Fire by Night (25 page)

“But Ike never misses,” Ted said. “Besides, the Rebels might start shooting first, you know. And they won’t be aiming for the balloon.”

“I fear it’s already too late,” Lowe said, gazing mournfully at the sky. “Surely the general’s out of range by now.”

Phoebe was glad not to be put on the spot. It was one thing to go after a sniper when she was hopping mad, but it was another thing entirely to fire at a balloon with a Union general on board. “Ain’t there any way to steer that thing?” she asked as it grew smaller and smaller against the sky.

“I’m afraid not,” Lowe said. “I only hope the general thinks to pull the valve rope and deflate the balloon.”

As they watched, the globe appeared to sag slightly; it started looking less like a globe every second. Then it gradually sank lower as it sailed into the distance.

“Hey, it looks like it’s coming down,” Ted said, pointing.

“Thank God! General Porter must have opened the valve.” Lowe sank down onto a wooden crate, looking as though he had been punched in the gut. The general’s aide quickly sent a search party to pick up Porter, and everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

“That’s all for today, boys,” Lowe said. “You volunteers may as well return to your camps.”

The excitement over, Phoebe started back across the field to her tent. “Maybe General Porter was tired of marching through all this mud to get to Richmond,” she told Ted. Their shoes were making squishing sounds in the soggy field. “We’ve been crawling along about as fast as caterpillars for weeks. Maybe he decided he’d fly there, instead.”

“Wish we could all fly to Richmond,” Ted grumbled.

By the time they reached camp, groundwater was already seeping into Phoebe’s shoes, soaking her last pair of dry socks. They arrived in time to hear the news that General McClellan had ordered them to march.

As if the weather took its cue from the general, thick, dark storm clouds began moving in from the west as soon as he gave the marching orders. The morning sun quickly disappeared, the sky lowered, and by the time Phoebe’s regiment was packed and ready to leave, it had begun to rain again.

Phoebe pulled her jacket collar up around her neck to keep out the rain. “If God ain’t on the Rebels’ side, the weather sure is,” she said for the hundredth time. She stepped from the field where they’d camped onto the road that headed north—and sank to her ankles into thick Virginia mud.

“I’ve been drenched for so long,” Ted said, “I forget what it feels like to be dry. My toes are as wrinkled as an old man’s.”

Phoebe’s regiment hadn’t seen combat since that terrible afternoon in Williamsburg, more than three weeks ago. Neither she nor Ted ever mentioned that day again, nor the paralyzing fear they’d both felt that night. But Phoebe knew they were in for another fight, just like it or worse, in the days ahead. They’d heard reports of skirmishes, and some of the men in the forward ranks who had crossed the Chickahominy River said they were close enough to Richmond to hear the church bells ringing. Phoebe found herself wishing for the long, boring days they’d spent back in Washington, before any of them knew what they were in for. At least then, fear hadn’t writhed through her stomach like a snake at the thought of facing that screaming gray line of Rebels again.

As the army continued its slow crawl toward Richmond, the mosquitoes were as thick as fog in the swampy woods. Hundreds of men had already fallen sick with malaria and fevers, and Phoebe worried every day that she would join them. With most of the roads flooded and the surrounding forests too thick with vegetation to pass through, army engineers had to construct miles and miles of corduroy roads to keep the cannons, artillery, and wagon trains of supplies moving. Phoebe and Ted took their turn at road-building— chopping down trees, driving wooden pilings into the sodden ground, attaching a raft of logs to the pilings, then covering the finished roadbed with a layer of mud to smooth it.

The heavy spring rains left every creek, river, and stream flooded well beyond its banks. The Rebels had destroyed all the bridges as they’d withdrawn to Richmond, and the larger, swiftly moving rivers were nearly impossible to ford. Progress halted as work crews labored with engineers to construct new bridges, many of which looked like they just might wash away before everyone was across.

On that wet, dreary afternoon, Phoebe’s regiment came to one such bridge spanning a flooded river. As she waited for her turn to cross, she could see the rickety span swaying beneath hundreds of marching feet. The swirling water was so high it sloshed over the roadbed as it rushed past with a roar, piling debris against the sagging logs.

