A Place of Peace (8 page)

Blocker yelped, and he lashed out, his hand flying out in reflex.  It caught Melinda on the side of the head, knocking her flat on the bed.  She lay there, dizzy and hurting. 

“Rebel whore,” Blocker said, looking down at the girl.  “You’ll find out that those who attack an officer of the Army of the United States soon regret their mistake.”

She wanted to say it was an accident, that she was just trying to keep from falling, but the room wouldn’t stop spinning as she tried to sit up.  She looked over at the door to see if Sims was still there.  Perhaps Sims would help her, but he had already gone, and she didn’t think he’d be back in time.

“Corporal!” Blocker was shouting.  “Fire the house and the barn.  Burn it all down to the ground.”

Melinda closed her eyes.  No…

“You see,” said Blocker, moving his face very close to hers.  “This is what happens to traitors.”

chapter nine

When Colby opened his
eyes, he was startled to see a another pair staring back at him.  They were steel gray and framed within a pretty face: a face that now had wrinkles slashed across the forehead in worry.  Colby started to speak, but the light trickling through the dusty window shone in the woman’s light blonde hair, and he felt overcome by its glow.  As she bent over him to press a cool rag against his brow, he caught the scent of her soap, and a heady feeling of peace overcame him.

“Good to see you’re awake,” a silvery voice met his ears.  “I was worried.”  The coolness press against him immediately doused the blazing fires that had overtaken his body, and he felt chilled and comforted all at once. 

“Who are you?” he managed to ask, as his skin broke out in bumps and he shivered.

“My name is Lilly,” the woman smiled over him.  Colby noticed the scar on her neck, like someone had cut it and then stitched it back together.  She noticed him staring, and before he could stop, she straightened up, moving away from him and leaving a waft of cool air in her absence. He saw a flash of color light up her face, and he suddenly knew she was very self-conscious of the scar. Colby felt like kicking himself for staring too long, but he couldn’t help it.  Even now, as he looked at her rising up and away from him, his eyes were drawn to it, and it took a great effort to pull his eyes up away from her neck and to her face.

She felt those eyes on her, no, on
it
: the horrible scar that choked her. “You still need rest,” Lilly said.  “I’ve got to go check on your friend.”

Friend? 
Oh, yes, Holcomb.  Remarkably, Colby did not feel any pain, and he looked down at where his leg used to be.  She had dressed his wound tightly, and it was good work.  She had probably saved his life by doing it.

“Lilly… ” he said, as she turned and closed the door behind her.  The scent of sunshine lingered in the air.

Lilly closed the door and pressed her back against it, her hand going up absently to touch her throat.  The flesh was raised there, would always be raised there, in a puffy ridge.  It would never go away, and whenever she thought about it, she could still remember the feel of the knife being raked across her neck, and the grip of the Union soldier that stood behind her and did it.

She took a deep breath, picked up the shotgun from the corner where she had left it, and went out into the front part of the store where she had told Holcomb to wait for her.  She didn’t really expect him to be there, she assumed he would flee as soon as she was gone, but, to her surprise, Holcomb was still there, sitting on a stool and writing something down on a scrap of paper.

“How is he?” asked Holcomb as he heard her come out from the back of the store.

“Better,” Lilly said.  She rested the shotgun casually over her shoulder, curious to see what Holcomb was writing. 
“As soon as your friend is able, you’re going to have to leave.”

Holcomb nodded.  “It’s kind of you to let us rest here.”

Lilly lowered the gun and propped it against the wall as she moved another stool up next to Holcomb.   “I might have overreacted when you first arrived,” she said, and there was a touch of concern in her voice.  “But you don’t know what we’ve been through in this town.”

Her tone surprised him, and he stopped writing to look at her, trying not to look at her scar, but even when she saw his eyes drop for a moment, she didn’t let it concern her. 

