Homeland (20 page)

The first day I wasn’t needed at the hospital, Nellie and I raced up to the house and took a count of the food left in the larder. Aunt Sally left us with half a wheel of cheese, three sacks of cornmeal, half a barrel of potatoes, most of a ham, and assorted preserves—we were due to start pickling cucumbers and bottling peaches in a few weeks, so supplies of those were low. We’re moving those down to the cave a little at a time, because nobody knows how long it will be before the town is either relieved or surrenders.
(Nobody
admits there’s any possibility of surrender, but President Davis would
never
make Lee leave Virginia to march here overland, the way everyone is saying he will and must.) In a way I’m glad Cookie ran away, the night Grant’s men moved into position around the town, even if she did take all the sugar. I suspect we’ll need all the food we can save.

After we move sacks and jars and dishes and bedding, I’ll make one more trip—it takes twenty-three seconds to run from the mouth of the cave, up the bank, across the yard, and in the kitchen door—and run into the library and tear the flyleaves and end-papers out of as many books as I can in thirty seconds, then race back. Once, I got caught in the open, when the guns moved earlier than I expected and shells started landing in Aunt Sally’s yard, but I threw myself down the bank and scrambled into the cave. At least we have plenty of water. Or we will unless a shell hits Aunt Sally’s cistern, which stands in the back of the house. Emory tells us that there’s no water to be had out at the rifle-pits, and in this heat the men are always desperate for it. I wonder if it’s the same, on the other side of the lines?

Emory to dinner again—I say, “to dinner,” as if we had something other than cornmeal mush, a sprinkle of cheese, and a few thinly-sliced potatoes, but he swears it’s a thousand times better than they have at the rifle-pits. He says they have only a little bacon
or salt beef (only it’s probably not really beef), to last them a whole day’s fighting, plus cornmeal and pea-meal, mixed. But, we now have the parlor table and three chairs, and plates and cups. Emory told us about the latest rumors, including a most pitiful story being circulated in the Northern newspapers, about Mrs. Pemberton, the Gen’l’s wife, being killed in the bombardment. (She is perfectly safe in Mobile, and everyone in town knows it.) Where the rumors start, no one has any idea, but many are called across the lines from the Federals. Men come in from the lines all the time, for aside from the shelling—about which they can do nothing—and the shooting back and forth, they also have very little to do. Emory says it’s like being trapped perpetually in a shooting-gallery, only the targets are shooting back
and
the building is on fire!

Considering how much danger we’re in, the days drag fearfully. Emory carved a set of chess pieces out of spent minié balls, and I play with him when he’s here. I think of you, Cora, shut into your house with darling Mercy for months on end in wintertime; sometimes this feels like a not-very-funny parody. We—Nellie and I—sweep the dirt floor, fetch water from the cistern, and count the hours until it’s time to make a little mush for the five of us—or six, if Emory will be in from the lines. We are
always
hungry. Julia and I have had a dozen squabbles, for she cannot resist Tommy’s pleas for food, and I say harshly, “Better he cries now than starves next week.” She tells me—as Aunt Sally was always doing—that I am cold, and unwomanly, and selfish.

Today, before he went back to the lines, Emory helped me make a barrier out of a shed the Yankees obligingly blew up for us, to keep Tommy from wandering out of the cave when no one is watching.

Many afternoons, I read. I carried down books from the house—
Catherine de Medici
and
Rienzi
this week—but I have to keep an eye on them, and carry them back when I’m done, or Julia or Nellie will tear out pages to put on the fire, rather than go out searching for kindling. I cannot blame them, and yet, I cannot see it done. Rather, I always select some awful tome or collection of sermons to bring
down, as well. Sometimes I read aloud to poor Tom, who drifts in and out of sleep—for he is in the most awful pain. Mostly, I just read. It’s better than thinking, sometimes.

[sketches]

[not sent]

Dearest,

A confusion of rumor, spreading fast over the island as the lobstermen come in from the mainland. A Confederate army has invaded Pennsylvania, and is en route to Washington. No one would speak to Will at Green’s Landing, but when I stopped at Uncle M’s on the way home, Aunt Hester said that some of the men had gone across to Portland to get news if there was any. The moon is new, and they will not be back tonight.

I try to imagine you across the table from me; yet tonight I feel more alone than I have, perhaps in my life. The rumor is indeed
true that the North has been invaded in force, and we know that Oliver’s regiment is in the army that was sent to intercept the invaders. But there is a deeper trouble here. Papa met me on the road, and said, Mother did not come back in from evening milking. When he went out to see what delayed her, he found her sitting on the milking-stool staring before her, and she did not seem to hear him when he spoke her name. He led her into the house and laid her down on the bed, where she fell at once asleep. Yet, when I went in with him and shook her, she at once woke up, and was herself, complaining only of a headache. Papa tries to be cheerful, and to act as if this is but a normal consequence of her fall in March. Yet last night I came into the kitchen, and surprised him watching her with such a look of fearful helplessness in his eyes as I have never seen. He knows no more of how to help her than I do, Susie!

And on top of great disasters come petty annoyances, like biting gnats! As if doing so would shield Oliver from danger, Peggie has taken to leaving pamphlets from the New England Propaganda Society on my pillow, or tucked beneath the sheets of my bed.
Execrable
verse—one can not call it poetry. I would laugh, but for my own terrible anxiety for my brother’s sake.

Mother, at least, seems better today. Rain is falling, and fills the summer kitchen with the scent of the woods, mercifully keeping both mosquitoes and blackflies away. The whole night whispers with it.

My compliments to Julia on her twenty-second birthday. Please forward to her my sincere hopes for her health and happiness.

