A Place of Peace (5 page)

“Give me a branch for a crutch, John,” said Colby, noticing Holcomb was nearby.  “I need to stand.”

There was a lot of splintered wood from the downed trees as a result of the cannon fire upon the train, and Holcomb soon selected a good-sized sturdy branch that was thick enough to be leaned upon.  He gave it to Colby, who managed to rise, shaking and trembling as he slowly put weight on  his leg.

“Lazarus, come forth,” laughed Holcomb as he watched Colby take slow steps toward the dead officer’s body.

After he hobbled over to Lieutenant Martin’s corpse, he knelt and sure enough, found the letter in the man’s breast pocket.  The paper was stained red with a hole neatly punched through the top of it, but he could still make out most of the words.  In the man’s trouser pocket, he pulled out the silver pendant, the portrait of Melinda still inside and gazing at him with those huge eyes.

The pain went from his leg, and Colby even thought about tossing his stick away.  Such was the power of the look the beautiful girl in the portrait gave him.  It troubled him that he would have to cause pain to this woman when he finally met her.  After all, it was up to him to explain to her about her father’s passing.

Holcomb came up beside him and put his arm on Colby’s shoulder.  “That’s a fine woman there,” he remarked as he looked at the portrait Colby held.  “A woman like that could make a man forget all about the war.”

“Yes,” said Colby.  He didn’t think it was possible to fall in love with a 2 inch by 2 inch portrait, but yet he found that he couldn’t look away from her beauty, and in his head he imagined her voice, sweet as a summer’s day, singing to him on cool spring nights.

“When are we going home?” asked Colby.  Holcomb shook his head.

“Not for a while.  Look, Colonel’s done gone and hanged a traitor.”

Colby had been so preoccupied with the portrait in his hand that he hadn’t noticed the activity going on around him.  He looked up and saw the engineer of the train swinging slowly from a nearby tree, a small group of men gathered beneath gazing up, and the Confederate Colonel offering a prayer for the lost souls who would betray the Cause.

Chapter SIx

April 30, 1862 

Dearest father,

I have received word of your capture and of your transport to the military prison on Johnson’s Island, and I need you to know that everything is okay down here.  I am fine and in good health.  The Johnsons have been helpful to me in many ways, and my biggest problem is with the crows that keeping flocking to my corn patches.  Mr. Johnson and I have written to the governor to see if we can somehow arrange for you to be exchanged for some northern prisoners that our boys have captured.  It may take months, but we are sincerely trying.  I will hear from you soon, and I keep you in my prayers and thoughts.

Your loving daughter,

Melinda

It wasn’t much of a letter, but as Melinda sat at the small kitchen table with the kerosene lamp burning softly beside her, the words failed her.  Everything she had wanted to say had mysteriously vanished when she applied the pen to the paper, and all of the big, vague ideas she tried to wrestle with and wanted to put down on the page left her.  She sat and stared at the few lines she had managed to jot down and thought about throwing it away.  However, paper was too expensive to waste, so it would have to do for now.

After much pleading, Frank Johnson had let her take the newspaper home with her so she could read the firsthand accounts of the terrible battle at Shiloh.  At first, Frank thought that reading such bloodied stories was inappropriate for a lady, but after Melinda broke down, he relented.  After all, her father had been in that fight, and she deserved to know what really happened.

The list of prisoners taken at the battle filled almost two pages, and Melinda knew that the Union Army was taking most of them to
Ohio, more specifically, a prison on Johnson’s Island out in one of the great lakes.  As she wrote her letter, she grew more frustrated with each word, until she either had to end the letter immediately, or throw it across the room into the fireplace.

April meant rain, and a lot of it, and the next morning the fields and gardens were virtually underwater.  At first, she thought it was good sign, that the rain would help speed along the growing, but after two more days of downpours, she suddenly worried that everything would be washed away.

When the rain broke enough for her go out, she pulled on an old pair of boots and her trousers and walked out into the garden, though she felt her feet grow heavy with the caked mud and if she stopped for too long in one spot, she could feel herself sinking.

