Leigh Ann's Civil War (25 page)

Tears came into my eyes. "Will she ever"—my voice broke—"come home again?"

The doctor-captain took me on his lap, just as Teddy would have done, and held me while I cried. "I'll bring her home," he promised, "as soon as she and the baby can travel."

When it was time to go, Dr. Ashton walked down the hill of the Georgia Military Institute with me and Carol and Buster, to where Mulholland Bad Face was waiting with four horses all laden with supplies.

The doctor was dressed in his full military uniform. He held my hand all the way down the drive and let it go only when he stood before Mulholland, so he could draw himself up to his full height, which was considerable and which allowed Mulholland to observe at close quarters that he was a man to be reckoned with.

He introduced himself and Mulholland came to attention.

"I am here as a superior officer, as a friend, a soon-to-be-relative, and a spokesman for these women," he told Mulholland. "I do not know the intimate details of your mission, other than that you are to see them safely home. Whatever subversive reason you and your brother have for letting them free, I do not wish to know the details. I assume you will iron them out with this little girl's brother. And, from what I have heard of him, I wish you luck on that score. Especially if he finds out how you have treated her."

Mulholland offered no reply to that. What answer could he possibly give?

"But I will tell you this," the doctor-captain went on in the same even, steady, and authoritative voice. "I am keeping an eye out for the results. I have my spies. And if I hear that you so much as lay a finger on this little girl again, or in any way disrespect her or her sister-in-law Carol on the trip home, I will come after you with the full force of my authority. And I will have you placed under military arrest, stripped of your rank, and sent to prison. Do you understand?"

"Yes, sir," Mulholland said meekly.

"I should whip you now," the doctor-captain said, "for what you have done to her already. It would give me great pleasure. The only reason I don't is that it would ruin my hands for surgery."

Then he turned to me, leaned down, and kissed me on the cheek and winked at me. He put his arms around Carol and gave her some last-minute advice about taking care of herself.

"Where's the other one?" Mulholland asked. "I was told there were to be three."

"The other one stays with me," the doctor-captain said. "She is to be my wife. Thus I am family."

He helped Carol mount one of the horses. "I'll take the other horse and rations," he told Mulholland. "You just get on your way. And remember what I said."

Before he waved us off, he stuffed a letter in my saddlebag. "This is for your brother Teddy," he said. "The least I can do, taking away one of his sisters, is to introduce myself and tell him of my experiences with all of you."

***

They had given me a tea-colored filly and Carol a long-tailed gray with a smooth gait.

We each had a bag of rations and plenty of water. Buster trotted faithfully along beside me, and Mulholland had given me my Enfield. I hoped he did not expect me to go into the woods to seek out any more mystical turkeys.

As we left Marietta, I perceived that this was another way I did not recognize. How many routes were there between Marietta and Roswell? About half an hour into our trip it started to rain, but the air had been sultry, not at all agreeable, so I was glad of it. Anyway, they had thoughtfully given us oilskins and hats, and Carol and I immediately put them on. I felt sorry for Buster, but he seemed to enjoy the rain.

The road, of course, became muddy. It rained copiously for about ten minutes; then, just as suddenly as it had started, it stopped and the Georgia sun came out again, but now the air had cooled and we took off our oilskins. Buster shook his ragged golden hair in a sort of celebration, then barked.

When we came to a curve in the road there was an overturned stagecoach. Six passengers stood by, all hurt in various degrees. Carol wanted to stop and help.

"What can we do?" Mulholland growled. "We have enough trouble helping ourselves."

Carol pouted, as I'd sometimes seen her do with Teddy. But she said nothing and we went on at a determined plod.

A postman in a mail buggy came at us going the opposite way and we had to move to the side of the road to let him pass. I wondered if I had any mail from James waiting for me at home. I wondered if he was still alive. Then I pondered if I should write to Major McCoy when I got home and tell him about my adventures.

Of course I will,
I decided.
Why not?
I felt so much older now than when I had left home. I felt old enough to correspond with a twenty-three-year-old man, if Teddy would let me.

