Fire by Night (26 page)

“No. Leave me alone.” He pried her hands off and wheeled around, striding back up the road the way they had come.

“What did she call you?” Phoebe asked when she caught up with him. “A
cartoon
?”

“I don’t know what she was babbling on about.”

Phoebe decided to let it go. She was feeling confused and shaken herself. Now that she had seen the way the slaves lived, she no longer felt sorry for the plantation owner or for the destruction of his beautiful property. It had all been accomplished at the slaves’ expense. And from the looks of it, they had never enjoyed the fruit of all their hard labor.

“I treat my animals back home better than this,” she said aloud. She stopped walking suddenly, pulling Ted to a halt beside her. “You know what? That’s why we’re fighting—it’s for those poor, sorry souls back there. It’s not for General McClellan or all them other bigwigs in Washington. It’s for the slaves. So they don’t have to live like that no more.”

Ted simply nodded, gazing blindly into the distance.

As they set up their pup tent in one of the fields, Ted was quieter than Phoebe had ever seen him. She worried that she’d said something wrong to make him mad at her. They built a campfire from pine branches to finish drying out their clothes and to help keep some of the mosquitoes away, then started fixing their dinner rations. Phoebe waited for Ted to sit beside her and eat, like he always did, but when she looked around there was no sign of him.

He finally returned empty-handed after dark. He never said a word about where he’d gone or why he hadn’t eaten with her, and Phoebe was afraid to ask. If he was mad at her, she might make things worse.

“Hope it don’t rain tomorrow,” she said. “Maybe we can finally get dried out.”

Ted simply nodded and crawled inside their pup tent for the night. She joined him a few minutes later, but she lay awake for a long time, listening to a chorus of frogs celebrating springtime in a pond close by and thinking of home. Ted tossed restlessly beside her.

“You all right?” she finally asked.

He exhaled. “No. There’s something I need to tell you.” He propped himself up on one elbow, facing Phoebe, his voice just above a whisper. “I’ve never told this to a living soul before, but you’re my friend and I want to tell you. Promise you won’t tell anybody else?”

“Sure. I can keep a secret.” She waited, unable to imagine what he might say. The moon was out, and as she lay on her side facing him, she could clearly see his boyish features. His brow was furrowed and his brown eyes looked very dark.

“I have a grandmother who lives here in the South somewhere,” he said. “She’s a slave.”

Phoebe couldn’t stop her mouth from dropping open. “You mean she …she’s…”

“A Negro. Yes.”

Phoebe had no idea what to say. She had always assumed that Ted’s dusky skin was brown from the sun, but she realized suddenly that Ted wasn’t a farm boy. He worked inside his uncle’s factory all day. And even during all those winter months they’d spent inWash- ington City, Ted’s suntan had never faded. He had the full lips that so many of the Negro contrabands had and thick, curly brown hair. Still, she never would have guessed he was part Negro.

“The plantation’s white overseer forced himself on my grandmother,” Ted continued. “She had a baby girl—my mother. Ma is a mulatto. She looks mostly white, though. My grandmother found out about some Quaker folks, abolitionists, who offered to smuggle my mother up north, into Pennsylvania. My ma left when she was five years old, pretending to be their white daughter. She remembers being a slave and living in a place like this. But she grew up as a white woman and married my father.”

“Did your father know that she—?”

“Yeah, he knew. He didn’t care.” Ted rolled onto his back again, staring up at the canvas roof. “What that old slave woman called me today …a quadroon …that’s what I am, Ike. It means I’ve got three white grandparents and one Negro one.”

Phoebe rolled over onto her back, too, still unsure what to say. “Why are you telling me this?” she finally asked.

“I’ve always been too ashamed to let anyone know. Ma warned us never to tell a soul because a lot of people won’t give you the time of day if they know you’re partly Negro. Ma said no matter what, don’t ever let on that you’ve got African blood in you.”

“Makes no difference to me if you’re an African or an Indian or an Irishman.”

