A Place of Peace (11 page)

Now the gray of the morning was nothing to feel cheerful about, save that it marked another day that she was still alive.  The smell of smoke was heavy in the air, and the outlines of the tobacco plants seemed to wave at her through the fog before vanishing in the mist.  She noticed Bill and his men had moved the body of the dead Union soldier away from the porch.  What they had done with it, she didn’t know, and she didn’t know if she wanted to.

They buried Frank
near a tulip poplar tree that he had been quite fond of.  As Bill and the men dug the grave, Melinda stood near Frank’s body.  She felt sorrow, but not like she had expected.  Instead, she knew it would come much later, perhaps late at night, when the crushing feeling of loss would settle over her and then the tears would come.  Joan was still in the house, still in bed.  Despite Melinda’s best efforts, she would not get up.  Melinda explained that they were going to bury Frank, but Joan did not acknowledge the girl’s words.  Her eyes were still blank, and still stared straight ahead.  Melinda had finally given up, telling Joan she would take care of the funeral.

Melinda felt the fog closing in around her, like a gray blanket wrapped around her to smother her.  She knelt by the body, still wrapped in the sheet, and touched Frank’s shoulder, feeling the coldness there.  She might as well have been touching a stone or a piece of wood.   It might have been her father lying there, and she might have had the same reaction: numb loss coupled by a feeling of dread that the true weight of sorrow was heading her way to hit her when she wasn’t ready to deal with it.

Bill Harris removed his hat, placing it over his chest in respect.  Two others lowered the sheeted corpse down into the hole, where it looked small and insignificant at the bottom.  Melinda felt the waves come over her, and the tears began dripping unheeded from her eyes.

“Let us pray,” murmured Bill.  Melinda clutched her eyes shut, squeezing two more tears out before the darkness came.  Perhaps when she opened them, the world would be different and there wouldn’t be Frank lying in a grave in front of her anymore.  She would go back to her house and wait for her father to come home, and her only worry would be whether or not the crows were going to eat her corn.

Bill Harris’s words comforted her a bit.  Frank had been a good man, an honest and righteous man who walked with God and had died protecting his family.  Melinda saw Joan back at the house, still lying in bed, clutching at the edge of the quilt pulled up around her chin, her eyes wide and staring, always staring, always mumbling quiet prayers to herself.  She should have been down here saying goodbye, but no one expected her to be here, not after what she had seen.

When Melinda opened her eyes, the world came back into focus, and Bill Harris put his hat back on.

“Is there anything you would like to say, Melinda?”

No words came to her.  She could have given a speech about protecting one’s property from invaders, and how Frank had been like a father to her, and how he had always looked out for her, but instead she said nothing.  And in her mind she saw the union soldier limping away toward the road, a soldier who someday would get to see Little William, or Billy, as his mother liked to call him.

What would Frank have said about that?  He might have seen her side of it, but under different circumstances, that boy might have worked on Frank’s farm in the summers, and Frank might have  introduced him to Melinda on one of his visits to her father.   Frank was only doing what he thought was right.  He was protecting his wife and his home, and those were noble things to die for.

“Goodbye, Frank,” she whispered.  “I will miss you.”  Already, the sense of loss was making her dizzy, and the thought of Joan lying catatonic in her bed was overwhelming.  She plucked some
of the new blossoms off of the tulip poplar tree and sprinkled them in the grave.

“Amen,” said Bill Harris.  “Be with God, friend,” he said.  Three shovels hit the pile of dirt at the same instant, and the first showers of dirt rained down into the grave.  Soon, it was over, and Melinda looked at the fresh grave.  If it hadn’t been for the new dirt, there might as well been nothing there at all.  Perhaps she would come back and plant something there after Bill and his men had left.  Frank would like that, she thought.  Maybe some roses, or even some daisies.  Frank always seemed to like daisies.

