A Place of Peace (4 page)

***

It was the same
when they went to the dry goods store to buy the flour and sugar.  The sugar had jumped in price so much that Frank decided he would just have to learn to drink his coffee black, but he managed to haggle for a fifty pound bag of flour at what he thought was a reasonably fair price.  Melinda kept looking at the recruiting posters hanging on the walls as Frank negotiated his purchase.  Each poster she looked at promised something different, and Melinda knew deep inside they would never be able to keep all their promises.  She supposed her father had been conned, in a way, but that first bundle of money he had sent had gone a long way until it had run out.

But it was probably the last bit of money he would send, especially since she hadn’t heard from him.  Frank came up behind her and tapped her on the shoulder. 

“Come on,” he said.  “You don’t need to be reading these.”  He carried a large burlap sack over one shoulder.  “Let’s go find a paper.”

There was a boy selling one sheets on the corner, and Melinda could hear him shouting the headlines as they neared.

“Clash of armies at Shiloh!” the boy was calling. “Confederates pushed back to Mississippi!  Massive casualties!” 

Frank saw Melinda turn pale, and he tossed the boy a penny and the boy handed him the paper.  They parked their wagon on the side of the street while Frank scanned the headlines.  In sharp black print the headline was one word:
SHILOH!

“Read it out loud, Mr. Johnson,” Melinda felt her heart beat faster.  “Is there is casualty list?”

“Wait a minute,” murmured Frank as he read.  “My God…” he whispered. 

“What is it?”  Melinda felt like yanking the paper out of the man’s hand and reading it herself.

“Thousands are dead,” Frank told her.  “Tens of thousands.  Look.  Here’s a list of locals killed.  I don’t see your father’s name.  Perhaps he moved with the army back to Corinth.”

Melinda let out a long sigh of relief.  Her father was not killed at
Shiloh.  Perhaps now she would hear from him soon. 

“Oh, no,” Frank’s voice came to her like an afterthought.  “Oh, no.”

He had been killed.  Melinda felt like she would pass out, but Frank’s strong hand grabbed her arm.

“Here follows a list of reported prisoners taken by the enemy,” Frank read.  “Lieutenant James Jacoby.  He was captured by some cavalry a little bit north of the battlefield.”

Captured.  Prisoner.  Melinda couldn’t hold back the tears, but Frank was there to put his arm around her.  “Now we know he’s safe,” he told her.  “He’s a prisoner which means he won’t be out on the battlefield anytime soon.  And when this war’s over, he’ll come home safe and sound.”

Frank’s words pierced her, and she realized she should be grateful, not sad.  Yes, she would not be seeing her father any time soon, but he would not be in any real danger as long as he was a prisoner.

“Yes,” she said.  “You’re right.”  But as they rolled back down the road toward home, she tried to keep the nagging feeling that all was not right.

chapter
five

I
n a train car
headed north, Colby Dalton opened his eyes and saw the suffering of his fellow men lying in heaps all around him.  They were in a box car and even though the Union troops had sprinkled a lot of hay on the floor, it was still uncomfortable.  They had changed the bandage on his leg and his wound was cleaned, but it still hurt.  Colby couldn’t imagine it getting any better where he was going.

He realized he was one of the suffering, too. Shipped with about a hundred fellow Confederate soldiers who were now prisoners, he wasn’t sure where they were headed, but he assumed they were going to a prison camp of some sort.

Lieutenant Martin had interrogated him, but after realizing Colby didn’t know much more than he had initially told him, had ordered him sent off.  They threw him into the box car, the door slammed shut, and the train began rocking down the tracks to its destination.

He lay in the darkness, smelling the stale scent of old hay and thinking of the girl Melinda.  He struggled to a sitting position, leg outstretched in front of him.  It was as if he was riding in a car with ghosts.  All around him, the haunted, shell-shocked gaze of other soldiers stared at him and through him.  Most of them at been at
Pittsburgh Landing, and now they were destined, like Colby, to spend the remainder of the war locked away in a northern prison camp.

A harsh whisper came to Colby’s ear.  A man was crumpled beside him, unseen in the shadows until Colby turned and saw a small glimmer of light off one of the man’s buttons.

“Where’d they get you?”

Colby shook his head.  “A little north of the river, after Pittsburgh Landing.  Cavalry.”

The man leaned forward, and Colby saw he bore a jagged wound across his cheek.  A lead ball had nicked him as he tried to dive for cover near the Shiloh church. 

“They caught my whole division,” said the man.  “There were over fifty of us.  I said, let’s keep fighting, but the others had run out of bullets.  What where they going to do?  Throw rocks?”

“I was supposed to be going home,” said Colby, his voice sounding a little sad.  “I got a leg full of grapeshot from a cannon, and they were going to send me home.  That’s when I got captured.”