“Thanks, Ike,” he said softly. “That means a lot. … You know, my mother used to tell stories about how horrible her life as a slave was, and today I saw the truth for myself. That’s no way to treat people. Did you see that big fancy house? Did you see how those rich white folks were living up there, high on the hog, while those slaves…? That cow barn is nicer than their huts. They shouldn’t be treated like animals!” He paused, exhaling angrily. “That old woman? She could be my grandmother, Ike. I’ll bet I have aunts and uncles and cousins who are forced to live just like this. … Slaves are
people
! Human beings. We share the same blood.”

Even though she knew the truth, Phoebe still had a hard time thinking of Ted as kin to those poor souls on Slave Row or the raggedy dock workers they’d seen. He was so smart and handsome and well educated. She’d seen the town in Pennsylvania where he lived, and it was worlds away from this place.

And that must have been his grandmother’s dream, she realized—to see her daughter and grandchildren set free from this life, free to live in a mansion like the master’s. But what a hard decision it must have been to give her child away to strangers, knowing she would never see her again. Phoebe wondered what it would be like to be loved so much by someone that they would make such a sacrifice for you. She was quite certain that she would never know.

“Say something, Ike. What are you thinking?” Ted asked.

“Your grandmother must have loved your ma an awful lot to let her go like that, so she could have a better life.”

“I suppose so. I never thought about it that way.” Ted drew a deep breath, then exhaled. “When we win this war, I’m going to find that plantation. I’m going to see if I can find my grandmother and bring her home to live with us.”

“Sounds like a good plan. Do you know where it’s at?”

He didn’t answer. Instead, he said in a low, calm voice, “We nearly drowned in that river today. If we had, we would have died for nothing. Now I’m not afraid to go into battle anymore, Ike, or to die if I have to. You were right in what you said this afternoon— I know why I’m in this war now. It’s for slaves like my grandmother. So they can be free. If I have to fight in order to win their freedom …well …I’m not afraid to do that anymore.”

Ted’s words made Phoebe afraid. What if his sympathy for the slaves made him reckless and he started taking stupid chances? He could get himself killed.

“Listen, Ted—”

“Do you remember that outdoor church service we went to back in Washington?” he asked, interrupting. “Do you remember what the chaplain preached about?”

Phoebe had been too nervous to hear a word. The only thing she remembered was talking to the young preacher who’d given her a Bible. “Um …not really,” she said. “That was a while ago.”

“He read a Bible verse that said there’s no difference between slaves and free men, that we are all one in the Lord’s eyes. We ought to be the same in each other’s eyes, too. There should be no such thing as slavery. You’re right—we’re not fighting this war for General McClellan. We’re not giving up our homes and our families to follow him. We’re fighting the Lord’s battles. And if I’m going to give up everything I want in this life, I’m glad it’s for that.”

Phoebe lay awake for a long time, thinking about Ted’s words. The next morning she saw where most of his rations were going. Ted took his food down to Slave Row and shared it with the old woman and the little children she tended. “We’re going to win your freedom,” he promised her. “You’ll see.”

Phoebe left him there and went for a walk in the woods alone, following a well-worn path strewn with pine needles. The lush green forest, fragrant with the scent of mulch and pine and alive with the busy rattle of insects, reminded her of home. She crossed a small creek and came to a pond where frogs and turtles sunned themselves on the grassy banks. Even the trees were the same as home—sassafras, white oak, red cedar.

She followed the path to where it ended in a small clearing in a pine grove. Tree trunks soared above her like pillars; the warm, humid air seemed hushed and reverent. But in the deep stillness that surrounded Phoebe, she suddenly felt as though she wasn’t alone, as though someone were whispering to her in the wind. She sat down on a log and took out her little Bible, turning through the waterwrinkled pages to the story the preacher had marked for her. She had already read it over and over, countless times, memorizing the story of the little man whose name she couldn’t pronounce, the outcast who had climbed a tree to see Jesus. But she read it through once again.

This time, Phoebe remembered how the bridge beneath her feet had suddenly collapsed and how she had sunk beneath the swirling water and had nearly been swept away. Then, when she’d been certain she was lost, she’d cried out to God, and a hand had reached out for her, pulling her to safety.

She read the last line of the outcast’s story again, wishing she understood what it really meant:
“For the Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which was lost.”

