Homeland (30 page)

I have made up the bed in Peggie’s old room in the attic for Papa, where I would sit and read on winter days before my confinement. The last time he was here, though he feels it his duty to stay beside Mother during the nights, I could see he slept scarcely at all. I will offer it to him at least, “lest
he
disturb
her
. …” though I am certain, she is not really aware, whether he lies beside her or not.

We have had a pleasant Christmas Eve after all. Papa, Peggie, and I took turns reading the Christmas story to Mother, Nollie, and my darling Mercy—Mother even seemed to respond a little to the familiar sound of Papa’s voice. Though Papa admonished us—with a twinkle in his eye—that it was “popish and pagan” to celebrate Christmas, I retorted that I had just happened by co-incidence to wake up feeling like making mincemeat pudding this morning, and it had
nothing
to do with it being the twenty-fourth of December. Though Peggie complained of the sacrilege, Papa and I went into the woods today and hauled in two sleigh-fs of firewood—cut last autumn—so the summer kitchen is stocked again for the time being (the snow on it does not even melt, it’s so icy in there). We saw a chickadee in the woods, hopping from branch to snow-covered branch, as if it were summer and human beings weren’t at war. As I write this, Peggie is taking her bath and bathing Nollie in the kitchen, and Mother has roused herself so far as to tell Papa that a fire in the parlor is a great waste of wood and heat:
he looks as happy as if she were speaking words of deepest love to him, or telling him that he’d just been elected President of Yale.

I will bathe Mother next, and wash her hair, which has turned nearly all gray this past year. Thus I will close this, so that Papa can mail it, when he crosses to the mainland Monday. When everyone is in bed, I will sit up with my candle a little while, and read at least two staves of
A Christmas Carol
—or maybe three, for I so dearly love the Ghost of Christmas Present, with his images of happiness, and plenty, and laughter, and the love of good friends. One year soon may we spend it together: you and Miss Mercy, Emory, and I.

Dearest Cora,

I am hoping that this letter will reach you safely. With the Union troops pulled out of Greeneville, rations were truly scanty here for a time, and we did eat ramps and wild sweet potatoes, and all of the fish I’d dried in the fall. When, at Christmas dinner this evening, the boys started toasting this person and that person in Pappy Weevil’s moonshine, I had to bite my tongue not to propose a toast to Gen’l Grant, the “founder of our feast,” since a good three-quarters of it was stolen U.S. Army cornmeal, bacon, and salt beef.

Enclosed please find imaginary Christmas presents for yourself and your family. The pink dress is for you—with new hoops and a satin petticoat—and the books, too:
Waverley, Rob Roy, Persuasion
, and
A Tale
of Two Cities
. Also the quire of the finest notepaper, and pens, to write to me. (Julia says I’m selfish—this proves it.) The little pink dress (I hope the size is all right?) is for Miss Mercy, as is the limberjack—have you ever played with one? The book of sermons is for your Papa. It says, in gilt on the cover, “Guaranteed to be both Holy and Uplifting to the Soul, and Improving to the Mind.” I have no idea whose sermons it contains. The other limberjack and the green-and-yellow toy horse is for Nollie, and the shawl and nightcap are for your Mother: I hope she likes green silk with yellow roses? That giant box is completely filled with propaganda tracts about how awful Confederates are and how they all deserve to be slaughtered in their beds. I know Peggie will just adore them. Being imaginary, all these things fit easily into this envelope—but, I would love to be able to see your face as they emerge, like a genie’s smoke, when you open my letter.

Dinner is over, and I have prudently shoved the bed up against the door of my room, and will stay awake “reading”
A Christmas Carol
over in my memory, until things quiet down downstairs. When the Ghost of Christmas Present carries Scrooge on his tour of the world as it celebrates Christmas, I trust for the sake of Mr. D’s more squeamish readers that they’ll skip a militia-camp in Tennessee! When last I heard from you, snow had not yet begun to fall: I trust that the house is now safely tucked into spruce-boughs, that you got the pigs slaughtered and the cheeses made, and that the soap came out better this year than it did last?

I trust, also, that no storm kept your Papa from the island, and that your Mother is comfortable, and that the Christmas sermon at the church will not be too boring. And I trust—I hope—that you are all right? As Scrooge says, Christmas is a time for finding yourself one year older: it’s hard not to take stock of what the year has brought. The only thing I choose to remember about this one is that it brought the renewal of our friendship. All the rest, I try to let go, like smoke in the wind.

Dearest Friend,

Thank you so much for the lovely gifts! The pink silk dress fits perfectly, and is the precise shade to go best with my complexion, and, I can scarcely wait to read the precious books! Papa was both moved and Morally Uplifted by the sermons. The volume contained many of his favorites, and quite a number that he had read while a divinity student, but had never owned. He is most grateful. Mother, when we wrapped her in the lovely shawl, smiled and stroked the soft silk … and Peggie was so taken with the box of anti-Confederate tracts (which weighs quite eighty pounds) that she immediately carried it on her back all the way to Elinor’s through the snow, for the pair of them to gloat over.