Most of the tomatoes were gone, and the corn stalks, little as they were, were underwater.  Worried by this, she checked her watermelon hills and found them crushed and gone.  She blinked back tears of frustration.  What would her father have done?  Planted some more, except there were no more seeds, and the prices in town were crawling higher each day.  As she stood there, hopelessly looking around her field, a crow squawked and landed nearby.  It was a bold move, and it told her the crows no longer feared her.

“I’ll show you,” she muttered as she reached into the mud and found a good-sized chunk of rock.  Before the crow could move, she hurled the rock at it.  It struck the bird on the side, and a few feathers fluttered away.  The crow cackled and jutted around in a daze, as if trying to figure out what had just happened. 

“You want another one?” asked Melinda.  “Here!”  She threw another rock at it, and another, until a barrage of stones was flying at the bird before it could process what was going on.  Most of  them landed wide, but when one hit, the bird would let out an angry caw, until another rock hit it square in the beak.

The crow fell over in the mud, and Melinda paused with her arm in mid-swing, about to let another rock go when the bird stopped making any sounds at all.  She dropped the rock when she realized the bird was dead.  It was not only dead, but she had killed it, and she had done it with a viciousness that surprised her.

She slogged through the mud back to her house and didn’t even bother taking her boots off before going inside.  Trails of mud followed her throughout the house, and as she passed the letter on the table with its pitifully few lines, frustration overwhelmed her.  She grabbed the letter and crumpled it.  There was not enough on the paper.  Not enough words to express what she really wanted to say.  She flung the paper into the fireplace and watched it burn.

***

She made another trip
to the Johnsons’ farm later that week.  It was early May, and the peach trees had all been in full bloom for a while now.  The peach blossoms fell around on the ground like soft snow, but Melinda did not see any beauty in it.  She was somber, thoughtful, and the absence of her father was like a knife had carved her heart out.

With her father in prison, it might be years before he came home.  She didn’t think she could make it.  Deep inside, she was terrified of the thought, and when she had tried to reset the plants and find what little seed was left, she realized it was going to be a long and lonely road.

Joan Johnson was sewing a pair of trousers that had ripped along the seam when Melinda came up to the house.  Joan had not seen Melinda since she and Frank had gone into Gallatin a few weeks ago, and the change in the girl was painfully apparent.

The sparkle in Melinda’s eyes was dead.  It was like watching a living corpse shamble up the road.  There was no lightness to her step.  Now she walked like an old woman, not caring where the next step was going to take her.   The hollowed out circles under the girl’s eyes were like shadows that refused to leave, no matter how much light you poured on them.  She was still pretty, Joan decided, but it was a beauty ravished with deep and resounding pain.

She wasn’t even smiling.  The girl managed a half-grin as she greeted Joan, but it was nothing compared to the girl who had skipped over just weeks ago.

“You have seen better days, my dear,” said Joan as the girl sat on the porch steps.  “Have you been eating?  You look thin as a post.”

“Seeds are all gone,” said Melinda.  “The rains washed away most of the things I planted, and I don’t have anything left to plant.”

“Poor dear,” said Joan, putting her sewing aside.  “Frank will let you have some, I’m sure.”

“Why has there been no message sent to me?” asked Melinda.  “Surely the army or somebody would send me a letter telling me what has happened to my father, wouldn’t they?”

“Well, these things take time.  With the war going on, things are different now.  People have changed.”

“The war, the war,” Melinda murmured.  “I’m sick of the war.  Sick of the whole Confederate mess.  They took my father, and they owe me for that.”

“There’s not much we can do, dear,” Joan said, trying to comfort the girl.  “We can’t change the way things are.  Your father will be home before too long, you’ll see.”

