A Heartbeat Away: Quilts of Love Series (7 page)

Heat curled around them, the sun hot and forceful adding to the discomfort of working so closely with the feverish man. Beth’s arms were tingling from the burden as they stumped down the step from the porch, stopped to gain their breath, and gave Joe a chance to rest. His eyes were half-closed, sweat dripping down his face, which was red with the exertion.

“Joe?”

She could see him swallow, felt him try to take his own weight, but he was too weak and the effort too much.

“We best get him down there before we lose him.” Emma redistributed his weight, and they moved forward. The cellar steps provided the biggest challenge. Gerta appeared with a long board that she placed over the stairs, and they laid Joe down, bracketing him on both sides and letting his weight and gravity pull him downward.

Gerta made a corner for him with blankets, and they pulled the half-conscious man to the pallet. She left to check on the other man, bidding Beth to remove the old bandage.

With gentle motions Beth unwound the strips. Joe stared, unseeing, still. She opened her mouth to speak, but the words wouldn’t come. By the time Gerta returned, Joe’s eyes had sagged closed and the wound was revealed.

“Emma, if you’ll bring me some water and soap,” Gerta said, removing her soiled apron, “I’ll clean him up again. Beth, a clean apron and another light would help.”

As Beth and Emma rose from the cellar into the smoggy heat, acrid with the scent of powder, Beth dabbed the perspiration from her face and rested on the top step. She stretched her leg in front of her, rubbing at the thigh and the knee, flexing her foot and relaxing it. Emma hurried by her. “You rest, Miss Bumgartner, I can fetch that apron and a lantern as easy as you.”

Another shell screamed through the air, farther away, the crash causing Beth to cringe, her heart to plummet. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. She had left her parents’ home to fetch her new dream, not to be cornered by Lee’s army like a rat in the corncrib. Across the Pipers’ field she could see the mountains, and the haze that lay like the fog that had burned away early in the morning. This mist was a harbinger of destruction. A threat that already held the little town in its clutches, and the residents were the innocent victims.

“A wagon’s coming. Gonna be full of wounded, you watch and see if I’m not right.”

Within an hour Gerta’s front parlor held five men. The low moans were harsh against Beth’s ears. Emma moved with quiet efficiency among the men, offering water to those able to drink. Beth knelt at the side of one soldier, his head bandaged with cornhusks still retaining their green coloring. With cold fingers, she dared to lift away the husk, and her stomach knotted at the gore.

“He won’t make it,” Emma whispered against her ear. Yet the phrase took on a life of its own, roaring in her ears and mixing with the smell of blood and summer heat, unwashed bodies and . . . Beth pulled air into her lungs, and Emma’s palm rubbed the area between her shoulder blades. “Done nursed a sight of things in my life. You want, I can work on this.”

She raised her face to the woman, her tongue poised to deny the weakness she felt. “I—”

Emma took her arm and eased her onto a chair, fanning her face with an apron already smeared with blood.

Emma rushed down the steps of the cellar clutching a basket of old clothes. Beth didn’t want to talk, she only wanted to finish ripping the linens and petticoats into strips and ignore the sounds and dust and fear gnawing at her backbone. She had to be strong.

Emma sat beside her. “North road is full of ’em.” The tremor in Emma’s voice could not be masked.

“I know. They’re everywhere.”

It was the reason Beth had sought the cellar and Joe’s still form. He grew restless during the worst of it, but stilled when she spoke to him. The parlor now held ten men, toe to head in
the cramped space. A surgeon had arrived hours before, working over them, oblivious to the blood smeared on his clothes or running onto the floor. Beth wished it would all go away. The men. The sound of their moaning.

“That boy about killed me,” Emma said. “Sad to see the young ones who suffer.”

The youngest, looking not more than fourteen, had been one of the first brought in, his frantic screeches vacillated between calling for his mother and writhing in pain from the hole in his abdomen. Beth shuddered at the memory and forced herself to pick up a petticoat. She began ripping the cloth into strips. Bandages to stop the blood of those men yet to come.

“Your grandmother works like she’s young.”

Beth nodded. “She’s strong.”

“Stronger than me.”

Beth’s gaze darted to the woman’s face. Emma seemed strong. She was a big woman, beautiful and hard-working. “I guess that makes two of us. I wanted so badly for Grandmama to leave, but she was adamant about staying, and I couldn’t leave her alone. Now,” the shame of the words she was about to speak reduced her voice to a whisper, “now I wish I had.”

“We’ll ask the good Lord to be here with us.”

Beth could only wonder how many times others had asked the same thing and now lay dying in the field, their blood staining the soil beneath them. She stood, the scraps falling to the ground, the petticoat gripped in her hand. No matter where she went, she could not escape God’s failure. Her failure to save Leo. But as the ground swelled with another nearby hit from a shell, and the urge to run burgeoned inside her, she realized there was nowhere she could hide. Emma’s voice lifted in fervent pleas to her God.

Beth leaned forward to raise the wick of the lamp. Shadows rolled back from Joe’s cheeks, showing the haze of a beard. She wondered if he wore a beard normally or kept his jaw and cheeks clean shaven. Pressing the back of her hand against his cheek, the heat seared her cool palm. Was it her imagination? Her heart raced. Surely he would not die. She went down on her knees, the cold of the earthen floor permeating her skirts, and released the stopper on her anxieties.

Lifting Joe’s hand, she uncurled his fingers and pressed her palm flat against his. If she closed her eyes, she could still see Leo’s flushed face in the moments before the boy died. She could hear his rapid wheezes, see the skin falling away, charred, and feel the heat radiating from his little body.

