Battle of Lookout Mountain (10 page)

Suspicion touched Drake’s eyes. “I guess you been telling them how I ran away.”

Royal shook his head. “Haven’t said a word. That’s all over, Drake. Why don’t you just forget it?”

But he was sure Drake could not forget it.

Five days later Royal and Drake did manage to wrangle passes—mostly through the agency of Sgt. Pickens. As the two of them made their way to town, Drake appeared more like himself. “Well, Royal, pretty nice of the sergeant to put in a word for me. He’s not one to hold a grudge, I’ll say that for him.”

“No, Ira’s a good sergeant.”

Drake was warmly welcomed by the Jenkins family, and the meal was, as usual, very fine. Lori seemed especially glad to see Drake, and Royal saw to it that he spent some time playing checkers with Mr. Jenkins so that Drake and Lori had opportunity to visit alone.

They got back to the barracks on time, and Rosie said, “Did you bring us any goodies?”

“Sure did.” And Royal produced the cake that Lori and her mother had prepared.

Walter Beddows said, “Here’s a letter come for you, Royal.”

Royal took the letter from him and, while the squad was enjoying their cake, he opened it.

Walter Beddows glanced up at Royal’s face. “What’s the matter, Royal? Bad news?”

“Some kind of sickness going around home. Sarah’s real bad,” he said slowly.

Jay Walters, who had enlisted at the same time as Royal, said, “I got a letter from my folks about that. Lots of people got it. Smallpox, I think.”

The news dampened Royal’s spirits, and he found it hard to join in his friends’ light talk. Later that night, when he and Jay talked about it, he said quietly, “I’m real worried about Sarah, Jay.”

“She’ll be all right.”

“Not sure about that. A lot of folks are sick, and I’d hate to see anything happen to her.”

Royal went to bed, saying a special prayer for his sister. He thought about the others at home. Pineville seemed so far away from Chattanooga, and he wished he could be back there to help.

Finally he prayed, “Well, Lord, You’ll just have to take care of the folks there. I know You can, and I’m asking You to do it.”

A
dull September sun threw feeble gleams down through a bank of white-gray clouds. Ezra Payne, who had been weeding the garden, looked up and frowned. Then he turned to his companion. “Leah, it looks to me like we are gonna get some rain.”

Leah was wearing a pair of Royal’s ancient overalls, bleached almost white from many washings. She straightened and glanced at the sky. “I hope it doesn’t rain like it did last month. We needed it then, but we don’t now.”

Ezra smiled down at her, admiration in his eyes. “That was a toad strangler, wasn’t it?” Then he pulled another weed, studied it thoughtfully, tossed it aside. Looking back at Leah, he said, “You’re worried about Sarah, aren’t you?”

“Of course I am!”

Leah’s tone was short, and Ezra said quickly, “That was a dumb question. Of course you’re worried. We all are.”

“If there was just something we could
do!”
Frustration swept across Leah’s face, and she kicked at a large cucumber. It had grown too big to make good eating, and now it split in two. The broken halves went skidding across the dark ground. “There’s not anything anyone can do—even the doctor.”

“She seemed a little bit better this morning, I thought. At least that’s what your ma said.”

“I wish they’d let me go in and see her,” Leah muttered.

“But you might catch it too. I wouldn’t want to see that happen.”

“Ma is worn out with taking care of her. I’ve tried to look after the house as well as I can, but I want to see Sarah.”

“I expect your ma knows best. Too bad your pa’s gone on one of his trips to the army. You reckon he’s heard of the sickness by now?”

“I doubt it. You know how slow the mail is with the war and all.”

They worked their way down the long rows, gathering the late harvest. Soon Leah’s bag was filled with squash, cucumbers, and okra. “We’ve got enough here—let’s go to the house, Ezra.”

“All right. I guess we got plenty.”

Soon they were sitting at the table on the back porch, cleaning and trimming vegetables.

Ezra held up a long piece of okra. “I sure do like fried okra,” he said. “Nothin’s much better than that to me.” He saw, however, that Leah’s mind was elsewhere. Feeling rather helpless, he said, “I guess it’s a good thing the Tollivers were able to keep Esther and Morena. Sure wouldn’t want them to get sick.”

“Yes, it was nice of them.” Leah’s voice was short.

The dreaded smallpox had swept through the community. Whole families came down with it, and the doctors knew little to do.