The man leaned back into the shadows, and it looked to Colby as if the darkness had swallowed him up.  “Well, we’re going to be a long way from
Tennessee, my friend.  I hear they’re sending us to Ohio.”

The thought of
Ohio didn’t fill Colby with much hope.  He kept thinking of Melinda, and how they had taken her father’s letter away from him, along with her portrait: the image of which now seemed to haunt Colby, for he could still see her eyes looking into him.  How would he find her now and tell her of her father?

“Is there any way off this train?” asked Colby.  The man chuckled from the shadows.

“Sure, if you want to get off in a coffin.  They’ll shoot you in the back if you try to run, and it’s almost impossible to open these doors from the inside.”  There was a long pause.  “Where are you from?”

“Just a little north of
Nashville.  You?”

“
Murfreesboro,” the man said.  “Before I signed up I was a printer: worked for the newspaper, you know.  Name’s John Holcomb,” a dirty, ragged hand emerged from the shadow and Colby took it and shook it.

“Colby Dalton,” he said.  “I was a farmer.  Mostly tobacco but some hay and corn.  Raised pigs, too.”

“Well, Mr. Dalton,” Holcomb said.  “Well met under bad circumstances.”

They lapsed into silence for a while, and just when Colby thought the man had fallen asleep, he spoke again.

“You got a wife?” he asked.  Colby shook his head.

“No.”

“I got one,” Holcomb sounded proud.  “Married almost two years this May.  When we get to where we’re going, I’m going to write to her.  She’ll pay to get me out of prison.  It’ll only cost three hundred dollars, and they’ll set you free.”

“You’re kidding,” said Colby.  “How do you know that?”

“Being in the newspaper business, I have a lot of contacts.  More than likely, if your family can manage three hundred dollars, they’ll let you go, too.”

“I don’t have a family,” said Colby.  “None at all.”  An image of Melinda came into his mind, but he tried not to think about her.  “There’s a girl, though,” he added.  “Her name is Melinda.”

“Oh, so you have your sweetheart at home.  That’s good enough for me.” 

“Well,” said Colby.  “She’s not exactly my sweetheart.  I was supposed to take a letter to her from her father, but the Yanks took it from me when they caught me.  I could show you her picture, but they took that as well.”

“Is her father dead?”

“Killed at
Pittsburgh Landing.”

“Then the army has probably already notified her.  They give most newspapers a casualty list within a day or two of the end of the battle, after the armies have counted who’s left.”

Colby supposed he should quit thinking about Melinda.  After all, there was nothing he could do now about taking the letter to her, even if he still had it.

“I’m going to write to Melinda,” Colby said.  “If I can.  I’ll tell her what happened.”

“I’m sure your words will be kinder than the army’s,” said Holcomb.  “Maybe she’ll get you out.”

“Maybe,” said Colby.

***

Something was wrong.  The
train wasn’t moving, and the men in Colby’s box car began to stir.  It was almost impossible to tell, but Colby thought there were faint traces of daylight filtering in through the crack at the bottom of the car’s door.  He nudged Holcomb, who apparently had drifted off to sleep.

“Wake up.  We’ve stopped.”

Holcomb climbed to his feet.  Colby could feel the bandage on his leg needed changing.  The crust of blood that caked it was scratching into his wound, irritating him.  Holcomb put his ear against the wall of the car and motioned for everyone around him to be quiet.

“Gunshots,” Holcomb whispered.  “Sounds like a raid.”

The men began murmuring.  Some seemed optimistic, while others seemed to be on the verge of panic.

“They’ll kill us all,” one man moaned quietly.

“Be quiet!” hissed Colby.  “Do you hear anything else?”

“No.  Wait,” Holcomb concentrated.  Other men began pressing their ears against the wall of the car, just in case Holcomb missed something.  “Cannons.  Ten-pounders.”

Colby was about to say something when the car suddenly lurched, throwing the standing men and pitching them over to the other side of the car where they collapsed in a wild tumble.  Colby braced himself as another bump rocked the car.  An explosion just outside, so loud it caused the metal of the car to start a chaotic ringing, knocked the car sideways, and Colby could feel them suddenly sliding.  The car was tipping over, and he knew he would fall.  He tried grabbing on to something, anything, to keep from rolling over with it, but there was nothing but smooth wall and floor, and then he was falling.  He spent a violent moment in mid-air as he traveled from one side of the car to the other, where the wall was rising to meet him at a speed that seemed impossible.

He crashed into the opposite wall, his leg crunching against it, and his scream filling the interior of the car.  Men were piled on top of him, some scrambling to get themselves upright, others lying unconscious.  Colby could tell from the angle that the car was now on its side, for the door was suddenly above him, and the metal walls were growing hot with some kind of exterior heat pushing against it.

