Leigh Ann's Civil War (23 page)

"I told you. I found him near the stream a ways over there. I shot him as you wanted. I'm not lying. Why did you send me there if you knew there were no turkeys?"

He was taking off his wide Yankee belt. "I'll teach you to lie to me, you little Southern bugger," he said.

And so saying, he grabbed me by the arm and proceeded to whip me with the belt. Oh, merciful God; I thought I would die! It was worse than when Mother had whipped me with her riding crop, and there was no one about to help. I wanted to scream but wouldn't give him the satisfaction.

And then, of a sudden, there was someone. Oh, there was a blessed someone!

From out of nowhere came a bird, screeching and clawing at him, attacking him.

An owl!

It hovered about his head. It bit his ears. It went for his eyes, and he had to release me to protect himself.

I stood back, breathlessly, watching in awe its tremendous wingspread, its terrible claws, its insistent anger. I thought,
It's just like Louis's owl. It looks just the same as Louis's owl did that night.

And I knew that if I did not say something it would not cease its attack; it would blind him or bloody his face to pieces. So I sang out, "It's all right, Owl, it's all right now. He won't hurt me anymore. Thank you, thank you. It's all right now."

The owl hovered around us another minute or so. Then it alighted on my shoulder and gathered in its wings. I stood very still.

Mulholland stared at me while he righted himself. "You crazy or something?" he said to me. "You talk to birds? That how you got that turkey? I heard all you Southerners are crazy. Learn it from the negroes, I hear."

The owl made a warbling noise on my shoulder.

"You can go back to Louis now," I whispered.

It took flight and I watched it go.

Mulholland was breathing heavily. "You tell anybody about this and I'll whip you again," he threatened, "inside a building, where that damned owl can't get to you."

I was hurting from this whipping. Before the owl had come he'd gotten in enough stripes to make my bottom smart. And anyway, I didn't want anybody knowing about it, either.

We had the turkey that night for supper, and it was most delicious. There was enough for all, with some left over.

The Yankees decided to stay right there and sleep. But no sooner had we settled in than they started with their festivities. About ten o'clock someone began playing the harmonica and the banjo, which wasn't all that objectionable, because I do love music and at home either Carol was playing the piano or Louis was picking at his guitar.

But the music was just part of it. Soon the Yankees were passing a bottle around, and be it brandy or rum or whatever it was, they could not hold their liquor. And one of the greatest sins in a man, according to my brothers, is that he not be able to hold his liquor.

Soon enough some were wandering around to seek out women to dance.

A very handsome but in-his-cups Yankee with an equally agreeable companion came over to our wagon to cast an eye on the women.

Our Yankee guard ordered us all out. Even me, in my boys' clothing.

Most of the women mumbled. They were tired and wanted to sleep. They were not dressed fetchingly enough. They wanted no truck with the Yankees.

Sadie Moline, however, was clear-eyed and enticing, and the in-his-cups Yankee immediately selected her.

"How about somebody for my friend here?" he asked.

Sadie grinned at me and reached out and pulled Carol forth by the hand.

"No." I stood in front of Carol and the agreeable Yankee soldier. "Not my sister. Pick somebody else."

He scowled at me. "Very commendable, little buddy, but I like your sister. She's the prettiest one here. Now out of the way before I box your ears."

I turned from him to Sadie. I pulled her aside. Quickly I reached into the pocket of my trousers and pulled out the two ten-dollar gold eagles that Major McCoy had given me. "Please," I begged. "Just leave us alone."

Sadie nodded and took the money, then turned to the agreeable Yankee and said, "You don't want her. She's pregnant." Then she pulled forth another woman named Ella Powers, who was not near as pretty as Carol but was presentable enough to hold her own. And they went off to tear up the night with rowdiness and screaming laughter and what they thought passed for singing and Lord knew what else.

In the morning the women were still not back. And nobody commented. But I was glad I had had those two ten-dollar gold eagles that Major McCoy had given me. For after that Sadie Moline did not exactly become my friend, but she did leave us alone.