“My father used to run this store,” she said.  “He was the town doctor, and I picked up most of what I know from watching him.  But then the war happened… the Yanks came marching through.  They took everything.” She waved her hand around the store.  “Everything.  When my father tried to stop them… they shot him.” Her eyes grew even grayer and darker with tears she hurriedly wiped away.  “They came through the town and left us with nothing.”

“I’m sorry,” said Holcomb. 

Lilly’s eyes glittered.  “It won’t end, will it?  More troops will come, and you boys don’t seem able to stop them.  Last I heard, our army was scattered across Mississippi, and we just recently lost control of the river north of Nashville.”

Holcomb began to grow angry.  Who was she to talk about what they were doing on the battlefield?  She hadn’t been there.  She hadn’t seen the effects of grapeshot on a tight formation, the body parts flung into the air like toys.

But he decided not to say anything.  Instead, he continued his writing and tried to ignore her.  Lilly put her hand over his, holding the pencil down and causing his marks to trail off the edge of the paper.

“I know what you’re thinking,” she said.  “I am a woman and I have no idea what is going on out there.  I know war.  My father fought in
Mexico, and I was there, too.  I saw him on the battlefield, knee-deep in blood, trying to save those boys who had been shot up.  I was five years old when I saw my first amputation.  I saw those Yanks storm through here like a hurricane on their way down to the Tennessee state line.  My father, who spent his life trying to help others, was gunned down over a barrel of corn seed.”

Holcomb felt the pressure of her hand over his as she talked.  He wanted to pull away, but her grip was strong, and it held his hand motionless.  “I didn’t know,” he finally said.

Lilly released his hand, and he felt free.  “It doesn’t matter,” she said, standing.  “I’m not fragile.  I will continue to survive as I have these past few months.”  Holcomb looked over at her shotgun, still propped against the wall.  He wondered how often she had used it.  She stood by the window looking out at the dark street, and Holcomb saw her hand touching her throat.

“I put the man into the ground who did this to me,” she said in a voice Holcomb could barely hear.  “Both barrels in the gut.  There wasn’t a lot left.”  He thought she sounded glad when she said it.

She turned to face him, and he suddenly saw exactly why she would survive.  She was a fighter, and she wore her scar as a mark of her revenge, and he knew she would not hesitate to kill anyone she thought threatened her or her home.  She moved through the store and began lighting the kerosene lamps.  Soon, the store was glowing with soft light reflected off the wood, and Lilly looked angel-like as she flitted through the shadows to light the next lamp.  Only she was both the angel of mercy and the angel of death wrapped into one terrible and beautiful image.

Lilly blew out the last match she held.  “Tell me,” she said.  “Is there a Mrs. Holcomb down in
Murfreesboro?”

She asked, Holcomb thought, not out of any romantic interest, but possibly to find out that if she decided to kill him, whether a widow would be mourning him.  He turned back to his writing.  A few inches of paper was all that was left on his little scrap, and he would have to be concise with his remaining words. 

“Yes, there is,” he said.  “In fact, I’m writing a letter to her now.  Married two years almost.”

“I see,” she said.  “And what about your friend back there?  What do you know about him?”

Her tone had changed, and Holcomb realized that now she was fishing for information because she might have either a concern or an interest in Colby. He had noticed the way she hovered over him and looked at him with eyes that were not of steel, but softer and kinder.  Whenever she looked at Holcomb, he felt her eyes were stabbing at him, but with Colby, it was different, and he couldn’t quite explain it.

Holcomb almost told her about Melinda.  After all, Colby had mentioned her several times, and there was that little portrait he kept staring at, but what Colby’s intentions were concerning her, he didn’t know.  After all, ever since they had met, Colby hadn’t been in the most conversational mood.

“He’s a farmer,” Holcomb said.  “I think he’s from north of Nashville.  Maybe around Gallatin or thereabouts.  He said he grew tobacco and  raised pigs.”

“How interesting,” said Lilly, gliding over to adjust one of the wicks in the lamps.  “A farm boy.  What about family?  Did he mention anyone in particular?”