Thank you for the kind letter you would have sent my daughter! I hope and pray that all is well with you and yours, my dear Susie, wherever you are.

[not sent]

Dearest Cora,

Wish your daughter happy birthday for me. The enclosed sketch is for her. The roses are real, and still blooming madly in the bottom corner of Aunt Sally’s yard. The cat is from memory: between the shelling, and no food in the town, and the possibility of being eaten themselves, I don’t think there’s a cat this side of the Union lines.

We’re just about out of cornmeal and all our flour is gone, so Wednesday I went down to the cane-brakes at the bottom of the bluff, to dig up the cane-shoots, which you can boil for food. It’s funny, to meet there some of the ladies I used to go take Sunday tea with, on the same errands. Emory says there are Louisiana men in the lines catching rats, and they swear they cook up just fine. None for me, thanks. Friday he brought us some mule-meat, which was ghastly. Julia gives most of her food to Tommy, and she grows pitifully thinner and more ethereal-looking by the day. She has this look
of martyred intenseness in her eyes, as if she expects every second to be her last and is determined to give her life for the South. Tom is fading, too, feverish and weak, and she is so patient with him, so loving, as if nothing existed but him and their son. Sometimes when the bombs are falling close, she sings. It is hard to imagine such love. Thursday was her twenty-second birthday.

[sketches]

Dearest Cora,

I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Please forgive me.

[not sent]

Dearest,

As I came down to the wharf at Town Landing this afternoon, I saw the men gathered around talking wildly and feared that the lobstermen had brought news of battle before Washington. But the men said a Confederate Navy schooner had sailed into the harbor
at Portland, a few hours’ sailing west of here, and attacked a Federal revenue cutter as it lay at anchor.

The island is aflame with suspicion of “Copperheads” and “traitors.” Anyone who does not cry
hip-hurrah!
at the sight of a bunch of red, white, and blue ribbons on a hat is automatically suspect.

My hands ache tonight, as you can see from my writing: an exhausting Saturday of hoeing, weeding, picking cherries, cucumbers, peaches! A Heaven of scent and sunshine! As a child I accepted without question the astounding bounty produced by a single plant or tree. As I grow older, I look upon this generosity with wonder. All day until darkness spent in the summer kitchen, making pickles and preserves. I told Mother I wished particularly for this to be done of a Saturday, so that I might help, having left so much of the pig-killing and soap-boiling to Peggie last fall while teaching. But in truth, I wanted it so because I was not easy with the thought of Mother working so close to a blazing fire and vats of boiling vinegar.

I moved about the schoolroom like an old lady today!

[not sent]

Dearest,

I wish—how I wish—I knew where you were, and under what circumstances. Papa says Pastor Wainwright offered up a prayer of thanks at church yesterday, and that everyone on the island says
that now the fighting will soon be done. Yet at what cost, Susie! Three days of fighting at Gettysburg, from dawn to the late fall of summer darkness! The whole island holds its breath, waiting for the casualty-lists. Peggie is distracted—

Twenty-four hours. I recall how you wrote, after the fall of Nashville, that sentences penned only days before seemed to speak of another world. I speak calmly to Papa, and firmly to Peggie, and cross to Isle au Haut to explain to my students the six-times-tables, and behave just as if I were one of those perfect sweet courageous heroines in all of Mr. Poole’s books. Only on the way back across the Bay this afternoon did I weep a little, for sheer terror and grief.

Last night I was brought running from the summer kitchen into the parlor by Mercy’s screams and the smell of smoke. Mother was standing in the middle of the room. The sleeve of her dress was on fire. She stared fixedly at the flames without making a move to help herself; Peggie pressed in a corner, clutching Nollie, in frozen panic. I slapped out the fire—it was from her bedroom-candle, fallen on the floor where it thankfully went out—and turned to see Papa standing in the door of the bedroom in his nightshirt, hands over his mouth and panic stamped upon his face. Then Mother began to struggle and sob in pain, and Papa ran to hold her, and all was confusion, but it was clear that Mother had no recollection of brushing against the candle, nor of her dress taking fire. We bandaged her arm, made her drink a little brandy-and-water as a composer, and I made Papa drink some, too, for he was shaking as badly as she, dropping the glass and the water-pitcher and his glasses. Though it was nearly midnight I took the lantern and walked the four miles into Northwest Harbor to fetch Dr. Ferguson. The moon is in its last quarter and the night overcast, and it would not have been safe to take the horse. When I returned with the doctor I took Papa aside,
and said, “Is there anyone that you know at Yale, who is a specialist in injuries of the brain?” He said yes; and, he would write in the morning, asking a recommendation, of who Mother must see.

I have just now been in her room. How much she has changed over the summer! It has been some weeks now, since I have seen her accustomed sharpness. I do not know what to do, except to follow the example and precept of those impossibly courageous, impossibly good young ladies—and to follow your example, my friend. Wherever you are, I know you have passed through horrors: getting your sister out of Nashville, coming home to find the world you knew laid waste. And those are only the ones that I know about. Please hold my hand through this time.

Oliver is dead. Of his regiment, only fifteen men and two officers survived. Will told me this when I came down to the Town Landing to return home this afternoon. When I got home at twilight I found Papa sitting on the boulder by our gate, alone. He said he had brought the news to Mother, and they and Peggie had wept together. Yet he said, a little later in the day, Mother had come in from the garden and asked, Was there any letter from Ollie? Peggie had sobbed out that he was dead in the battle, and both wept again, as if it were the first time of hearing it—but, Papa said, it had just now happened a third time, that Mother had no remembrance of the news, nor even that a battle had been fought. Peggie had told her, he said, and again it was as if she were hearing it for the first time, and he could not endure it.