And the best gift of all is my laughter at the thought of these imaginary presents from you, at the end of a very cold and weary day. It has been storming all week, and today was the first day that I could snowshoe to Southeast Harbor for the mail, through a landscape like white iron. Little news of the fighting, which after the summer’s horrors is now stilled. But word came in today that Will Toothaker, whose farm lies down the road from ours, died last week in one of the transports on the way to Richmond, of disease, without ever seeing an enemy. His young wife Lucy is left with four little daughters.

The harbor is frozen, the salt-sheds barely a line of marble hillocks against the black of the pines behind them: grimly beautiful,
were it not for the thought of the wood remains running low again in the summer kitchen. By the time I reached home the wind had already begun to blow from the northeast, and I spent much of the day bringing in logs from the woods, where—thank Heavens!—Jem Duffy had left them piled in the fall. The wind howls outside now, and I know Papa will not be coming. I must finish my sewing, and put Mother to bed, and then perhaps will have some time to go back to the gaudy bustle of
Vanity Fair
.

“I know that the account of this kind of solitary imprisonment is insufferably tedious, unless there is some cheerful or humorous incident to enliven it—a tender gaoler … or a waggish commandant of the fortress, or a mouse to come out and play … or a subterranean passage under the castle, dug by [our hero] with his nails and a toothpick: the historian has no such enlivening incident to relate in the narrative of Amelia’s captivity …” As there is none in mine. And then a few pages later I’m longing to shake that silly woman for not seeing how desperately her faithful Major Dobbin loves her, but instead clings to the memory of the handsome and quite worthless George …

As I cling to Emory? I tell myself, At least Amelia knows that her beloved George is dead. I tell myself many things. As you say, there are things that it is best to let go, like smoke in the wind: things that can not be helped, or at least can not be helped
now
. Things that are as they are. I am well; and, I have your letter, and your kind thoughts to see me through
my
captivity. I pray that your situation—which sounds horrific—is not in reality too intolerable, and that General Grant’s supplies hold out.

A day of digging, of snowshoeing into the woods to drag out more wood. The wood I dragged home was the last of what Jem
Duffy cut this fall, and more will have to be chopped. Nollie is feverish—again—but Peggie insists on taking him to Elinor’s with her. When I asked, Would she truly rather risk losing her child to pneumonia, than leave him here with me? she looked me up and down with incredulity, and said, “If you don’t know why no decent woman would leave a child in your care, I can only pray for you.” I was silent before her contempt, but when she was gone, I could not suppress the waves of anger in my heart. I would never hurt a living child—
never
. I know that as I know my own name. At the same time, tears poured down my face. Because of what I did last May? Or because it is clear to me now that all the island knows? Did I do what I did to save Mother and Mercy from the scorn and scandal, or because I feared to lose Emory?

I do not ask for answers, my friend; only for the relief that you understand my questions.

The weather is clear, cold, and bright, though I will leave the rope stretched from house to barn, just in case. If it looks to remain clear tomorrow, we will soak laundry tonight. Clean sheets! Freshly-ironed chemises! Uncle M, God bless him, sent a man to chop more wood. With a cord in the summer kitchen and another out in the woods, I feel
invulnerable!

Dearest Cora,

“Popish and pagan” indeed! I see that I should have sent your Father an imaginary hair-shirt and cat-o-nine-tails for Christmas instead of an imaginary book of sermons!!! Your Papa is lucky you served him a lovely mincemeat pudding for Christmas dinner instead of bread-and-water.
Dry
bread, weeks old.

As you see and will have seen, if you got my Christmas letter, we’re still here, and will be, as long as Julia has breath in her body (she says). A few days after Christmas we had a frightful quarrel about moving into town. One of the churches in Greeneville got barrels of clothing and blankets from a “Ladies Aid Society” in New England, and, of course, God forbid Julia should touch Yankee charity! She clings to the belief that Pa will return any day. It’s true, that if we were to leave, I’m certain that either the Unionist guerillas would burn the house over the militia’s heads, or the militia would get drunk and burn it over their own.

Brute cold again; nothing in the traps. No fishing, either, for the streams, even where they aren’t frozen, run so low there are no trout, and I haven’t seen so much as a bird for days. Thank God for the U.S. Army! Without them I suppose the Confederate militia would starve to death. This sort of existence makes much more sense of
The Iliad
, which I am “re-reading” lately. I used to wonder how those brave Grecian warriors found the time to fight over women
(or each other’s armor), and make long, tedious speeches, and stew over their honor, when they were locked in war with the Trojans. Now I realize that most of those ten years were probably spent the way the militia boys spend them downstairs: drinking, playing cards, and making long, tedious speeches about States’ Rights and how the High Command should be conducting the War. (Did the Wily Odysseus have a moonshine still somewhere out behind the chariots? I’ll bet he did.)

More than that, I’m trying to figure out why anyone
ever
thought those men were heroes? I can’t think of a single decent, kindly thing any of them did, except when Achilles finally gives Priam back his son’s body—and then it’s
only
because the gods “put it into his heart” to do so. Is that what New England preachers mean, when they talk about predestination?

More rain. There’s one officer we can trust to keep guard over the stairs, so Julia and I can haul hot water up to bathe—usually we just wait til the militia goes off “foraging,” but the weather has been too bad for that. I’d pray for the earth to open up and swallow them, but with our luck, the house would fall into the resulting chasm.