Homeland (4 page)

Dear Cora,

Your letter of October first was waiting when I reached Nashville this evening, the one written before Emory’s departure, warning me against Mr. Poole.

I wasn’t even born when Patsy Poole went over that cliff. I’ve seen the cliff—it’s called Spaniard’s Leap and it’s really quite high—and one of the first things Emory told me about his Pa, was, “He killed my Ma.” When I first met Mr. Poole, I was five, Payne was seven, Emory twelve. Justin Poole was still living in the woods then and sleeping up in Skull Cave most nights, tho’ he’d work the farm in the daytimes, with his hair all down his back and twigs in his beard. I think I was the only person he would talk to. After Emory went to Yale Mr. Poole did start coming into town sometimes, and dressing in regular clothes. Tho’ he still sleeps on the ground with the dogs. The big one’s Sulla and the ugly one’s Argus. I knew he was crazy when first I met him, but I never was afraid of him, so please don’t credit all the terrible stories they tell of him.

The night of Payne’s funeral, the Lincolnites burned the bridges all along the railroad line. All the mountain counties rose instantly in revolt against the Secesh government in Nashville. There was supposed to be a Federal Army invading, too, only they never showed up. Pa not only sent me back to Nashville, but packed off Julia and Henriette and all the children here, too, to stay with Henriette’s mother and sisters, whom Henriette
hates
. She keeps asking, Why can’t Pa write to Aunt Sally in Vicksburg, and they go stay there? Because Aunt Sally has a big house and six plantations and a
lot
of money. I guess Pa doesn’t feel up to telling Henriette that Aunt Sally
despises
children and won’t have Leonella and Tristan in her house.

Would you have gone on with your education, Cora, if women were allowed to go to college? I know people say a woman isn’t suited for any of the professions because she has to take care of her children, but what about all the women whose husbands [
leave
them to go to war
—heavily crossed out] turn out to be drunkards or gamblers or wastrels? They
have
to take care of children
and
do something to earn money, don’t they? And every slave woman works in the fields and takes care of her children, too. What’s the difference between hoeing tobacco all day and seeing your children only at night, and teaching or mixing medicines all day and seeing your children only at night?

Sunday dinner yesterday with the Russells, Henriette’s family. I didn’t really want to go. Since Payne’s death I find myself getting angry very suddenly at little things that didn’t used to bother me at all, like Julia’s chattering, but Julia sent a note begging me to come, “so we can comfort each other.” But talking about Payne
doesn’t
comfort me, much less listening to what Julia would do if Tom were to be killed. (Die, too, she vows. She and Henriette spent a tedious hour planning their mutual tomb.) And all Henriette’s mother and sisters could talk about was the blockade and how they can’t get any coffee or sugar. I came back to the Academy feeling worse than if I’d spent Sunday here alone. Is there something wrong with me, for feeling like this?

Today Mrs. Elliott let me spend nearly the whole afternoon at Mrs. Acklen’s, copying an Italian painting of St. Peter in Chains. Enclosed is my sketch—quite clumsy—and a study of Mrs. Acklen’s dog sleeping.

I hope all is well with you on your Island tonight.

Dearest Susanna,

As cold waters to a thirsty soul, so is good news from a far country
. Your letter must have reached Boston only days after I left the city.

Needless to say, I fainted with horror at your shameless conduct in going “down the line.” Nothing less will do for you, wicked girl, than to forever after wear a large red “C” sewn on your garments for, “Curiosity.” Did you don a false mustache? How did you disguise your voice? It has always amazed me that the men in Shakespeare’s plays never caught on to the fact that there was something a trifle dainty about “Cesario” and “Ganymede.” Did you smoke a cigar? I search in vain for even one sketch.

It has been snowing heavily since yesterday noon. We feared Papa might be trapped here when the storm came on in earnest. Ollie has stretched ropes to the barn from the back door, so that Mother and I hold on to them when we venture out to feed the hens and milk the cows and goats, without fear of straying in blowing snow.

Still snowing. With the house “banked” in spruce-boughs, the shutters stay closed from November to March, and the dim daylight can only be seen in the attic. As a child I thought nothing of this, but once I went to the Seminary on the mainland, I would look back on these dark winters, and wonder how I could have endured them.

In truth, I had good need for the cheer your letter brought me. Upon my return last week, Elinor and Deborah came to the farm to welcome me. The silence that fell on them when I said that my Emory had joined, not the Union Army, but the Confederate, went to my heart like a dagger-blow. They recovered quickly, and gave me loud and angry commiseration, assuring me I will still be welcome to the Ladies Reading Circle that we three founded when we were barely schoolgirls.
But as they were leaving, Elinor took me aside, and told me, quite seriously, that I had grounds to divorce Emory, for desertion.

Mother had put me to work at once, helping her finish her cheeses, and then make the soap. Between aching shoulders and washing the grease from my hair, I had little occasion to think. Yet now, snowbound, my thoughts return to their silence, and the look on Elinor’s face. No one here speaks of Emory. Mother reads the Bible to Peggie and I offered to teach her writing and ciphering, but she manifests no interest in it, preferring to sew. With the house closed up, everything in it smells of smoke.

Sunlight this morning like the trumpets of angels, but oh my, it is bitterly cold! Ollie and I donned snowshoes and dug out the path to the “house of office,” filled with childish delight to be out-doors again and able to breathe fresh, sweet air. The summer kitchen is stacked with cut wood to its low ceiling, and more heaped around the barn. All afternoon Ollie and I have lugged in buckets of snow to melt for water, for baths tonight. This means the parlor will have a fire this evening, and there will be oceans of spilled soapy water to be mopped from the kitchen floor before we can go to bed! The weather looks to hold clear for church in Northwest Harbor tomorrow. Mother and I will bake, for coffee in the church hall between services, the scent of ginger and molasses almost better than the cakes themselves. I will drop this letter into the post-box at Lufkin’s store, for Will Kydd to take across to Belfast on his mail-run Monday.

