Leigh Ann's Civil War (24 page)

I glanced briefly at the tree where I'd seen the owl. He was still there, perched on a limb. I took Captain Ashton inside and introduced him to my sisters.

Immediately, he leaned over Viola and asked her if she thought she was up to being a nurse. She told him she would be, after a good day's rest.

He helped her to her feet. His consideration was beyond even that of a doctor.

He signed out Viola and Carol and two other women and took them with him.

As we left I tapped his arm. "Captain?"

"Yes?"

"I'm sorry I doubted you. I don't want you to think all Southerners have the temperaments of hedgehogs. And I thank you for taking my sisters."

He looked down at me and smiled. "Do you think Teddy would let you come with me now and attend to your hurts?"

I knew I shouldn't go. I knew Mulholland would punish me. But I did hurt, and the captain's voice was so kind.

"Yessir," I said.

Before we left the premises I cast another look at the tree. The owl was gone.

Although the supply trains came in regularly at Marietta with food for the army, Mulholland Bad Face still sent his bummers out to forage in the surrounding countryside.

The supplies that came in by train, he said, were for the armies that were going to Atlanta. And he wanted to keep his bummers in practice.

"Besides which," he told me, "Sherman wants the Southerners in his path to feel the wrath of his destruction. And I want you to feel the wrath of my anger, 'cause I'm mad as hell at you for comin' in so late t'other night, Conners. And I ain't finished punishin' you yet."

I hadn't used my protection notice yet because something told me I'd be needing it for a more important moment. Ashton had bandaged up my hurts and given me powders for my headaches, and although he had written a note to Mulholland explaining the reason for my lateness, old Bad Face had whipped me again on my return. Inside the small brick building where he and his bummers stayed. So there was no owl about.

I fought him. I tried to kick him in the groin, but he knocked me about so that, besides a hurt bottom, I came away with a bruised cheekbone.

The man was what Louis would call a clodplate, one who had no soul, no spirit, one who had never heard of fanciful things, of books like
Gulliver's Travels
or
Jack and the Beanstalk,
one who had never traveled by using the North Star.

So on the second day of our sojourn in Marietta, he sent me out alone on another impossible task, to a nearby farm to steal chickens.

I was frightened this time, not reassured, like when I went looking for the turkey. I didn't even have my Enfield rifle. I was not supposed to shoot the chickens. I was supposed to wring their necks. Three of them, and bring them back to Mulholland for supper.

I had never wrung the neck of a chicken in my life. I had seen Cannice do it. I don't think Careen had ever done it, either.

It was not in the geography of my makeup to wring the neck of anything.

By the time I got to the farm I decided that I would not do it. I would run away, even though Mulholland had told me that if I did not return by three o'clock that afternoon he would personally track me down and shoot me dead.

The farm was a pretty place and I found the part of it where the hen house was without difficulty. Once there I sat down outside the fence and commenced crying.

I wanted to go home. I wanted my brother Teddy. I wanted to be a child again, to let everybody else make the decisions for me. I had not asked for any of this. It had all been thrust upon me, and the unfairness of it now gripped my soul so that it felt as if I had no soul left at all.

And then, as I was looking up into the vast blue sky for inspiration, through the branches of a nearby pine tree, my soul came alive again. For I saw, there on a high branch, looking down at me, the owl.

I stopped crying, knowing it was Louis's owl, because owls never came out in daylight. Everything would be all right now. What the owl would do to remedy my miserable situation, I did not know. But it would do something.

I sat watching it for a while, having a tête-à-tête with my fancies.

And then, in no time at all, he did it.

He swooped down low into the yard of the hen house, and before the chickens could even raise a fuss he grabbed one by the neck, did something that rendered it helpless, scooped it up, and carried it over to me, where he set it on the ground and then flew back to repeat this performance twice more.

When I had three dead chickens on the ground in front of me, he perched on the limb of the tree again and sat there staring at me with his unblinking eyes.

I stood up. "Thank you," I said. "Oh, thank you. You have rescued me again. Tell Louis thank you, dear owl." I held my arm straight out.

