Homeland (12 page)

Sunday Ollie, and half a dozen others, had leave to come from camp: his first sight of his son and it now appears his last for some time. All leaves have been cancelled. The Sixteenth marches in a week, to Virginia.

Through my bedroom wall I hear Peggie sobbing again. Nollie is in here with Mercy and me, sleeping the sleep of exhaustion, for Peggie’s weeping kept him awake, and she is again unable to feed him. First cock-crow is only an hour away. Exhausted as I am, I find rest in reading even a page or two from
David Copperfield
. There is a comfort in knowing you’re probably doing the same. Like you, I long for only a five-minute conversation with you, face to face, now in the present, to see what is taking place around you by moonlight on the twelfth of August, not two months ago or two months hence. I am not a Spy in Enemy Territory, but a Sinner in the Land of the Righteous. My doubt is sin, but I doubt all the same. I am as unable to alter my doubts as I am unable to wish away my love for Emory.

When I knocked at the back door of Elinor’s house this evening my darling Mercy was brought out by Katie, with the curt information that Elinor “can’t look after her anymore.” Mercy was crying wretchedly, exhausted as if she’d been crying for hours, and had been
neither changed nor fed. Inside I could hear both Columbia and Ned howling. I stared at Katie, mouth half-open that anyone would leave a two-month-old infant in such a state, and Katie said, “Nathan is dead,” and closed the door on me.

When I reached home, Mother told me that Nathan, and Otis Greenlaw from Southeast Harbor, were wounded in the Baton Rouge fighting, and sent down-river to New Orleans on a steamboat to be taken care of. The steamboat hit an underwater snag, and tore out her bottom. The boat sank, and all the wounded on-board, trapped within, were drowned.

I have written Elinor a letter, offering my condolence and whatever help she shall need, but I know it will go unanswered. Mother has been feeding wee Nollie cow’s milk, as Peggie’s milk has dried. He does well enough, but I will take Mercy with me tomorrow across to Isle au Haut, and see how that answers. Will, whose mother and grandmother are midwives, at least will have no objection to an infant’s presence on-board the
Lady Anne
.

My heart aches tonight, for Elinor, and Nate, and Peggie, and Ollie asleep on the ground with his head on his pack, ready to march away tomorrow. May morning bring hope with its light.

Dearest Cora,

Hurrah and welcome to the lovely Miss Mercy Poole! Of course
she’s the most beautiful baby in the world—she’s
your
daughter! And thank you for sending me news of Justin. I enclose a letter for him, if you would be so good as to forward it. I have thought a great deal about what you said in your letter: that we can not know what will befall either of us, before the War’s end. As you know, I’m something of a Pagan (particularly in comparison with your mother), and I fear I grow more Pagan every time the Reverend Crouch edifies us with Sunday sermons about how God is going to send every Yankee straight to Hell. Yet, there is a great deal of comfort in your faith, that all things—even the horrible ones, like losing Payne, and hiding in the cellar last June with shells landing three streets away—are the work of God, designed for His own Purposes that we do not understand. I do wish He would explain them just a little more clearly, though!!!

I laughed to read your Mother’s version of Nursery Tales For Little Ones. But, I am astonished she missed the one about the little children who mocked the prophet Elisha’s bald head. As I recall, Elisha called two she-bears out of the woods
(are
there woods in the Holy Land?) and they proceeded to tear those bad children to pieces. It’s in Second Kings Chapter Two. Every time Tommy has the colic I can tell it’s one of Aunt Sally’s favorites.

It’s ironing-day here. I’ve left Julia my share of the mending (I would rather muck out stables than sew!), and will spend the afternoon in the kitchen with Cookie and Nellie, hearing all the gossip that nobody talks about in parlors. In every town of any size below the Mason-Dixon Line there are really two separate towns: the free blacks and the house servants of everybody in town all know each other, the way the “quality” whites all do. Cookie doesn’t mind me helping because I won’t tell Aunt Sally, if Cookie spits on the iron to test it.

With the doors and windows all thrown open, and the river breeze coming through, the kitchen isn’t really bad to be in, even with the
stove going for the irons. And I love the way the clean, warm linen smells! Still, I’m glad ironing-day’s over for another two weeks.

The moon is almost full, setting over the river. I’ve heard nothing yet of where Henriette or her children might be, though that just may be because she’s as bad about writing as Pa. Still, having lost Gaius, every time I see Tommy I feel a sadness, at having now lost Gaius’s children, as well.

Yet another letter from you! Enclosed in one from Mrs. Johnson, who seems to be moving here and there among her relatives in the mountains. But, it made me so angry my ears got hot. It’s one thing for my brother Payne to go to war when he was eighteen—he’d been a cadet in the Military Academy, and everybody knew he wanted to be a soldier. But for someone to shame and coerce your brother to abandon his wife—even if it’s only until apple-picking time—is inexcusable.
And
Elinor can keep her silly verse.

Would you have married Emory, if you had the choice to be or do something different? At least, if you’d had a profession, you could be following it in Boston, instead of being stuck on Deer Isle in the snow with the Daughters of the Union telling you you should divorce Emory because of his politics!

What I’m saying is, I’m delighted you have the chance to teach school. I take back what I thought about Elinor. I’d almost take back what I said about Ollie joining the Army (since his doing so opened this door for you) … but not quite.