Chapter Thirteen

H
olcomb stretched the canvas
across the back of the wagon and secured it with large loops and knots of rope, threading them back and forth in a criss-cross pattern that would allow for no wind or rain to creep beneath.  It was already misting rain, and Holcomb could tell by the grayness of the sky that it would be like that all day.  Eventually, the mist would develop into larger raindrops, and it would do them no good to have their supplies dampened.

Lilly was standing beneath the overhang in front of her store watching Holcomb load the last of the supplies.  She wasn’t kidding when she told him she had things hidden.  Her father had long ago built many trapdoors leading down into dark cellars full of goods.  Doors that were built so cleverly, that to the casual observer they were virtually invisible, unless one knew where to look.  Lilly’s father had kept his best medicine down there: most of it was legal but occasionally he had exotic medicines and herbs imported from lands Lilly had never heard of.  They cost a lot and were always delivered in secret late at night, but her father’s reputation as a healer only grew as a result.

She knew she was not coming back, and when she led Holcomb down into one of the underground vaults, she took pride in the look of shock on his face.  It was all there: most of it untouched by the troops. 

“Pack it all,” she said.  “Every box and barrel.  There’s no reason for it all to stay here if the store is closed.”

Holcomb whistled.  There was enough medicine in just one of the vaults for an entire regiment, along with supplies of dried fruit, meats, blankets, and gunpowder in small barrels marked with a red X.  Lilly could have stayed here for at least a year and never wanted for anything.  Perhaps that was why she almost shot him on arrival.  If word got out in the town that she was hoarding all this stuff, she would be overrun in mere minutes.

But there was danger in taking it all with them, too.  Holcomb held no illusions they would not be stopped between here and
Columbia at least once.  The roads were filled with enemy troops and the roaming and displaced who would be very quick to kill for the treasure they would be carrying.

“Are you sure about this?” asked Holcomb.  “If the army knew about most of this stuff, you would be arrested.”

“Who?  Me?  An innocent young woman?  I don’t think we’ve fallen that far into barbarism that they would arrest me for things I don’t know.  Like these bottles over here.  My father’s.  He was a well-known doctor, and I am his daughter.  I have no idea what’s in them.  Ignorance will be my defense.”  Her voice held a smirk which made Holcomb’s skin itch.

“Oh, but you do know what’s in all of them, and you know how to use them, too.” Holcomb  said.  “Your father trained you well.”

Lilly laughed.  “I am a doctor, too.  I may not have the degree my father had, but I’m just as smart.  I have a better knowledge of medicine than most of the quacks out there on the battlefield patching up our poor boys.  Like your friend upstairs.  That man who cut his leg must have been blindfolded when he did it.  Or drunk.  Or both.  The bone looked like it had been chewed on.”

“Still,” Holcomb said, but he had no defense against her.  She was right.  No one would believe a girl as young as her could be so knowledgeable of medicine. Her looks betrayed her, and her coyness would be an able defense against any questions.  Holcomb had to admit that if he hadn’t known her as well as he did, he would be fooled, too.  There was nothing about the young woman that would lead anyone to such a conclusion, and she wrapped herself in that knowledge.  He also knew she was just as capable of killing as any man, perhaps even more. Holcomb had been at Pittsburgh Landing and had faced the enemy.  He had watched most of his fellows shredded by cannon fire and not flinched when he was captured and loaded into that train.  He had no real fear, save that he might not get to see his wife again, but he realized now he was afraid of this woman who stood before him.  The way she carried herself with a cool intensity, casually talking about the proper way to bind a wound or the slightly amused way she spoke about killing, or the way she let people purposely gaze at the scar on her neck, just so she could gloat about killing the man who put it there.  There was nothing about her that could be tamed, and she knew it.  And Holcomb was afraid of her.

“You know,” said Holcomb, looking around the cellar.  “I could report you.  I could make it known throughout the town that you have all this.  What would happen then?  You couldn’t bribe us with your supplies, then.  We wouldn’t have to take you with us.”