And then I realized that it was the first time in a long time that I found myself wondering if Teddy would allow me to do something. For how long now had I had to make my own decisions, with no Teddy to advise me, to guide me?

We passed some thickets of plums and I begged Mulholland to let us stop and pick some. Old Bad Face glumly agreed, and I got down off my horse and gathered a goodly amount and gave some to Carol. Oh, they were warm and luscious.

We continued on and soon we went by acres of cornfields. At some point here, without saying a word, Mulholland brought his horse to a halt, jumped down from his gray gelding, turned his back, and peed into the tall grasses at the edge of the road.

Carol and I just looked at each other in disgust.
Clod-pate,
I thought.
The man is disgusting. He simply has no dignity.

We went on. From a thicket of corn a little way up ahead stepped out a young, likely-looking negro girl. Her apron, which she wore over a washed-out calico dress, was raised into a bundle, holding something. Her feet were bare.

Mulholland stopped and raised his hand. "Hello there," he said in his most cultivated voice.

"Hello." But she would not look at him. She lowered her head.

What she apparently held in her apron was a pot. And the fragrance of whatever she had in it drove us all mad.

"What you got there?" Mulholland asked.

"Soup," she said softly, "made of Indian corn, with salt and some bacon and some other things. Would you like a taste?"

Mulholland would indeed like a taste.

From somewhere in her apron she pulled out a wooden spoon, dipped it in the soup, and offered it to Mulholland. He got off his horse and went over to her. She spooned it into his mouth.

"Ummm," he said.

She gave him another spoonful. Then another.

It was like some kind of a religious ritual. Carol and I looked at each other, embarrassed. She was enticing him into the thicket of corn.

With each spoonful she backed up a little more and he stepped farther and farther into the thicket. Then he turned to us and said he must go and help her pick more corn so she could replace the mixture that he had eaten. And we should wait for him.

We waited for him in the sun for at least three-quarters of an hour.

When he reappeared he was almost apologetic, guilty for making us wait so long. They had to pick a lot of corn, he said. "Tell you what. About two miles up the road apiece, there's an inn. They serve decent vittles. We'll stop there for supper. My treat."

It was called Diamond's. They allowed us to come in with Buster, if he was good, which he was the whole time.

The place was crowded and Mulholland was extra nice to us, looking around all the while to see who was watching.
He's looking for those spies the doctor-captain told him he has about,
I told myself.

For supper we had some kind of fowl, red potatoes, eggs, fish, grits, corn bread, and coffee. Mulholland paid the bill and we were about to leave when our waitress told him that up the road apiece they were about to whip two negroes for killing a white man.

"Likely give 'em a hundred lashes each," she said. "Whip 'em to death. I wouldn't think you'd want the young lady and the little boy to see such."

So Mulholland got two rooms for the night and feed and shelter for our horses.

I shared Carol's room. The cots were tolerable clean. The only bad part was that Mulholland got us up at five in the morning. We did have breakfast at the inn. Fish and hominy and Indian bread and fresh butter and more coffee. I gave Buster some Indian bread and a saucer of coffee.

Two miles up the road we saw the whipping posts where they had given the negroes a hundred lashes each. They had then burned the bodies, and the burned carcasses still remained. As did the smell.

We went on solemnly and I thought of Cannice and Primus and Careen and the war we were fighting. Were we in the South fighting so we could keep the right to whip to death and burn negroes if we wanted to? What was it Louis had said?

The only problem I have is that I don't know which I'm going off to do, to kill the myth or to save it.

Nobody said anything for a while as we went on.

I could see church spires in the distance, so I knew we were about two miles from town. I waved my hand to attract Carol's attention and pointed. She saw the spires and smiled.

At this juncture, Mulholland drew his gelding to a halt, held up his hand for us to stop, and looked up and all about him.