It’s funny, Cora: I usually
hate
making jelly, because it’s always the hottest day of the year, and I burn my hands and get smoke in my eyes and every fly in Mississippi comes to watch … But there’s that moment when the jelly “sets up” and I feel as pleased as if I’d just finished building the Great Pyramid of Egypt, all by myself. I burned my wrist so I can not hold the pen properly—and it’s a quill pen, too, since there isn’t a nib to be had anywhere in town for any money.

[
Damn
—heavily crossed out]

Curse the blockade.

With regard to Mr. P, thank you for reminding me of Elizabeth Bennet, and how we need to reserve judgement, even though we
think
we know we’re right about a person. But the other thing
P&P
taught me (and
Persuasion
even more) is, that people’s hearts can change. That
people
can change. In the meantime we can only, like the heroine of
Bleak House
, keep ourselves cheerful and useful, no matter how many evil lawyers all around us get shot or wicked rag-and-bone dealers burst into spontaneous flames …

Yes, you are absolutely insane for taking pleasure in changing your beautiful daughter’s diapers. I love Tommy, but there are limits and that quite lies beyond them!!!

I suppose it is my destiny to love insane people.

P.S.
I
become insane contemplating what’s going on at Bayberry, because I’ll bet my last three sheets of drawing-paper that Regal never got even a corn-crop in the ground, much less tobacco. If my brother manages, on top of everything else, to lose the plantation because he can’t pay the mortgage, I’ll—I don’t even know what I’ll do. Go on living on charity, I suppose.

Susanna,

Devastating battle news. Wednesday evening the lobstermen all saying there were rumors on the mainland about fighting in Virginia; dead and wounded in numbers so high I can not believe they are not exaggerated. Oliver is there, and twenty other island men. Papa came back from Yale. So much work to do, to get the apples in, and the cider made, and start on the cheeses, with only Peggie to help, and me only from sunup today until it was too dark to see: with this standing beside us, an invisible spectre, like the terrible Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. At night Papa and Mother sit quietly in the kitchen, reading the Bible to one another:
Be strong and of good courage, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee, withersoever thou goest
. Their courage shames me.

News like a blaze of light in darkness. Will met me at the wharf this afternoon with news that’s up and down the wires all over the country: that in the wake of our victory in Virginia (if so ghastly a massacre can be so called), President Lincoln has issued a Proclamation, freeing the slaves in the South. As I stood open-mouthed, amazed, that after all these years that horror and disgrace on our nation—on
humanity!
—has been finally struck down, Will added, “But, ‘tis only in the South, not in the States that stayed loyal to the Union. And only in those Rebel States that
don’t
give up and re-join the Union by January first.”

I felt shocked, angry, and furious with President Lincoln. How
dare
he treat the freedom of hundreds of thousands of human beings like a parlor-trick, to threaten the Rebels with? What is in your heart about this, Susanna? What is in your thoughts? I asked you once before—how long ago that seems!—about slavery, and
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
. What do the people around you in Vicksburg—both black and white—think of this? As I walked home, with Mercy riding in the little sling I’ve made for her, I passed Elinor’s house, as the sun was going down. It stands back from the road, on the tall hill above Green’s Landing. I paused by the gate and could see from there two men stacking cordwood—her father’s employees, from the store or the marine-yard—and a woman dressed in deepest mourning. I remembered how Elinor and I had sat on her bed with our hair down our backs, talking of
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
, and slavery, and our duty to see that somehow, the wretched slaves would be freed, until past midnight.

I think if Nathan had not been so lately dead, I would have let myself through the gate and walked up to speak to her. To cry,
We did it! We did it!
Maybe Will is right, and this “Proclamation” of Mr. Lincoln’s is just a “smart” move by a politician who cannot win a military victory. But it is the small end of the wedge. On that foundation, freedom can and will be built.

But I walked on.

And just as well that I did. At church yesterday Pastor Wainwright preached a sermon of thankfulness for the Proclamation. As we were leaving, I heard Elinor scolding him for the praise he’d given to a “half-hearted piece of politics” that would “disgrace a common pickpocket.”

But to make up for that, this afternoon when I came down to the wharf at the Town Landing to come home, Will met me with a letter
from Ollie, which he’d gone all the way to Belfast on purpose to fetch. My brother is well, for his regiment was held in reserve, and did not see battle. Still no letter from you. I have gone back to
David Copperfield
, with its gentle reassurance that people come and go in our lives, and return again in time. Haying is done, and gathered into the barn. Apple-picking time has come and gone.

[lost]

[lost]

[not sent]

Dearest Cora,

Your letter reached me today, What do I think about Mr. Lincoln’s Proclamation of Emancipation? Everyone here says this is his malicious way of inciting slave revolt, but not a servant in this house-hold—or anywhere in Vicksburg, so far as I can tell—is thinking about revolt. The ones who don’t like being slaves (and there are quite a lot that don’t mind it: they have food and clothing and a roof over their heads, and trust their masters—and apparently their masters’ heirs!—not to sell them) are all thinking about running away, because now they have someplace to go.

All my life I’ve heard Pa’s friends, and my brothers, fretting about slave revolt, and I’ve always thought:
If they weren’t slaves, they wouldn’t revolt, would they?

But the other thing that reached me today is the news that Mrs. J and her family have been forced to flee from Carter County. So there is no way I can send you this just now. I will continue to write—and to make drawings for you—and send it all when I can.