“Do you think that bridge is going to hold?” Ted asked. “I can’t swim.”

“If you fall into that river, you won’t have to worry about swimming,” she told him. “You’ll be washed away so fast you’ll be back at Fortress Monroe before we even hear you holler for help.”

“Thanks a lot. I feel much better now.”

The sky opened up in a downpour as Phoebe’s turn came. She could feel the river tugging at the slippery logs beneath her feet as she started across. She knew she had to watch her step, but the swaying motion and swirling water gave her a queasy feeling whenever she looked down. She kept her eye on Ted instead, who was marching right in front of her.

When they were about five feet from the opposite shore, Phoebe heard a shout, and suddenly she felt the bridge being jerked out from beneath her like a carpet. She lunged toward the riverbank, propelling Ted with her, both of them straining to grab hold of anything they could reach to keep from being washed away. But her hands found nothing to grasp, and she felt the angry river tugging her down, pulling her underwater.

The shock of the icy water forced all the breath from her lungs, and for a terrible moment she couldn’t think what to do. The river roared in her ears as she sank beneath the surface. The heavy knapsack and rifle she carried were trying to tug her backward, weighing her down, holding her underwater. She kicked and struggled with every ounce of strength she had, fighting against the extra weight and the river’s current, desperate to save herself.

God, help me!
she prayed.

At last her head surfaced and she gulped air. She saw hands reaching for her, and she stretched her own out toward them. A moment later, Phoebe felt strong arms grabbing her, pulling her free from the water’s grip, hauling her onto the muddy riverbank. They dragged Ted ashore beside her, coughing muddy water from his lungs. They sat together, shivering in the spring air, watching as others were pulled to safety—and as others not as fortunate washed downstream with the remnants of the bridge.

Someone built a fire. Both survivors and rescuers huddled near it, sipping whiskey-laced coffee, trying to warm themselves and dry out. Phoebe wrung water from her bedding and from the extra clothing in her knapsack with trembling hands. She hoped the others wouldn’t notice the tears in her eyes, or if they did, they would think the smoky fire caused them.

She had nearly died. So had Ted. She wished now that she hadn’t joked about him not being able to swim. He sat huddled beside her, shivering. She wanted to say something, to apologize, but she couldn’t make her stiff, shuddering jaws form words.

When everyone had dried out enough to stop shaking, they shouldered their sodden packs and marched on, through woods that were wet and gloomy and jungle-thick. But Phoebe couldn’t stop thinking about the cold, dark river that had grabbed her and held her in its grasp, trying to swallow her alive. She had cried out to God for help, and He had saved her. She’d never asked God for anything before, but after reading her little Bible all these weeks, she had done it without thinking. God had saved her. She was alive. And so was Ted.

Late in the afternoon, the rain finally stopped. Phoebe’s regiment emerged from the woods and began passing croplands, fenced fields, and the carefully tended grounds of a plantation. When they reached a narrow, tree-lined lane that led to the manor house, Colonel Drake ordered them to leave the main road and proceed toward it, their weapons loaded and ready to fire.

The white two-story home sat on a small rise, shaded by oak and chestnut trees and surrounded by lush, fenced fields and orchards. There was a quiet dignity and stillness about the plantation that made the soldiers hush their voices as they approached, as if they’d come upon a queen seated on her throne.

“If this ain’t the most beautiful farm I ever seen,” Phoebe murmured.

The front door of the plantation house opened, and a middleaged man emerged, unarmed, to stand on the portico between its stately pillars. Phoebe thought that President Lincoln himself, standing on the White House steps, couldn’t look more noble and proud than this man did. He calmly watched as Colonel Drake and his aides approached.

“I’ll thank you to stop right there,” the man said when they were within a few yards. “I am William Fletcher, owner of Hilltop Plantation, and you, sir, are trespassing on private property.”

Colonel Drake halted at the bottom of the steps. “If you’re willing to swear allegiance to the United States of America, Mr. Fletcher, then we’ll leave you and your property alone.”

“I owe allegiance only to God and to the sovereign state of Virginia,” Fletcher replied.

Drake’s men moved swiftly then, taking the plantation owner prisoner and confiscating his house for the officers to use as their headquarters. Phoebe and the rest of her regiment were ordered to spread out and search the grounds for any armed resisters before finding a place to make camp for the night.