I thought he was going to remark on the breathlessly beautiful blue sky, which reminded me of the color of one of my Sunday dresses at home. Good Lord, how long had it been since I'd worn petticoats and a dress! Two weeks? Like Dr. Ashton had said, in wartime a week seemed like six months.

Or was he looking at the jackdaws congregated on the telegraph wires overhead, probably deciding which field of corn they were going to destroy this morning?

No, he was looking at the telegraph wires.

And, while looking, he was taking a large pair of shears out of his saddlebags. He was going to cut them. Then he looked at me.

No, he was going to ask me to go up there and cut them.

He smiled his Bad Face smile. "One more thing you can do for me before you get home, Sam," he said. "I've been ordered to cut the telegraph wires when I got close to Roswell. But I thought it fitting that you should do it."

"Me?"

"Sure. Why not? You walked on the mill roof, didn't you? What's a little telegraph pole to a girl like you?"

"Please, Sergeant Mulholland," Carol said.

"You stay out of this. None of your business," he told her.

"Suppose she falls and gets hurt?" Carol reminded him. "What are you going to tell her brother? You think he'll negotiate with you if you hurt or kill his sister? You know how devoted he is to her."

Mulholland chewed on that for a moment. Then he scowled, made an annoyed sound in his throat, and spoke. "He don't negotiate, I just take you back with me."

"I don't think so, Sergeant," Carol said, not losing a bit of her poise. "What I think is that if Leigh Ann is killed in a fall, or hurt, my husband will never let you off the place alive. As a matter of fact, I know it. Don't be a fool." She said it as if she were disappointed in him.

Angrily, knowing she was right, he got off his horse and, shears in hand, climbed the metal hinges of the pole until he got up to the wires.

I felt a pang of disheartenment as I thought,
Here I am sitting, doing nothing, while the people of my town are being denied wire service again. But what can I do? The insufferable brute.

I watched him reach out with the shears and cut the insulated wire. It swung out in two directions, and then back at him.

Teddy would say I was getting mean and nasty, but in my heart I hoped it would hit him in the head and knock him off the pole.

It did not. He ducked his head, avoiding it. Then he climbed down and mounted his horse, and we continued on.

As we approached the town, I still felt disheartened, and now scared, too. What would the town look like? Would it be destroyed?

On the road as we approached, we passed several people whom we did not know driving wagons filled with large pieces of iron, leaving Roswell.

"That iron must be from the mill," Carol said. "And since we don't know those men, they must be coming from other places to salvage it."

We also saw wagons filled with bricks, stacks of them, also likely from the mill. Then we sighted a whole herd of hogs being driven out of town by some Confederate soldiers.

Carol stopped one of them. "Tell me, what condition is the town in?" she asked. "Is there anything left?"

"A lot of the houses have been ransacked, ma'am, but not destroyed. The mansions and churches are in need of repair, but they still stand."

"Do you know"—Carol's voice broke, then she recommenced speaking—"do you know the Conners plantation?"

"Sure 'nuf, ma'am."

"Is it still standing?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Have they ransacked it?"

The soldier smiled. "Need the whole Yankee army to do that, ma'am. That Conners fellow, he's a regiment all on his own, not to mention his negroes."

"Thank you," Carol said.

The soldier tipped his hat. "My pleasure, ma'am. Why, that Conners fellow, he'd just as soon blow your head off as look at you, you come too close 'round his place. Good day, ma'am."

He went on, catching up with his friends and his hogs. Carol threw a superior glance at Mulholland, but he quickly looked on ahead.

***

We came upon the long drive, which was still the same as I had left it, though for some reason I did not expect it to be. And there were the trees lining each side. How could they not have withered, or fallen, or aged? Changed somehow, after all I had been through?

Hadn't it been a hundred years, at least?

At the end of the drive was the house, as always, where I'd been a child, where I'd run and played and done mischief, when running and playing and doing mischief was all that had mattered to me.

No one was about. Was it empty? Had it all been a dream, after all?

Was there no Teddy to ask,
Where have you been? You've missed dinner and you know I wont tolerate that.