It was like Melinda was in a different world.  She had a vague notion of things happening
out there
.  She wasn’t quite sure where
out there
was.  It was more of a concept, than an actual place.  She would stay on her farm cut off from the rest of the world while things continued happening
out there
and without her participation or knowledge.  Her father was one of those people
out there
.   She grew afraid, even with Joan’s gentle words trying to sooth and calm her.

“I should have gotten a letter from the army at least,” Melinda said under her breath, as if speaking to herself.  “I shouldn’t have had to read about it in the paper.”

Joan rocked in her chair and mindlessly plucked a stray thread from the pants.  “You should come stay with us until all of this is over,” she said, still rocking.  “At the very least you would have something to eat.”

Melinda couldn’t tell from Joan’s tone whether it was a sincere offer of help or just made out of pity.  She was not a child.  She could manage on her own.  Melinda almost started to say something harsh to the woman, but stopped before the first words came.  What was happening to her?  Two weeks ago, she would have never even thought such things.  Of course, Joan was offering out of kindness.  She had known her all her life, and practically thought of her as she would her own daughter if she had one.  Still, she couldn’t take her up on the offer.  There was enough food canned and preserved to last at the very least until winter, and then she would be able to put away all the things she would grow over the summer.

She started to say no, but then more thoughts came.  There were no more seeds, and the rains had wiped out many of the things she planted.  Then there were the crows, and if any corn managed to survive the summer, it might not be enough after it was picked.  She didn’t have the money to buy more. 

No, she was determined not to be a burden on the Johnson family.  Frank Johnson was a good farmer and had things well planned, but with the war, the unknown factor figured in heavily.  It might all be gone tomorrow.

“Thank you, Mrs. Johnson,” she heard herself say.  “But I can’t.  I’ll be fine, and I have more than enough food put away.  Don’t worry about me.”

Joan smiled, but said nothing.  Melinda knew the look Joan was giving her.  It was the knowing look of a mother who had listened to her child and knew she was wrong, but decided to let her experience her mistake for herself.  It would be one of life’s lessons well learned.

“I’ll be fine,” Melinda repeated, as if trying to convince herself.  “I’ll be just fine.”

***

Joan had ended up
giving Melinda some more paper from an old blank journal she used to write recipes in sometimes.  Now, as Melinda sat at her table again, pen in hand, all that came to her was the sight of the blank paper in front of her.  Although she was determined to say all the things she wanted to say, she could not get past the greeting, and the ink dripped from her pen as she held it poised above the page.

She had eaten some tomatoes out of a jar retrieved from the cellar, but she was still hungry.  Melinda wanted to save the meat for later in the season, but Joan was right: she hadn’t been eating much, instead, she tried to conserve food whenever she could.  She had always been thin, but now she could tell she had lost more weight.  The combination of working out in the gardens every day and eating as little as she could get away with was taking its toil.    Now, what fat she had was being dissolved, and bones she hadn’t realized she had made their presence known as they began to protrude in sharp lumps beneath her skin.

It was crazy.  She decided she was not going to live like that.  There had never been any reason to conserve food when her father was there, and now should not be any different.

That decided, she went back to the cellar and hacked off a large piece of salted pork and selected some onions and potatoes from the boxes holding them.  She realized that it was the last potato, and she hadn’t planted any more that year.  For a long time she stood there holding it in her hand and debating whether to eat it.

Her stomach answered for her, and soon she was enjoying grilled ham fried in the large iron skillet with cooked potatoes and onions.  As she ate, she looked again at the blank paper that refused to let any words be written on it. 

Okay, she told herself.  This is your father you are writing to, not some boy you have a crush on.  It should be very easy. 

In the end, she began writing, and the words suddenly sprang forth in a rush, and she was very sad when she reached the end of her pages and found she still had more to say. 

The next letter will have the rest of it
, she wrote at the bottom of the last page, just before she signed her name.

Now, she had to take it to
Gallatin to send it off.  Hopefully, Mr. Johnson could take her tomorrow.  As she washed her plate from her dinner, her full stomach made her feel better she had in quite some time.  She decided not to deprive herself anymore.

She didn’t have to.