You may always say what is in your mind to me, Susanna—anything you wish. As I hope I may, to you, should I ever chance to do anything as outrageous as yourself.

Dearest Susanna,

The thought of you in Nashville—smiling and politely nodding while all around you rabid Secessionists shout their heads off—is the only thing that lets me breathe a little easily tonight. I trust that further meetings of the Southeast Harbor Ladies Reading Circle will go better!

Your letter came. Oh, my darling, I will take the liberty of disregarding your first request, and will pray for your brother Payne! For both of your brothers! And for yourself. I hope things go more easily for you now?

Another snowstorm last week. The house and barn are but dimpled mountains of snow. Even during daylight hours the house is dark, for the sun rises well past eight and is vanished by four. We keep the wood-box filled, prepare our simple meals and eat them, endeavor in vain to keep the house clean of soot. With the hired man gone, Oliver works very hard keeping the cows fed and the barn clean and fresh. The cows are nearly dry, so there is no butter to be made, only salted from the cellar, and last fall’s eggs taste of brine. As the well is frozen hard, Ollie scoops up buckets of snow, to melt in the kitchen for our use and that of the animals. In the evenings we
knit or sew, while Ollie sharpens tools and mends snowshoes and harness, and keeps the brass polished. He and Mother take turns reading to us from the Bible. I sometimes read the Portland newspaper, but much of what it contains is diatribes about Southern cowardice and degeneracy. Like you with
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
, I
know
this is not accurate!

I took the precaution of purchasing material before I left Boston, for clothing for Little-Miss-Fidgets or Little-Master-Fidgets. Fabric is always dearly expensive on the island, the more so now that the Confederate sea-raiders are burning coastwise shipping. Peggie confided to Mother last night that she suspects she may be with child herself. Ollie walks around with a dazzled look on his face that is almost comical.

Mother reads, and we sew, and the banked spruce-boughs clogged with snow almost muffle the shrieking of the wind.

And now it is for me to confess shocking, shameful, and outrageous behavior.

A storm again, darkening even the windows of the attic where I sit in what used to be Peggie’s tiny room. I have brought up a lamp with me, and this end of the attic, above the kitchen and close by its chimney, is comfortably warm. Yesterday Elinor visited, to ask me to speak at the Ladies Reading Group. “The women need to hear you,” she told me. “You need not let shame keep you silent. For the good of the Union, Cora, you must speak out about how you truly feel towards this traitor who has tricked and deserted you. You must show the other women that you are one of
us.”

I replied, “I am not ashamed. Emory made his choice. That does not alter either my love for him, or my loyalty to the Union. Have you not always been first to champion a woman’s right to hold views
that differ from her husband’s?” But Elinor was profoundly shocked at my disloyalty. In the end I gave a half-promise to speak, but her embrace upon departure left me feeling more alone than ever.

I do not wish to dwindle into one of those people who is forever complaining, “In the City we did so-and-so … Back home it is like this …” Yet when I woke last night to the muffled howl of the new storm outside, I felt such a longing for Boston, with its lectures, its newspapers, its concerts, and its crowds, that I nearly wept. Instead I lighted my candle, and re-read your letters: wanting only, as you said in your latest, to be anyplace but here. Yet reading last week’s newspaper brought no distraction—accounts of skirmishes in South Carolina, of bloodshed and incompetence. At length I climbed to the attic, and opened Mr. Poole’s trunk of books, and sought for one of those novels that gave you such comfort. Upon finding it, I thought that the title
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
sounded rather lurid, yet surely a title like
Pride and Prejudice
connoted grave respectability.

After two chapters I
had
to continue, and pursue the fate of the Bennet sisters and their ridiculous mother. There was hopeless love there, too, and I grieve for Elizabeth and her Mr. Darcy. As I read on, bundled up in my quilts, I did feel much better.

You were quite right, dearest Susie, about the power of novels to lighten a heart. I never knew!

Dear Cora,

Tho’ there has been no reply yet to any of my letters, I must seize this chance to write one more, while I can. Justin Poole will take this letter across to Kentucky, and this time he won’t be back.

I’m at Bayberry again, tho’ thankfully will not be staying. Even Pa agrees that it’s too dangerous. We’re having Christmas here early, because of Gaius’s furlough. Then Henriette and Julia will go back to Nashville with me, and Pa will take the train in the other direction, to Richmond, to see if he can get a dispensation (or whatever it’s called) to sell our tobacco.
^*

It apparently never occurred to Pa to write to any of us that Regal’s militia company is now camped around our tobacco-barn. We may be safe from bush-whackers this way, as Pa boasts, but it makes my hair stand on end, to see the men harass the maids when they go down to the servants’ out-house. Pa says, “It’s just the boys having a little fun. They don’t mean any harm by it.” But I’ve told the women servants that it’s all right for them to go down in pairs.

The men from the camp relieve themselves in the weeds along the snake-rail fence. That’s in full sight of the window of my and Julia’s bedroom—which it didn’t used to be, but all the trees that surrounded the house have now been cut down for firewood.

I feel like I’m in a bad dream: one of those where you’re with a total stranger, and everyone around you keeps saying, “No, no, that’s your mother—” (or Julia or Payne or whoever) and you
know
they’re lying.

From the window of what used to be Payne’s room I sketch the
men, eating or playing cards or cleaning their rifles. As you can see from these, I don’t get any too near. They hold cockroach races on hot skillets. I bet they don’t wash the skillets afterwards, either!