“Get off me,” he said, but no one moved until he began pushing.  Some men rolled too easily, and Colby realized it was the dead he was pushing off him.

Holcomb was one of the first to stand, and he seemed to be bleeding from a cut on his forehead that strangely matched the gash in his cheek.  Colby, his face pressed against the wall, which was now the floor of the car, felt the heat grow stronger, and he knew there was a fire outside which must have burning strong to heat the car up like this.

Smoke began rolling in through gaps Colby hadn’t noticed before, and soon the car was filled with a misty gray fume.  It seared his lungs as he breathed it and knew it would be the death of them all unless they escaped.

“Colby!”  It was Holcomb’s voice.  “Can you help me?”

Colby tried to move his leg, but it was a useless stump, and he wondered if it wouldn’t have been better if they had just cut the thing off after the battle.  He tried to speak, but smoke surged down his throat, and instead he began coughing.

There was another explosion outside. Colby heard the familiar whistle of canister shells bursting.  If one of them hit the car, then it would be all over for the survivors.

“We’ve got to get that door open,” Colby finally managed to gasp when enough air was available for him to speak.

Most of the men weren’t moving, and whether it was because they were dead or simply unconscious, he didn’t know.  John Holcomb was shaking others, trying to rouse them, but few responded.

Colby saw what Holcomb was doing, and he wished it hadn’t come to it, but there he was, stacking the dead men like steps, forming a pyramid that would allow him to reach the door above.  He stacked five men then climbed over them, and he had his hands on the door.

Holcomb strained with the effort, pulling against it and trying to get it to slide.  It budged a little, but one man alone couldn’t do it.

“There’s something caught on it on the outside, I think,” he gasped.  The smoke was heavier around the door, and he was having a hard time breathing.  Another whistling canister, and the sound of bits of metal and stone pelting the outside of the car was deafening.

Some of the others who were not motionless began to scale the human steps as well.  They joined Holcomb and soon four men were pulling as hard as they could. 

Colby watched as the door was inched open, and a burst of sunlight poured in.  The smoke swirled and began to drift out of the car. 

“That’s it!” Holcomb sounded excited.  “Push again, boys!”

Another tremendous shove, and the door was open about a foot and a half.  One of the men poked his head outside, looking around.

“Get down, you fool!” snapped Holcomb as he pulled the man back down just as another canister popped outside.  “You’ll get your head blown off, is what you’ll do.”

“It’s cavalry,” said the man.  “Looks like a big division.  The Yanks are off the train and lined up along the woods.  I saw a white flag.  It’s probably our boys come to save us.”

“Well, thank God,” said Holcomb.  The others seemed noticeably cheered by the news.  “I guess now we just have to wait to see who wins.”

It felt like hours but was probably only a few minutes later when the constant whistling outside stopped.  Colby listened, but didn’t hear anything, and he assumed that was good news.

The sound of heavy boots thudding on the roof of the car.  Colby estimated four men walking by the door and when he looked up, four rifles were pointed down at them. 

“Don’t shoot!” shouted Holcomb.  A head with a wide-brimmed hat with the letters C.S. in twinkling gold plate sewed on the front looked down at them.

“Well, howdy, boys,” he said.

***

What was left of
the train was a smoldering wreckage half off the tracks.  Three shells had twisted the tracks into a jumble of metal knots, and Colby noticed theirs was not the only car knocked off the track.  One of the horse cars had been hit too, and the horses who were not wandering wild beside the tracks waiting to be caught were scattered in pieces in front of the trees.

The Confederate cavalry was busy rounding up the dead Union soldiers, stacking them and looking for any identification.  Their commanding officer, who was the first to look down into the overturned car, was trying to get the engineer, one of the few who was not killed, to admit he was a Union sympathizer. The engineer kept insisting he was a local boy who was forced to drive the train north.

The Confederate soldiers had pulled the prisoners out of the car one at a time, then went back for the dead.  Colby sat beneath a tree and watched the others being pulled from the wreckage.  The engineer was on his knees, begging the Confederate Colonel to spare his life.  Colby flashed to his own capture, and the pleas of the wagon driver.  Would the men in his army be any more merciful?

Another rumble, distant.  The shelling was starting again, but the shots were not aimed in their direction.  The former prisoners were milling around, talking with the cavalry who saved them.  Some of them were old friends, and the laughter was not something Colby had heard in a long time.

The bodies of the Union soldiers killed on the train were lying in a neat row beside the ruined tracks.  Colby recognized one of them.  Tall, with a handlebar mustache that curled off into sideburns, eyes now closed, his hat lying near his head.  The markings on his uniform gave him the rank of lieutenant.  He had been on the train accompanying Colby, no doubt wanting to make sure he claimed the credit for the capture of who he thought was an officer.