And, speaking of McCoy, Viola told me that he was twenty-three years old and unmarried. I don't know how my sister found such things out, but she always did know everything.

She also told me the reason Carol had offered to come with us, had suddenly voiced such concern for us, was because she wanted to make it up to Teddy for all the bad times she'd given him.

"She told me this," Viola said. "And after all, it isn't as if we're going to be sent farther north with the others. We're going to Grandmother's in Philadelphia, aren't we?"

The next day there was leftover turkey enough to give to Carol for her midday meal. The rest of us made do with the coarse fare that the Yankees fed us.

We were passing a part of the country steeped in poverty. It was truly a dilapidated part of the wilderness. Tumbledown houses, if one could glorify them with that name, appeared on both sides of the road. Here we saw women in ragged clothes, some chopping wood, some attending to halfhearted gardens. There were lots of dirty, half-naked children running about.

"Our negroes live better at home," Viola whispered.

"I wonder where the men are?" a woman named Elinor asked.

"At war," another called Betsy said.

"For which side?" Rose asked.

"Which do you think?" Sadie put to us. And nobody dared answer. For none of us knew and none of us dared guess. Which side, Yankee or Confederate, would allow their women to live like this?

And to mention which side, here and now, would cause an argument to break out.

Quickly, but not quickly enough, it seemed, we passed this ungodly settlement and soon came upon another sight even more ungodly.

Up ahead to the left of us was a slave gang, all chained together, sitting around a fire, resting. What appeared to be the slave trader and his assistant were standing under a nearby tree, with guns, drinking and watching them.

I had never seen a gang of slaves in chains.

All I knew of negroes were Cannice and Careen and Primus and the other house and field servants. We never called them slaves. Surely they had never had beginnings like this!

I had never really thought of them as having been purchased anywhere. They had just always been there, around me. Friends.
Part of the family.

If I sassed Cannice, Teddy would punish me.

I came out of my reverie then because our Yankee guard was saying something.

"Lookee here, you people. Here's what your loved ones are fighting for. Don't it make you proud? See that bunch of slaves? On their way to New Orleans to be sold to the highest bidder. What gets me is you people never give up. Here we are and the war is nearly over. You're losing. And you're still selling slaves!"

Then there was the barking of orders and I saw an officer on a horse and men with guns at the ready, forming up and going to surround the slave trader and his assistant. The officer ordered him to immediately unlock the chains of the slaves.

There was a heated exchange of words. The slave trader not only refused, but he and his assistant fired at the Yankees, who immediately fired back. In a minute they both lay dead on the ground.

In the wagon the women all screamed and were shouted at by the Yankee guard to quiet down.

We watched in horrified fascination as the Yankee soldiers secured the keys from the dead slave trader and unlocked the chains of all the slaves. For a moment or two, the slaves just sat there, though unchained. They raised their arms in surrender. They mumbled things like, "No trouble, boss. I gives no trouble," and "I stays put, suh. You doan gotta worry."

It took a lot of coaxing from the soldiers to convince them it was all right to get up. They offered their own canteens of water. They squatted down and made themselves eye-level with the slaves and spoke quietly with them for several minutes. Other soldiers came across the road with goodies to offer. Some pieces of bread, it looked like. And ham.

We all watched, speechlessly.

Eventually, one by one, the slaves got up. There were six of them. They were properly dressed, in osnaberg trousers and white shirts, hose and shoes that they had trouble walking in. They went with the soldiers over to one of the wagons, to continue on with them.

"Now they're free and we're not," Sadie said.

A detail of men with their horses was left to bury the bodies.

We continued with our travels, and later on in the day we reached Marietta. Too early by half for Grandmother's emissary from Philadelphia to meet us.

What would happen to him when he came? How would he find us? More important, how would we find him? I already considered it my responsibility to make the connection, but suppose I was off on some mission for Mulholland Bad Face. Would the Yankees have shipped Carol and Viola off north to Nashville by then?