“I’m going to get that new kind of medicine that keeps you from getting smallpox. If Sarah’d had it done before, she wouldn’t be sick now.”

“I don’t know …” Ezra shook his head doubtfully. “The way they explained it to me, they scratch your arm and put in some blood from a cow or a
horse that’s been infected with smallpox. That doesn’t sound smart to me—giving you the disease!”

“The way it works,” Leah explained—she trimmed a cucumber and tossed it into the bucket — “you get just a little bit of smallpox, and then you can never have it again.”

“I guess so, but it sure sounds odd.”

Ezra and Leah had just carried the vegetables into the kitchen when a thumping sound came from outside. They looked up as Tom shoved the door open with a shoulder and swung himself in. His crutches thudded on the floor, and he held his maimed leg high.

Tom had taken Sarah’s sickness hard—harder than any of them would have imagined. When her illness had been diagnosed as smallpox, he had still insisted on visiting in her room. “I’ve already had smallpox,” he said. “Can’t hurt me.” From then on, he had spent time with Sarah every day.

In one hand Tom held a collection of wild flowers. Looking rather sheepish, he said, “I found these out in the field. I thought Sarah might like them.”

“Oh, they’re beautiful! Let me put them in a vase.” Leah jumped up and located a green vase that her mother had gotten as a wedding present years ago. She put water in it, arranged the flowers neatly, then extended the vase to Tom.

“You can take them up to her,” he muttered.

“I’ll do no such thing!” Leah said indignantly. But then she smiled. “You picked them for her—so you can take them up. Go on, now.”

“Well, all right.”

Tom grasped the slender vase and managed to wrap his hand around the handle of the crutch at the same time. He thumped across the kitchen, and
they heard him go down the hall, then up the stairs.

“He’s getting along all right on those crutches,” Ezra remarked.

“Yes, he is, and his wound is healing cleanly too. Dr. Brown said the surgeon did a good job.”

Ezra glanced toward the door and lowered his voice. “I sure wish he’d let me make him one of those wooden legs. I bet I could do it.”

Leah smiled at him. “I’ll bet you could too, Ezra. You do everything so well along that line.”

Her praise brought a flush of pleasure to his cheeks. “Well, it doesn’t do much good,” he declared finally, “if he won’t let me make him one.”

“Don’t give up. Sooner or later, I know he’s going to come to accept what’s happened to him.”

Upstairs, Tom stood before the door of Sarah’s bedroom and knocked.

“Come in.”

He opened the door and swung himself inside. The room was darkened, for it was a prevailing belief that sunlight would hurt the eyes of one afflicted with smallpox. Tom propelled himself across the room and squinted down at Sarah, lying in bed with the counterpane pulled over her. “Found these in the woods,” he said. “Thought you might like them.”

“Let me see.” Sarah reached out a hand and took the vase. She raised her head and smelled the blossoms. “Thank you, Tom. I’ll put them right here on the table.”

Tom stood there awkwardly and at last said, “Can I get you anything?”

“Sit down and talk to me, that’s all.”

Tom lowered himself into a cane rocking chair
and placed his crutches on the floor. “How do you feel today?”

“Oh, I’m all right. I can’t complain.”

“You never do.” Tom leaned forward and examined her features. “No breaking out yet,” he said.

“No—not yet.”

Something in her tone told Tom that she was worried. He thought he knew what the trouble was. “You’re worried about getting scarred, aren’t you, Sarah?”

“I guess I shouldn’t be. I suppose I ought to be thankful just to survive.”

“It’s only natural that a pretty girl would worry about scars, but lots of people get by with just a little scarring. Sometimes even where it doesn’t show. I never had any at all.”

“Well, maybe I’ll get mine right in the middle of my back.” Sarah managed a weak smile.

She’s feeling terrible
, he thought. The fever had drained her of strength.

But now she attempted to show a little spirit and said, “Tell me what you’ve been doing, Tom.”

“Why, nothing,” he admitted. He looked down at his hands. “Picking flowers—that’s about all I’ve done.”

“Ma tells me you’ve been helping some with the work around the place. I think that’s fine.”

Tom looked up at her, pain in his eyes. “Not much a one-legged man can do on a farm.”

Sarah said nothing for a moment. “I thank God every day that you didn’t get killed. That was my greatest fear.”