Lilly smiled, and Holcomb felt chilled.  “Go ahead,” she said.  “I can hide more things down here than just food and blankets.”

“You’re quite a woman, Lilly,” said Holcomb, admitting the truth. 

“You’d better get started loading that wagon before the rain comes,” she replied.  “I’ll go check on Colby.”  The way she said his name.  Holcomb felt sorry for the poor man.  He was a prisoner and didn’t even know it, and he doubted Lilly would be the kind to take no for an answer.

***

Holcomb had decided they
would head west and try to avoid the towns if possible.  They had enough supplies to travel through the back country without ever stopping for any more.  The fewer people they encountered while carrying this cargo the better.

He sat in the main room of the general store, keeping half an eye on the covered wagon through the window.  The rain was still misting outside, and their horse looked grumpy, but he saw no one wander by to peek inside the back of the wagon.  In fact, it seemed most people avoided walking by the store altogether.  Holcomb wondered what kind of reputation Lilly had in the town to make everyone give a wide berth to her store.  If her father had been so reputable, it looks like Lilly would have generated a little bit of sympathy just by the relationship.  He could hear Lilly in the back room talking to Colby, but her words were muffled by the closed door.

They would go east to Columbia, first.  There they would decide to keep going east toward Murfreesboro, or turn north toward Nashville.  Holcomb felt like he had a responsibility of sorts to Colby to see him delivered home, but he hadn’t really planned on going any farther than Murfreesboro.  After all, his own wife was waiting for him there, and Holcomb wasn’t keen on the prospect of leaving her for a second time to escort Colby a hundred miles north to the other side of Nashville.  Besides, there was always Lilly.

The door to the back room opened, and there she was, dressed in a long skirt that almost swept along the floor.  Her hair was down, and it flowed around her shoulders in light waves.  She looked ready to go out to the
midnight ball, not ride seventy miles east in the back of a wagon.

She saw him staring at her, and her gray eyes hardened.  “Do you not think it proper for a lady to go out without a hat?  Or have her hair up?  Or how about carrying a gun?”  She lifted the shotgun and propped it against her shoulder.  “I loaded it, you know.  After you checked it.”

The skirt was not too fancy.  Holcomb guessed it was more practical than it looked.  Aside from a few glitters, it might have been any dress worn by the most common girl in the field.  She walked past him, her boots thumping across the wood.  “I told Colby I was going, too.”

“Hmm,” said Holcomb.  “His reaction?”

“He didn’t say much.  He just asked for his damn portrait back.”

“Ah, yes.  Melinda.”

She flinched when he said her name, but she kept her back to him as she stared out the window at the soft rain.  “I gave it back to him.  Why should I want it?” she laughed a little, but Holcomb heard it conceal a twinge of pain.  “After all, he’s not mine.  And it belongs to him, I guess.”

“Sure,” said Holcomb.   Lilly floated around the room and blew out some stray candles. 

“You’ll have to help him out into the wagon,” she finally said.  “I’ll ride up front with you.  There’s not enough room for him to lie down in the back with another person.”

“I was going to wait until it stopped raining,” said Holcomb.  “No sense in starting out soaked.”

“I see,” said Lilly.  “And then what?  What if it doesn’t stop raining for three days?  Four?  I know you like it here, but we’ve had enough delays, I think.”

Like
was not the word that immediately came to Holcomb’s mind, but he supposed she was right.  The wagon was loaded, and the day was wasting away, rain or not.

“Well, then,” said Holcomb.  “I guess we can go then.”

Lilly didn’t reply.  Instead she drifted back to the window and looked out at the empty street.  “I won’t miss this town,” she said, and Holcomb at first thought she was speaking to herself.  Her voice was barely above a whisper.  “I won’t miss it at all.”  He watched her hand wander up to her throat again, and he knew it wasn’t a conscious move.  “Not at all,” she repeated.