For all she had done, the prayers she had prayed, still he had died in the inferno that had trapped her as well. She ghosted through the days of her recovery, unable to do anything but the most menial tasks, afraid to look at her leg and ankle and see the truth that shadowed the doctor’s eyes, then her mother’s and father’s. And the cycle had begun again. The endless prayers for mercy, the fear of never being able to walk again.

Beth stuffed her fist against her lips, pressing, pushing back the wall of emotion that threatened to crush her. The sight of Emma’s sleeping form stretched out beside her helped Beth gain control.

A soft flutter against her fingers pulled her attention down. Joe’s fingers touched hers like the fragile beat of a baby bird’s wings. His eyes remained closed, but his breathing had changed, grown shallower.

“Joe?”

His eyes slitted open. “Can’t feel . . .”

She pressed a finger into the palm of his hand and his fingers curled inward, wrapping around her finger like a newborn.

“Can’t feel what?”

“Arm.”

The wound on his right side was high up on the shoulder. She stretched across him, touching his upper arm.

His nod brushed whiskers against the blanket, making a scratching sound. “It hurts.”

She skimmed her hand down the length of his arm. “Your arm or the pressure?”

“Like needles.”

“Can you move it?”

He tried. She could feel the muscles flex, but with a kitten’s strength. His eyes opened fully, canvassing the interior. “What is this?”

“We moved you to the cellar. You were having nightmares or memories.”

“Another battle.”

The words rang hollow, awakening Beth’s inner turmoil. “Yes. Close. Very close.”

“And you’re my refuge.”

She sat back on her heels, confused by his choice of words. “My grandmother has done much more than I. She cleaned your wound and put a poultice on it to draw out infection.”

“But it’s you I remember.”

“Me?”

“Your voice, talking to me.”

“I—well, yes. I’ve tried to help where I can.” Her throat closed. “It’s all we can do.”

His eyes closed and his tongue darted out over dry lips as another hit rattled the house above and sent down a geyser of dirt and dust to cloud the air. Emma moaned and sat up. The black woman scooted close, a piece of linen pressed to her mouth. Joe’s cry came from low in his throat, and his fingers tightened on Beth’s as she stroked his forehead, his jaw. Her heart squeezed at his helplessness.

“Am I dying?”

For an instant she hung suspended, afraid to make such an answer. The fever. His extreme thinness and the already exhausted state in which he’d arrived. The fever would further reduce his strength. She bit her lip to keep from crying, for surely he would recognize her distress and assume the worst. She’d never considered the other side of death’s equation—the fear of dying. Only the side that feared being left alone.

His eyes were more focused, drilling into hers as he waited for her answer. “You are stronger. If you eat more . . . And we need to get this fever to break.”

“Is there any bread? Soft bread.” His tongue darted out to lick his cracked lips. “Haven’t tasted soft bread in months.”

“I’ll get you some. A whole loaf to yourself, if you’d like.” Beth rose, giving her legs a chance to recover from the cramped position. She did not want to consider why it was suddenly so important to her that he live. “More salve for your lips, water . . .”

“Come back?”

She turned at those two words, feeling both the desperation and the longing weighing on each syllable. It pulled at the vulnerable place buried deep within her heart, where she used to dream of being loved and needed. If she could not have love, she could cherish need.

“Miss Bumgartner?”

The deep rumbling voice came from the opening of the cellar doors. Jim.

“Your grandmama wanted me to bring this frame on down for that man before them Rebels claim it for one of the other men. Another wagon full of men came in. Almost full up there now.”

She peered around until she saw Jim’s large form, the cot stuck beneath his arm. “Yes, that would be wonderful.”

When Jim was eye level with her, his dark face offered a wan smile. “Got Mr. Nisewander to agree to get out. He’s coming here, gonna bunk in the cellar while I help.”

“They’re hitting close.”

“That was what got the Mister convinced.”

“The caves would be safer, even up north with his brother.”

“He still ain’t wanting to leave town, but I got him to see that your grandmama needed the help. He’s said as long as he could see his house he’d be content.” He lowered his voice. “Done had me go hide his money in the stone wall.”

Beth glanced over her shoulder. Joe still watched them from the floor. “Can you get Joe settled?”

“Done got another cot to bring down, then the Mister. Me and Emma will set things straight while you fetch what you gotta.”

Joe could hear no more than the deep rumblings of the black man and Beth’s murmured responses. He could see the woman quickly glance in his direction. Saw her say something more, then turn to leave. His spirits sagged. He didn’t want to be alone. Loneliness nipped at him, hollow and cold. Ben should be here, but, no, Ben was gone. Shot. He squeezed his eyes shut to try and remember the dream, or was it a vision? Every fiber of his being stretched to bring into focus the wayward images that danced along the periphery of his mind but never quite came into focus. He was hot, perhaps the images were nothing more than the result of his fever, of the wound in his shoulder.

And then there was his arm . . . tingly, numb. He couldn’t feel it, but it hurt to move it. Even bunching his muscles sent out pulses of pain. A surgeon would amputate it. He’d seen it done hundreds of times, had heard the agonized screams of the men when medical supplies were low and chloroform in short supply. Arms, legs, hands, feet, it mattered not the part or pain, and all for the sake of saving the soldier’s life. Joe shuddered and turned his face to the side. He tried again to make a fist and though his fingers curled some, he couldn’t get them to tighten into a fist. It was all the Yankees’ fault. The war. The blackness of war coated his soul.