“Sometimes I wish—” Tom broke off and changed the subject. “I got a letter from Pa this morning. He and Jeff are all right. Not in any fighting
right now. Things are pretty bad there in Richmond though—and in all the South.”

“How does your father talk—I mean about the war?”

Tom leaned back in the chair and brushed his hair out of his eyes. “He doesn’t say much, but I can tell what he thinks.”

“What’s that?”

“He doesn’t think there’s much hope the South will ever win. I guess that’s what I think too.” He thought back over the last battles—at Gettysburg, at Chattanooga, where the South had suffered tremendous loss of life. “Can’t go on forever,” he said quietly. “Sooner or later it’ll have to be over. If the North loses fifty thousand men, Lincoln just issues a call, and then there are fifty thousand more. But when the South loses fifty thousand men, the ranks just get that much thinner. Only one end to that.”

“I suppose you’ll be very sad if that happens.”

Tom closed his eyes. “I don’t know, Sarah. I would have at one time. But now, I just don’t know.” He changed the subject again. “Jeff’s all right. He misses this place. Leah especially.”

They talked until finally Sarah drifted off to sleep. Tom sat beside her for a long time. He had loved this girl for almost as long as he could remember. Now, looking at her still face, somewhat flushed with fever, he thought,
There never was a finer girl—not in the whole world! She deserves better than a cripple
.

He glanced down at his pinned-up trouser leg, and his lips drew thin. As quietly as he could, he picked up his crutches, put them under his arms, and swung himself to the door. He let himself out carefully, shut the door, and went downstairs.

There he met Mrs. Carter, who stepped out of the parlor and asked him, “How is she, Tom?”

“I don’t know,” Tom confessed. He balanced himself on one foot with the crutches under his arms. His brow furrowed. “What’ll happen next? I was so young when I had smallpox …”

“We’ll hope that she’ll just begin to break out. Sometimes it goes bad, and people’s fever goes so high they just can’t tolerate it.”

“You mean—she might die?”

Thoughtfully, Mrs. Carter gazed into Tom’s face. Tom Majors had been in and out of her house all his life. Though he was grown now, she still saw traces of the small boy she had known. She saw that the war had worn him down, and the loss of his leg had made him sober. The cheerful good nature she had known was gone.

“Death is close to all of us, Tom,” she said finally, “Closer than we know. It’s not just in battles. You saw enough of that, but none of us know what will take us away. All we can do is trust.”

Tom stared at her, then nodded briefly.

As he thumped away down the hall, Mary Carter thought, He’s grieving more than I thought was possible. I believe that Sarah’s sickness has hit him as hard as losing his foot
.

She turned back into the parlor, glancing up at the tintypes on the wall—pictures of all the Carters and several pictures of the Majors family as well. She thought about old times before the war, when life had been so easy, and grief came over her. Her lips tightened, and she began cleaning the house with unnecessary vigor.

L
eah looked up to see Pete Mangus coming down the road. As always, her heart beat a little faster when the mail came—which was not often. She thought,
Oh, I hope I get a letter from Jeff!
and held her breath to see if Pete would stop his Clementine at their gate.

When he did, her heart leaped. She jumped off the porch and ran out to meet him. “Hello, Pete. Do you have a letter for us?”

Pete Mangus grinned toothlessly at her. “You sure do look pretty, Leah,” he said, sounding as if he had a mouth full of mush. He took in her light green dress, rather old and faded but still looking nice. “You’re sure growing up to be a pretty young lady. Wouldn’t be surprised to get a wedding invitation from you one of these days.”

Leah was accustomed to Pete’s teasing and knew that he had to go through a certain amount of that before he delivered his mail. She endured it as patiently as she could, then finally interrupted. “Pete,
do
you have a letter for us?”

“Why, sure I do. Why else would I stop here?” the mailman demanded with surprise. He reached into his canvas bag, rummaged around, then brought out an envelope.

Holding it at arm’s length, he squinted at the writing. “Yep, that’s your letter, all right.” He grinned at her and winked. “You’re Miss Leah
Carter, I take it. Well, that’s who this letter’s addressed to.”

Leah reached for it, her eyes shining, but he pulled it back, holding it away from her grasp. “Let’s see—can’t tell exactly who wrote this letter, but the handwriting looks familiar. Let me see now—”