Melinda’s name came up in Holcomb’s mind, but he bit it back before he blurted it out.   Lilly might not take the news too well, especially since Colby was in her care, and she was within reach of that shotgun. 

“He said he didn’t have a family,” he finally said.  “I don’t know much else.”

“Surely, there’s someone back home is he going to?  A lover perhaps?”

Melinda
.  “No, I don’t think so,”

Lilly reached into the pocket of her skirt and pulled out a long chain.  The pendant on the end flashed in the light of the lamps.  “Who’s this?” she asked.  “I found it in his pocket.”  She opened it and Holcomb saw the tiny image of Melinda, beautiful even in such miniature detail.

“I don’t know,” Holcomb said, worried she was going to go for her gun, especially if she thought he was lying to her.  He realized she didn’t have any use for soldiers, no matter which side they were on.

“He didn’t mention her?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You’re lying.”

Her eyes were molten steel, and there was an edge in her voice, like a razor slicing through the air.  “Why would you lie for him?  What else are you not telling me?”

The pendant was swinging in a slow arc back and forth, and Holcomb found himself following it, mesmerized each time it caught the light and gave a quick flash.   “Okay,” he said at last.  “Calm down.”

She snapped the pendant shut and dropped it back into her pocket.  “Maybe you’re not even from here.  Maybe you are deserters, and swiped some uniforms to pass through our part of the country to make your way back north.”

“No, I swear
...” Holcomb was looking at the gun.  Lilly followed his eyes and saw what he was looking at.

Lilly didn’t go after the gun.  Instead, she sat down and to Holcomb, she looked sad and somber.

“He’s got someone he’s going to,” she said.  “Either his wife, or sister, or lover.  It doesn’t matter.”

Holcomb wondered whether to tell her the truth: that Colby didn’t even know the girl, but was going to see her to take her a letter her father wrote before he died.  Lilly seemed sad, but no tears came.  Instead, her face hardened and a look of determination came over her.

“It doesn’t matter,” she repeated.  “He might be dead before morning.  The fever’s really got him.”

“That girl in the pendant,” Holcomb said in a burst.  “Is not his lover, or wife.”  Lilly looked up and her face seemed brighter.

“Who is she?”

“Just a girl,” Holcomb said.  “Colby met her father after he was wounded.  Her father died and Colby was going to deliver a letter to her.  That’s all.”

“Well,” Lilly smiled.  “That is something, isn’t it?  Why didn’t you just say so?”

Because I was afraid you’d go after your gun and kill us both.
  Holcomb kind of grinned.  “It didn’t seem important, I guess.”

“Look what I have,” Lilly stood up and ran off.  Holcomb could hear her rummaging around in some boxes in the next room.  He slid off his own stool and crept over to the shotgun, careful not to let his boots make a sound on the wooden floor.  He lifted the gun and quietly broke it apart.  When he reached down to remove the shells, there were none there.  The gun was empty, had been empty this entire time.

Wanting to laugh but daring not to, Holcomb put the gun back in its original position and hurried over to his stool just as Lilly came out of the other room holding a bottle of some kind.

“What’s that?”

“This,” said Lilly proudly.  “Is morphine.  Probably the last bottle in the western part of Tennessee.  I hid it from the Yanks, and they never found it.  I kept it in case some of the townspeople needed it, but I think now it will help your friend more.”

Holcomb looked at Lilly.  She was not the terrible angel of death as he had seen her before.  Now she just looked like a simple girl, and her features betrayed the hard edge of a few moments before.  She was smiling, and in that smile, Holcomb saw the girl as she must have been before the Yanks had come through.  A time before the war.

“You’re a good person, Lilly,” said Holcomb.  “I know Colby would be grateful if he were able to tell you.”

That compliment seemed to change the girl.  Her eyes gleamed, and the lamplight highlighted her in a warm glow.  She went into the back room with Colby and shut the door behind her.  Holcomb smiled and finished his letter, not knowing how he was going to be able to send it to
Murfreesboro.