Chapter Twelve

White House Landing, Virginia
June 1862

Julia lay in her berth aboard the passenger steamer
Potomac Queen,
listening to the steady thump of the paddlewheel as the ship chugged south, rising and falling on the swells. She tried to prepare herself for what lay ahead. Dr. McGrath had insisted she would not be able to cope with the aftermath of a battle, but she was determined to prove him wrong.

Three days ago she had read an article in the morning paper about the battle that had taken place on the Virginia Peninsula near Fair Oaks, not far from the Confederate capital of Richmond. Alongside that article was another one about the U.S. Sanitary Commission’s efforts to outfit four passenger steamers as hospital ships. Volunteer nurses were needed on board to help transport wounded soldiers back to Washington. Julia had immediately gone to the Sanitary Commission’s offices to volunteer.

“I’m a nurse at Fairfield Hospital,” she’d told them, “working under Dr. James McGrath. I read that there’s a need for nurses on your hospital ships, and I’ve come to volunteer.”

“Can Dr. McGrath spare you?” the official asked.

“He’s already down on the Peninsula, working as a field surgeon. Fairfield is virtually empty at the moment. If I served on one of your ships, I could accompany the wounded men back to my hospital.”

“Excuse me for being blunt, but you look very young, Miss—”

“It’s
Mrs
. Hoffman. I’m married.” The lie came so easily to her now that she almost believed it herself. “I know I look young, but the matrons at Fairfield will be very happy to provide references if you’d like.”

“That won’t be necessary. We’re grateful for your help, Mrs. Hoffman. The army has established an evacuation hospital at White House Landing on the Pamunkey River. You can help us load the wounded on board and care for them on the return trip to Washington.”

Julia felt a thrill of victory, as if she’d just won an important battle. She would be where she’d wanted to be at last—near a battlefield like Bull Run. No more linen rooms, no more measles patients, and no more Dr. McGrath. “Thank you so much,” she said.

“No, Mrs. Hoffman—thank you.”

The
Potomac Queen
was a small passenger steamer with tall black smokestacks and a sloshing paddlewheel. Food and medical supplies, donated to the Sanitary Commission by various charitable organizations, had been loaded on board in Washington. If Julia had been at home in Philadelphia living her former life, she and her friends would have likely raised funds, scraped lint, rolled bandages, and collected many of the other items the ship carried. She had done that sort of work in the past, but it hadn’t provided the deep satisfaction she’d felt the night she had comforted Ellis Miller as he lay dying. For that one brief moment, she’d felt as though her life finally mattered.

Julia had already met some of the other nurses on board the
Potomac Queen,
mostly older women with children her own age. She hadn’t made any friends. Also volunteering were four Sisters of Charity, hospitaller nuns from the Mother House in Emmitsburg, Maryland. They seemed mysterious and exotic to Julia with their starched white wimples and winglike headpieces. The nuns and the other nurses had quietly kept to themselves throughout the trip. Julia wondered if they, too, were steeling themselves for what lay ahead.

The journey had been a hot and humid one as the ship steamed down the Potomac River to Chesapeake Bay, then traveled up the winding Pamunkey River to its destination. As they neared White House Landing, Julia emerged from her cabin and stood at the rail beside one of the Sisters of Charity. On shore, the dark blue of countless uniforms came into view, blanketing the ground like a carpet. Row after row of white tents sprouted in the distance, much like the army bases she’d seen all aroundWashington before the Peninsula Campaign had begun. But even before the ship finished docking, the atmosphere in this camp seemed very different from the camps in Washington. No military bands played rousing tunes here; she saw no waving banners and heard none of the soldiers’ usual boisterous shouts—only a vague, mewling sound she couldn’t quite identify.

Then she noticed the stench. Over the past few days she’d grown accustomed to the dank, fishy odor of the muddy river and salty air, but this was the fetid scent of rottenness and decay. It was the stench Dr. McGrath had tested her with on her first day at the hospital, and she recalled how he had laughed when she’d told him she would be prepared for it the next time. She certainly wasn’t. Julia pulled a scented handkerchief from her sleeve and held it to her nose, but it was a feeble gesture. The stench crawled inside her until she could even taste it on her tongue.