It took only a second or two for him to lift his wings and come and perch on my arm. He was gentle with his talons. He stayed just a moment, then bobbed his head and flew away.

I picked up the three chickens and started walking back to camp.

***

We stayed at Marietta for two more days and then they started shipping the women out on the trains. It was all great confusion, with some of them crying, some of them refusing to go, and soldiers pushing them on board and threatening them with guns.

And where, I wondered, was the emissary from Grandmother in Philadelphia? He should certainly be here by now. But how would I know him? He would be in a wagon, of course, but didn't they say that all stragglers would be arrested?

And weren't there Yankee soldiers all over the place, guarding the entrances and exits of the town? If he'd come, likely he'd been turned away, I decided. So it was a good thing—no, a blessed thing—that Carol and Viola had gotten those jobs as nurses in that field hospital. But what would happen to me? Would I be shipped on with Mulholland's bummers to Nashville? Or would I go to Atlanta?

And then we went out to forage on the plantation where I found the dog, and Mulholland discovered that I was a girl, and he took me to his brother's office. And it was agreed that I and Viola and Carol were to be sent home.

***

"The first thing I must do," I told Sergeant Mulholland, "is go to the field hospital over there and get my sisters."

"You do that. I have to get a replacement to tend to my bummers, fetch the horses, and get the rations. I need two hours, at least. We meet at the foot of the hill down there, Sam Conners, or—what did you say your name was, anyway?"

"Leigh Ann. Come on with me, Buster."

"Who's Buster?"

"The dog. I've decided to call him Buster. He's mine now. I'm taking him home."

"You remember one thing, Sam, or Leigh, or whoever you are. We get to your plantation and your brother don't have the money to ransom his wife, all of you come right back here, you got it?"

I nodded yes. We had the money. I wasn't worried about that.

I was worried about what Viola and Carol would say about the conditions I had agreed to that allowed us to go home. And then, before I had weaved in and out between the soldiers' tents that occupied the lawn between the military institute and the field hospital, the dog trailing behind me, I had decided what I would do.

I had to tell Carol and Viola that Mulholland wanted money for Carol's return. Carol would never forgive me if I did not. But I would not disclose the amount.

Mulholland and his brother, Major Tom, wanted at least five thousand dollars.

I did not know whether Teddy had that much money lying about doing nothing. But I did know that the silver Louis and I had buried that day under the tree was worth quite a lot. And hadn't Louis told me to use it, if push came to shove, to save the family?

And with Carol expecting a child, wasn't this saving the family?

I did not know which door to go in at the field hospital, but there were Yankee guards all over the place and soon enough I was called to account by one of them.

What was I doing on the grounds? Explain myself.

"I-I'm looking for Captain Ashton," I stammered. "My sisters work for him. It is important that I see him right away."

I was scowled at, patted down, and scowled at some more. I had to give my name. "Sam Conners."

What was I doing with this dog? He could not go inside. Didn't I know that? This was a hospital, not a kennel.

"Please, sir, is there some place safe you could keep him for me? He's my dog, and I'm taking him home. And I've come to get my sisters because they're going home, too."

"By whose orders?"

"Major Thomas Mulholland, sir."

That becalmed them somewhat. There were three of them tormenting me by now. One of them went inside to inquire whether Dr. Ashton did indeed know a scruffy, paltry excuse for a boy named Sam Conners. And in a short time he came out and said yes, the doctor did, and furthermore the doctor said the boy was to be treated with the utmost courtesy and respect. And was to be taken inside to the coffee room into the presence of his sisters.

Which put the three Yankee guards in a considerably contrary mood. Still, the doctor's words must have carried some weight, because they put a rope leash on Buster and brought him into a small unused office for safekeeping. Then they ushered me inside and down a main hall.

It was a hospital and it was not a hospital. It was easy to see that it had once been an enormous mansion. Rooms off the main hall were emptied of all furniture and filled with beds on which were sick men. Nurses moved between them. It had three stories, so I assumed the same scene was repeated on each floor as well as in the sunroom. From the kitchen came smells of good cooking. And I saw stacks and stacks of doctors' supplies in what must have been the office as I passed.

