Homeland (18 page)

This afternoon after I wrote to you, I went up to Sky Parlor. The river’s a half-mile wide here, but from Sky Parlor you can see across it, to where the Union soldiers were building concealed gun-emplacements. By daylight, with Doc Driscoll’s spyglass, I could see the town of DeSoto, reduced to cinder and ash, the people who lived there—and Union soldiers—moving around in the ruins.

[sketches]

[not sent]

Dear Susie,

Disquieting visit to Lufkin’s store yesterday with Mother. Mother told me, troubled, on the way home that she had heard a shocking rumor about Will Kydd stealing parcels entrusted to him for transport about the islands. She rebuked the gossip with a suitable passage from Holy Writ, yet, she told me, with the cost of cloth, and molasses, and salt so high, surely a man so poor as Will would be tempted? Exasperatingly, a few miles farther, Mother turned to me and repeated the identical rumor, as if she had forgotten that she had already done so: a trick she has acquired since her fall two weeks ago. She tries to conceal it, but the blow on her head affected
her memory a little. She let slip yesterday a remark that made me realize she has no recollection of the fall, nor how she came to have a healing cut and a clipped place in her hair, just above her left ear.

I wish, just for once, that Mr. Poole’s trunk contained at least one medical book. Surely
Fantomina
could have been spared, to give it room?

Uncle M still down with
la grippe
. Will came to chop wood and sharpen the tools. I was talking with him at the wood-pile when Peggie came out and told him we didn’t need the help of “such as he.” Fortunately Will is the best-natured man on earth. He waited til Peggie went inside again—which she soon did, as it was terribly cold—and resumed chopping. Later in the afternoon she regaled me with her suspicion that Will is in league with the Confederate raiders, who have captured and burned so many coastal vessels and taken their crews prisoner. Why could he not, she demanded, only be waiting to deliver the whole island over to these pirates, to use as a permanent base?

I laughed at this, as I laugh now in retrospect. Yet this kind of hurtful rumor tells me the sort of thing that is probably being said about me, behind my back.
He who is not with us is against us
. Fear of the raiders makes even the most stupid innuendos seem likely. The wood stores are low, and we are down to the last few crocks of last fall’s butter. Thank Heavens that the cows are freshening again, and will be in milk soon. I am grateful that Will has offered to cut wood, as neither Peggie nor I is strong enough to wield the broad-ax. Mother can cut logs into stove-billets, but this past week she has thrice dropped things in the kitchen—Mother, whom I have seldom seen drop anything in her life—and I do not like to see her, with an ax in her hand. You grew up in the country, dear friend, around work-crews engaged in heavy labor. Do you know how long it is, after a blow on the head like that, before its effects finally dwindle?

Perhaps you are right, and I should consult Dr. Ferguson in Northwest Harbor.

[not sent]

My dearest,

Troubling news in the papers, of fighting all around Vicksburg. I hope your Aunt has removed you from that town, since it now seems there will be a determined assault upon it. My heart hurts me, at this link with you severed: that I do not even know where you are now, or under what circumstances.

I refuse to believe that it is the last link. Wherever you are, I know that when it becomes possible, you will write to me again.

[not sent]

Dearest Susie,

Mother seems much better! Thank you for the kind note that I knew you would have sent, had you received my letters containing my concerns for her. And thank you for the sketches that would have been enclosed, of your errant Pa’s adventures in Richmond. The snow is almost off the ground, reduced to three or four inches in the cold shadows of the woods, and in the brown, dispirited boughs that still heap the sides of our house and barn. We sugared off last week—twelve pounds of maple sugar,
plus
syrup! Men are readying the cod-fleet to go out, though Uncle M says the cost of rigging-line has quadrupled and the government is no longer paying bounties on fish. Although enlistments are at a standstill, with so many men gone—more than one man in three!—it is difficult for him to raise full crews, much less find a man to hire for the farm-work. He may only send out one boat this year.

For weeks I have not quit the farm, though I have received word that I will indeed teach this summer. This is a great relief, for those things that we can not raise, such as salt, lamp-oil, and garden-twine, are almost more than we can afford.

I have begun to re-read
The Iliad
—not one of Mr. Poole’s, but my old copy Papa gave me—and having read
Don Quixote
, it has begun to occur to me to wonder: Was Homer being
sarcastic
, about his bronze-greaved Achaean heroes before the walls of Troy? Or have I had too many conversations with Will?

Three more men have come home disabled.

Spring Cleaning.
The Iliad
must be set aside. All Saturday Papa and I—and Mercy, who can now toddle and get herself unutterably filthy—dug in the new garden, while Mother and Peggie scrubbed floors, scrubbed walls, swept and black-leaded grates. The woods are a fairyland of early wildflowers: fragile trilliums and gaudy Devil’s paintbrush, meadowsweet and steeplebush, each color like a note of music. I opened windows to let the wind blow through, carried furniture and mattress outdoors to air, beat carpets. The moon being a single day into its first quarter, Papa would not hear of planting potatoes, rhubarb, beets, or any other thing that grows beneath the ground. He left me with instructions for getting in the corn, pumpkins, squashes, etc. next week, as soon as the moon has waxed sufficiently not to have any danger of being termed New or Dark. Aunt Hester follows a still more Babylonian regimen: not only must crops that grow downward be planted in the waning of the moon, but they
must
be planted on the day of the month dominated by the proper Zodiacal sign as determined by the almanac. Papa shakes his head at this. Yet if word reached him that I planted the potatoes before the second of May, I’m certain it would give him sleepless nights!!!