***

The sprinkling mist changed
over to slanted sheets of rain almost before they had left the town of Decatursville behind them.    Holcomb bent over against the rain, but Lilly sat straight, her blonde hair plastered around her shoulders and back.  Holcomb glanced back at Colby, who was half covered by the canvas, keeping his wound dry, but his eyes were open, and they blinked against the rain, the streams dripping across his face.

“How long to you want to keep going?” Holcomb shouted to Lilly.  “I mean, the road is pretty muddy, and if we go much farther, we might get stuck.”

“If we get stuck, then you’ll have to get us unstuck,” she said.  “You’ve got a fine horse that can pull all of this, and you’re telling me he can’t pull us through a little mud?”

“I don’t think we should strain him,” replied Holcomb.  “He wasn’t in the best of conditions to start with.”

Lilly didn’t say anything.  The rain had no effect on her at all, and Holcomb couldn’t help but think that most women would be complaining right about now.   But if she didn’t want to stop, then he wouldn’t stop them.  For a strange moment, Holcomb felt like he was almost in competition with her to see who would break first.

“We’ll go until dark,” he said.  “And let the horse rest then.”

Lilly smiled that same smirking smile as if she had won a prize of some kind.  Holcomb didn’t know whether to admire her fortitude, or slap her for her smugness.  They went on for another hour with the horse making one labored step at a time.  Even though the horse was usually sure-footed and strong, he seemed to be weaker than normal, and the wagon lurched several times when the horse stepped up to his ankle in mud and canted to one side.

At last, the rain slackened enough to Holcomb to see past the horse’s nose.  The little road they had been traveling on ended suddenly at a thicket of trees.  A smaller foot path was worn through the trees on to the pastures beyond, but Holcomb knew there was no way to get their wagon through on that trail.  They would have to find another way.

“Do you know where we are?” he asked Lilly.  “Is there another road?”

Lilly had stepped down from the wagon and was walking around it.  Holcomb wanted to repeat his question, not knowing if Lilly heard him.  The rain stopped abruptly, as if someone had stopped cranking the pump handle.  Holcomb shook the water from his eyes, turning to check on Colby.  Colby was asleep, dozing fitfully in a puddle of rainwater that had collected beneath him.

“Lilly?”

“Be quiet,” she said as she stared through the trees.  “I know where we are.  There’s a logging road a little ways up from here that crosses a creek.  There used to be a bridge, but that was a long time ago.”

“How far to the north?  A mile?  Two?”

“Maybe two.”  She turned and came back toward the wagon.  “I’ve got to check Colby’s leg.  The dressing may have gotten wet.”

She climbed up into the wagon, standing over Colby and peeling back the canvas covering his leg.  The bandage was dark with moisture.  Holcomb watched as the woman skillfully cut the bandages away with a small knife.  She reached back into the one of the boxes and removed what looked like a bottle of bourbon. 

“This is something my father told me,” she informed Holcomb, sounding almost like a teacher giving a lecture.  “He had a theory about infections.  If you could kill whatever caused the infections, there would be no infection.”

“Sounds simple enough.”

She put a reassuring hand on Colby’s chest as he began to stir.  “This is going to hurt,” she told him.  “But you have to be strong.”

She took a dry strip of cloth and doused it with the bourbon, splashing a lot of it along the floor of the wagon.  Before Holcomb could lament the loss of good bourbon, Lilly placed the dripping cloth directly on Colby’s wound.

The effect was immediate and swift.  Colby’s eyes sprang open, his mouth opening up to shriek.  Lilly clamped a hand over his mouth, risking a bite in the process, but Colby calmed down, his eyes tearing up.

“I said to be strong,” she said to him, much like Holcomb assumed she would talk to a small child.  “You’ve come this far with this wound, and you’re not going to give in to the pain now, are you?  It will hurt, but the medicine is good for it.  Take a drink.”  She handed the bottle to Colby, who took it with a trembling hand.  He managed to splash a swallow into his mouth, but she pushed the cloth onto the wound again, and the bottle rolled out of Colby’s fingers.