something in the night.

She raised her hand to knock and jumped when Jim’s voice boomed out behind her.

“Jim’s not home.”

She turned, a ready smile on her face. The large man’s coffee-colored skin retained few wrinkles despite his fine crop of silver hair. His dirty knees and the shovel gripped in his hand gave evidence to what he’d been doing.

“You look well, Jim.”

“Won’t feel so well if them Rebs have their way.”

“You’re a free man.”

“Done begged Mr. Nisewander to let me hitch the wagon and take us on up to Mercersville. His brother’s up there, ya know. But he say no, he too old to be rattling around in a wagon for all that ways.”

Jim lowered his head a moment, his words softer now. “The leg giving you trouble?”

Beth felt the familiar poke at the precarious wall that retained her deeper emotions. “I’ve been on it a bit longer than usual.” Descending the step, she put her good foot down first, relieved she did not fall, one of her worst fears. She tried to project a lighter tone. “Grandma has a wounded soldier at our place. She needs him moved into the house and wondered if you could help us.”

Jim glanced away, his expression unreadable in the low light. “A real soldier? A Union man?”

She swallowed, wishing so much he hadn’t asked, or that she didn’t have to answer. “A Reb. A band of blacks brought him to us in the night. They were heading north from Middleton.” She shrugged, repeating only what she’d learned secondhand.

“They risked their lives for a Grayback.”

It seemed there had been more to the story. “They said him and his brother saved their lives, and they couldn’t just leave him to die.”

Jim seemed mollified by the news. He shifted his weight to his other foot, lips pooched as he scratched along his short beard. “Reckon it won’t hurt none to help.”

“She’ll be grateful, as am I.”

“Hurt bad, is he?”

She licked her lips, wishing for a cool drink. Jim set the pace at a quick trot that left her struggling to keep up. The limbs and brush clawed at her skirts as the two of them passed along the trail through the woods. She gasped when a prickly branch scratched across her burned hand, drawing blood. She dabbed at the area with her apron and let Jim get ahead of her so that she could rest. She hated weakness. Hated that her leg hindered her so much. Tears burned her eyes, but she widened her eyes and willed them away. Now was no time to feel sorry for herself. Not if she didn’t want others to do the same.

Jim carried the wounded soldier like a baby at her grandmother’s incessant urging not to jostle her patient. He knelt to lay the man in the front room on a thick pile of blankets her grandmother had prepared in her absence.