Do these customs hold in Tennessee? Are they the same among the white farmers in the mountains like Mr. Poole, as among your Pa’s Negroes? Or is there some African system that differs entirely? I know the fishermen have their own set of customs, which include casting silver overside when becalmed: “buying wind,” it is called. Uncle M tells me of a man in the cod-fleet, who carries a dime wrapped in a rag and tied on the end of a cable, which he will throw into the sea in times of stillness, and haul back again if the desired result is not forthcoming. I suspect that the gods of Homer would have something to say about that!

The fleet has gone out. The nights are cold, but it is such a blessing, to go out to the milking in the flush of new light, when the world smells of pine and sea.

I have not mentioned it before, but Mother has been sleeping later in the mornings, which is unlike her. I have told myself, she is fifty, and has not the energy of a girl. Yet this morning it was only with the greatest difficulty that I waked her at all, and for some minutes she seemed confused, as if she did not know me. When I spoke to her of it later, after we had set the milk-pans to separate, she did not remember the incident at all.

Tell me what you think of this, my friend. How I wish that you could!

[not sent]

Dear Cora,

I should be sleeping; I’m so tired I feel like I fell down a flight of stairs. Wounded coming in every hour, and in the heat the hospital is frightful. It’s the old Washington Hotel; flies everywhere, and blood soaked into the lobby carpet so that it stinks. Sometimes they need help there, sometimes they don’t, but there’s
constant
laundry: bandages. Zed cuts wood and hauls water for it, first thing in the morning, then goes to the hospital to work himself.

Emory, in town with dispatches, told me Captain F was killed in a skirmish. I felt stricken with guilt—Why? He was boring and had no manners. Just now Nellie came up, saw my candle, asked me, What was wrong? I told her. And she said, “He used to grab at my pussy every time he pass me on the stairs.” Maybe he still doesn’t deserve to be dead, but suddenly I don’t feel so bad.

People are fleeing town for Jackson. Emory to dinner. I asked him, Would we (meaning, little Tommy, really) be safer back at Bayberry? He said No, the whole section is in flames: militia of both sides, deserters of both sides, stripping the countryside bare. Even Seceshes are refugeeing to Nashville, where there’s food. I wondered if Justin’s books are all right, deep down in Skull Cave. Only later, did I wonder: Is Bayberry still standing? Did the Romans feel like this, when the bloodthirsty Goths came through?

[sketches]

Floods
of wounded. They say Grant is crossing the river. Sound of Union guns carries like thunder over the water.

Emory came to the hospital. He brought word that Tom had both legs shattered by a minié ball. Julia there—too many wounded for anyone to stay home now—and fainted. He took her home. He is here still, and bids me send you his love.

Tom brought in—finally—today. Doc Driscoll said, “I wish I could spare you, Susie, but I can’t,” and I had to help him cut off Tom’s legs. After two nights of no sleep, staying up with Julia, I didn’t feel anything more than if I was helping Cook thigh a chicken. But I now know how kind God was, to Gaius and Payne.

[not sent]

Dearest Susanna,

Newspapers—terrible fighting in Virginia, where I know Oliver is now. Nearly as bad is the account of the fighting all around
Vicksburg, where I fear—despite my efforts at optimism—that you still might be. I remind myself that your Aunt Sally did not appear to me to be a woman who would put up with seige conditions. I tell myself that it is foolish to torment myself over what I can not know, and can not help.

Sadness as well as fear: a letter from Mrs. Johnson, with news of the death of her son Charley, who once paid money from his own pocket to rent a buggy, to take you back to Bayberry. A fall from a horse, his mother wrote. God forgive me, my first thought—from my slim acquaintance with the man—was to wonder if he were sober.

Great worries and small. Blackfly season: swarming, pestiferous vermin. Do you have blackflies in Tennessee? When I read the tale of the Plagues of Egypt, that is what I see as the Plague of Flies. The days lengthen and warm, endless sweet twilights made hideous by the first mosquitoes. God created all living beings, including the mice that have returned to my dresser drawer.

I am beginning to be very uneasy about Mother, despite Dr. Ferguson’s assurance that these symptoms are normal, in one who had what was almost certainly a mild concussion. Her fall was over two months ago. Surely the spells of forgetfulness, the abnormal clumsiness, should abate? Or at least, not become
more
frequent? For the most part I can not even speak to Peggie of my concern. As her friendship with Elinor has grown—she regularly attends the meetings of the Daughters of the Union—she avoids me with an air of uneasiness, as if she has been warned even against conversation. This room where I sit tonight has taken on something of the aspect of a sanctuary. It is the only place where I can feel safe, with the only company I can trust: yourself, Miss Mercy (who can now say Mama, G’amma, Eggie, Nollie, and One), and those dear fictional
friends who meet perils and tribulations unknown to me, with courage, tenderness, and fortitude likewise worlds away from my own vexed strivings.

Every time I close the book—whatever book it be—I ask them, to give you my love, when they should meet you next.

[not sent]

Dear Cora,

This morning General Pemberton issued an order for all non-combatants to leave Vicksburg, while he still holds some part of the railroad. Jackson is in Union hands. Aunt Sally said that if the Army thought it could run
her
hospital without
mere women
cluttering things up, they certainly had
her
permission to try. She said she was taking me, Julia, and Tommy to Richmond. Julia clung on to Tom’s hand (we were at the hospital—we finally got Tom a cot yesterday) and begged me not to leave her: “You can’t take her from me, and you can’t make me go!” And to me, “Susie, if you go I’ll
die
!”