They took me to a small pantry with a table and chairs. The coffee room. The eating place.

There were Carol and Viola, waiting.

They jumped up and we hugged. "You finally came to see us," Viola said. Then she drew back and took my measure. She touched my face, tenderly. "Mulholland hit you again?"

"I fought him, but he was too strong for me. He knocked me about. I'm in fine fettle, though."

"We've got to get you out of his hands," Carol said.

I grinned. "I am. I'm no longer a bummer. I'm going home. This very afternoon."

They both gasped. Carol got tears in her eyes.

"So are the both of you. It's all arranged." And I proceeded to tell them how I had arranged it.

They listened in silence. Their eyes grew wider with every word.

"How much?" Carol asked.

"Whatever he and Teddy agree to," I said.

Carol nodded in understanding and I felt a sense of relief, but I should have known better. Any sense of relief I felt these days lasted only two seconds.

"I can't go home," Viola told me.

I stared at her as if she had said she had just decided to become a Yankee. "Why?"

She lowered her head. She folded her hands on the table in front of her as if she had committed some sin and was afraid to tell me. But I knew what it was. I had known all along, hadn't I? Even before I had come in here?

She and the doctor-captain were in love with each other. I knew that from the first day he had leaned over her cot and looked down at her so tenderly. And from the way she had looked up at him.

I had seen enough looks of love pass between Louis and Camille, hadn't I? And, in the end, just before she left, between Carol and Teddy? And hadn't I, God forgive me, seen the way Major McCoy had looked at me?

"I've got complications with my baby," Viola said softly, still not looking at me. Then she saw a nurse passing by out in the hall, got up and whispered to her, and came back to us. "I've sent for John. He'll be along momentarily and he'll tell you why I can't go home."

John, is it?
I thought.
Well, you've told me already, Viola.

He came. Momentarily. He came in an apron stained with blood, which he immediately whipped off on coming into the room.

His eyes twinkled when he saw me. "Ah, the little brother who isn't," he said.

I got up and went to him to shake his hand, but he gave me a quick hug instead. Then he looked at my face. "Been in a fight? What does the other guy look like?"

But he was not happy about my face, I could see that. He went immediately over to the sink in the small room, wet a towel under cold water, and held it to my face.

"Mulholland knocked her about again," Viola told him.

He sat down and drew me toward him as Teddy would have done. "You've got to stop with this boy business," he said. "Viola told me the why of it. Now I'm telling you the no of it. I'm going to put a stop to it here and now. Use my authority. This is unconscionable."

"Your authority as what?" I asked.

"Leigh Ann, don't be impertinent," Viola scolded.

But the doctor-captain only grinned at me. "As your future brother-in-law," he told me. "Your sister Viola and I are to be married. This weekend."

Well, so soon? I was not surprised. Now I know how Teddy feels half the time, dealing with us.

What would Teddy say, I pondered. I looked up at the doctor-captain. "Sir, I don't mean to be saucy, but you do love my sister, don't you?"

"Leigh Ann, shame on you!" Viola scolded.

"It's all right, Viola, really," the doctor-captain said. "The child is concerned about you. I'm a Yankee, remember. Yes, Leigh Ann, I love your sister, dearly. And I want to take care of her. I don't want to lose her. I realize we've only known each other about a week, but it's wartime and we're in love and a week is worth six months."

"Well then, you'd best explain to her why I can't make the trip home with her as she wants," Viola told him. And she proceeded to tell the doctor-captain about my plans.

"She's telling the truth about her condition," he said after Viola had finished. "She has complications carrying her child. The ride home would not only cause her to lose it, but endanger her own life as well. You don't want that to happen, do you?"

"And if she stays here? Will she be all right?"

"I'll make sure she is. We'll marry. And as my wife, she'll no longer be under arrest. She'll live in my quarters and be properly attended to before, during, and after the baby's birth."