Marietta had once been the prettiest of little college towns, with beautiful homes, tall trees on the main street, and a train station that looked like something out of a painting.

Oh, the homes and trees and train station were all still there, but now it was an army town, a conquered and fortified military city. The courthouse was a military prison. The fine old houses were hospitals. Nine trains arrived and departed at the depot each day, bringing supplies for the Yankee armies as they readied their advance toward Atlanta.

The infantry was housed in buildings on the square. All deserters and stragglers were immediately arrested. The mill workers were taken to the Georgia Military Institute on the hill.

Somehow I got permission from Mulholland Bad Face to accompany my sisters there while he found a place for his bummers. We walked up the lovely, rolling grounds full of soldiers and tents and horses and were ushered into the barracks to the side, which were once occupied by the cadets.

Here there were women already, some from Roswell and others from the mill at Sweetwater, which had also been burned by the Yankees. The rooms seemed to go on forever, with rows and rows of cots. Women waved at us, came forward, and hugged us as if we were friends.

There were crying children. The women spoke of the horrid food. Of the even more horrid Yankee guards. They said we would have to wait two days before the first train came that would ship us out.

I noticed that it was terrible hot in here. And that the women had already taken sheets from the bed and draped them over the windows to shield themselves from the sun, which shone directly in this time of day.

Immediately Viola lay down on her cot. I knew she was not feeling well. I also knew I could not stay long, or Mulholland Bad Face would beat me again.

"I'll look after her, don't worry," Carol promised.

So I left, halfheartedly, promising to be back, though I didn't see how I could.

Outside, on my way down the front path, I thought I saw in the distance an owl on a tree limb. I was so intent on looking at it that I bumped into a tall, fine-looking Yankee officer. I mean I ran right into him. And fell onto the ground.

"Oh, I'm sorry, sir," I said.

"
You're
sorry! Are you hurt?"

I had scraped my elbow somewhat. "No," I said, though I'd turned my wrist.

"Here, I'm a doctor. And I feel responsible. Wasn't looking where I was going. Habit of mine." He took the hurt wrist to help me up.

"Ow!"

"You
are
hurt."

"No, sir, I'm fine."

He squatted down like Teddy would and flexed the wrist, which made the elbow hurt.

"Sir, please don't."

"Why do people lie to doctors?" Quickly and expertly, he felt me in more places.
If Louis were here,
I thought,
he would have to beat him up.

He ran his tongue inside his cheek. "You're not a boy, are you?" he said.

I blushed. "Please, you mustn't tell anyone, sir. My life depends on it."

He took me by the waist and pulled me to my feet.

"Doctors don't tell. They know how to keep secrets. I would like to bandage your wrist and elbow, though. I work in that big house over there. It's a field hospital."

I got suspicious.

"What's the matter?" he asked.

"My brother Teddy told me always to be suspicious."

"I see. Go on."

"Why should I go into a big house with a good-looking Yankee who just put his hands all over me and claims to be a doctor?"

He threw back his head and laughed. "Good girl. Good advice. I like your brother Teddy already. And I'm flattered to be called a good-looking Yankee. I take it you just came in from Roswell?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then you should hate all Yankees."

"I've decided only some of them are devils. I haven't made my mind up yet about you."

His blue eyes sparkled. He shook his head in disbelief. "I don't know who raised you, but they did a good job."

"My brother Teddy."

"Ah, so I see. Look, you don't have to come to the field hospital with me if you don't want to. I just thought to bandage your hurts. But what you can do for me is help me right now. The reason I'm here, you see, is because I'm looking for some women to help out at the field hospital. I'm Assistant Surgeon Captain John Ashton of the 7th Iowa Infantry, and I've been asked by Major General Grenville Dodge to hire some of these women as nurses."

I came alert. "Nurses?"

"Yes. So they don't have to get shipped out to God knows where. And perhaps never see home again. You came out of there." He gestured to the door of the barracks. "You know anybody inside?"