Phoebe set off to explore the plantation. She was too intrigued by the serene beauty of Hilltop to feel threatened by any lingering Rebels. She and Ted followed the driveway around to the rear of the house, where there was a carefully swept yard and several outbuildings. In one of them, the kitchen, a dozen slaves sat huddled in their quarters upstairs, too frightened to come out. The soldiers let them be.

Phoebe walked the well-tended grounds, passing a weaving shed and a smokehouse, a grove of pear and apple trees, a fenced vegetable garden. She couldn’t help thinking of her own family’s struggling farm. How many years, how much backbreaking labor had it taken to create a plantation this beautiful, to clear a hundred acres of farmland like this, rid it of weeds, and build such fine fences? She couldn’t even imagine.

Beyond the cultivated areas, the dense, green woodlands began. They reminded her of the forests back home, and she longed to shed her pack, her rifle, and her shoes and go exploring, alone.

She and Ted walked back down to the bottom of the hill where there was a weathered wooden barn, a windowless tobacco shed, a corncrib, and a blacksmith shop. Phoebe knew that any remaining feed in that corncrib would soon be used to fatten Yankee horses. Across the road, in a nearby field, the other members of her regiment were already setting up camp, trampling the newly cultivated wheat underfoot, pulling down fence rails to build campfires. She ran across the road, yelling at her fellow soldiers to stop.

“What’s the problem, Bigelow?” Sergeant Anderson asked when he heard the commotion.

“Please, sir, tell them to show a little respect for this property. It takes years to build fences like these, and if we destroy them all, then the cattle’s going to roam wild, and—”

“Calm down, son. The army gave clear instructions that the men are to take only the top rail.”

She thought about that for a moment, then shook her head. “But every rail is the top one once the rail above it’s taken down. Pretty soon the whole fence will be gone.”

Anderson laughed. “You’re pretty smart to figure that out, Bigelow.”

Phoebe couldn’t bear to watch the destruction. She turned around and walked the other way, following a well-worn road beyond the barn. Ted hurried to catch up with her.

“Hey, come on, Ike. Don’t take it so hard. The owner’s a Confederate. He deserves what he gets for rebelling against his country. Let’s—”

Phoebe and Ted both stopped short when they came upon the twin rows of tumbledown shacks, hidden from the manor house by a clump of trees. She would have thought the ramshackle cabins unfit to live in if she hadn’t seen with her own eyes that they were inhabited by the plantation’s field slaves. A handful of her fellow soldiers, who had arrived first, were trying to coax the frightened souls out of their cabins.

“It’s okay. You can come on out. I don’t know what your master told you about us Yankees, but we aren’t going to hurt you. We’re your friends. We’ve come to set you free.”

Little by little, more than fifty slaves ventured out, cautiously greeting the Yankees, accepting a few treats the soldiers offered as tokens of friendship.

“It true what you saying?” a ragged-looking Negro man asked. “We free now?”

“Yes, you’re considered spoils of war. You belong to the victors— that’s us.”

“You mean we can leave Hilltop?” a woman asked. “And Massa Fletcher can’t come after us and whip us for escaping?”

“Yes, you’re free to leave.”

“Where are they gonna go, Ted?” Phoebe whispered. “You know how many of them we’ve seen already in Washington and working on the docks. How are these folks gonna live? Where will they find food to eat?”

“Any life is better than staying here and being slaves,” Ted replied.

Phoebe peered into one of the empty cabins, and what she saw made her simple cabin back home seem like a palace. The dirt floor was nearly bare of furnishings, flies buzzed around the few scraps of food near the hearth, and the unchinked logs would keep out neither wind nor rain. She didn’t want to believe that people had been forced to live this way.

Once the slaves got over their fear, they began to laugh and cheer, dancing for joy in the littered road as they welcomed their saviors. One old Negro woman with small children clinging to her skirts hobbled around, hugging all the soldiers one by one and saying, “God bless you. God bless you, son.”

She took Ted into her arms for a hug, but when she drew back again and looked up at him, she broke into a wide smile, as if she recognized him. “Why, you’re a quadroon, ain’t you, boy? Or an octoroon?”