Homeland (7 page)

That was yesterday. Julia and I didn’t have a nickel between us when we arrived, but Charley Johnson was kind enough to drive us out to Bayberry Run.

Pa still isn’t back from Richmond (not that he’s written us, or anything like that) and most of the darkies have run off, and I can’t blame them. The militia is still camped around the barn, but about thirty of them have now moved into our house. Regal wasn’t here to order out the ones camped in our bedroom. Captain McCorkle
(he wears spectacles and has an Adam’s apple the size of a lime) got them to move finally, but the whole bedroom stinks—tobacco-spit, cigars, and plain dirtiness, a smell worse than any animal—and the bed and blankets are crawling with bedbugs and lice. So is the chair—I tried sleeping in that. The window is broken, so we needed to wrap up in the one remaining blanket, and we wouldn’t have had
that
if Captain McCorkle hadn’t been standing right there when the men got out of the room. We hugged each other to keep warm, and Julia wept all night (in between both of us scratching). She has been begging me for the last half-hour while I’m writing this to go downstairs and get Mammy Iris to come up with hot water to wash, and milk for her, and to have Cook boil up water to wash all the bedding.

Does she really think any of those women is still on the place?

Mammy Iris, Den, and a few others are still here!!! Cook ran off last week, after some of the men raped her and her daughter. Mammy looks at me like she hates me, Mammy who raised us all! The awful thing is I don’t blame her.

It’s almost too dark to write. I can hear the men downstairs, rough voices and things breaking. I don’t really think they’d do anything to me with Captain McC in the house, but going out to use the out-house is truly terrifying. Julia and I pushed the bed up against the door.

Hunted the house top to bottom, for anything that can be sold. Hard to do that, with the men hanging around, chewing and smoking and playing cards. Pa had a couple of trunks full of Confederate bonds in the attic, but that’s now a kind of dormitory. I didn’t even dare go up there. Anyway, Captain McC says there’s nothing left of value up there now.

Got Captain McC to lend me “a couple of the boys” to ride into Greeneville, to see if there’s a doctor there, and to see if anyone knows anything about the bank. Of course Regal’s still gone, and there’s no word from Pa. On the way into town, the Corporal in charge of my bodyguard scolded me about being brought to the plantation by Charley Johnson, a traitor from a family of traitors who all deserve hanging. “I hear tell you been sparkin’ some Lincolnite hill-billy yourself,” and gave me a look that made me think,
I’m out in the middle of the woods with four men I’ve never met before in my life
. I told the Corporal that I didn’t think gentlemen discussed ladies behind their backs, and he snapped back, “They don’t. But soldiers fighting to defend their country from invaders got the right to discuss if a she-traitor is likely to stab them from behind.”

The bank in town was shuttered tight, and nobody knew anything about a doctor. Under pretext of looking for one, I got away from my bodyguard for an hour, and sneaked to the Johnson house, which is horribly broken-down now, with awful things written on it. Mrs. Johnson was thinner even than she was last spring, tho’ she claims (to me) to be malingering so the local Confederate troops won’t confiscate the house. I guess an Oath of Loyalty doesn’t count if everybody “knows” you’re a traitor in your heart. She asked very kindly after you, and offered Julia and myself sanctuary. I was hard
put to find a way to say,
Oh, no, thank you, we couldn’t inconvenience you
(as one is supposed to at least once for good manners) that wouldn’t jeopardize the offer. She laughed at my expression and said we’d be doing her a favor, because the Confederacy would think twice about turning out the daughters of the most prominent Secesh in the county.

Well, I might just as well have saved myself the trouble of being polite. Because of course, Julia won’t hear of it! She clung to the bedpost like she believed I’d drag her bodily out of the room, and said she refuses to have anything to do with a Yankee-loving traitor and her drunkard son (preferring I suppose the sober paragons of gentility in the next bedroom). “This is my home, Susie! This is
our
home! Does that mean nothing to you?”

This sounds terrible to say, but no, it doesn’t. I try to joke about it, but I feel like I’m in a nightmare. I can’t desert her—I could never face Pa, or Tom, or Emory, or myself in the mirror, if anything happened to Julia or her baby … But, Cora, I’m so scared I don’t know what to do.

If you get this—when you get this—you’ll know that everything turned out all right. But right now, tonight, it’s dark, and I hear the men getting drunk again.

Lincolnites attacked our home last night. They set fire to the tobacco-barn and the militia camp. I saw one man shot off his horse and dragged away screaming at a gallop with his foot caught in the stirrup-leather. I didn’t see more because a bullet smashed the window beside me, and Julia went into hysterics. The men burst into the room, cursing us because we’d dragged the bed in front of the door again before going to sleep, and broke out the rest of the window
to shoot at the riders down below. One of them yelled “Shut that bitch up!” and Julia screamed again, and I thought,
Oh, my God, she’s going into labor!
But she wouldn’t let go of me to let me look for a candle, and away from the firelight at the window it was too dark to see anything, and she kept screaming, “Don’t leave me! Don’t leave me!” It was Bedlam, Cora!

Even when the men ran out, and the barn-fire died down, she wouldn’t let me go. It sounds gruesome, but I felt around her in the bed, and there didn’t seem to be any blood. The shooting got less outside, and she finally fell asleep. I couldn’t find the candle, and wasn’t about to go out of the room, so I went to the shattered window. Standing there on the shards of glass, I saw the remains of our barn and the soldiers’ encampment, glowing red-gold against the black night and the black trees. I guess that’s what the Greek camp outside Troy looked like when Hector drove the Greeks back to their ships. Only when first light came and I could see Julia hadn’t miscarried, could I breathe again. Outside, by the cut-off tree-stumps, six corpses were lined up on the ground.

I got dressed, and went downstairs and told Captain McCorkle in my most commanding tone that Julia and I would need an Army wagon, to take us into Eliza Johnson’s in town.

And that’s where we are, Cora. I don’t know how long we’ll be able to stay here, or what Pa will do with us when he gets back from Richmond, but at least we’re safe and we’ve both
finally
had baths. I wasn’t about to get undressed back at Bayberry even if we
could
have gotten water heated. By the time you get this, goodness knows where we’ll be. Mrs. Johnson tells me that Nathan Forrest managed to get his men away from the Federals, and as of two days ago was holding Nashville. But nobody really knows what’s happening.

I’m going to try to write to Dr. Elliott at the Academy, and to Mr. Cameron. I have no idea where Henriette is with her family and the children. I know they have family in Missouri, but what’s going on there sounds even more frightening than what we’ve been through
this week! I feel as if Julia and I have been washed overboard in some huge tempest, and are out in the middle of the ocean, clinging onto a plank. But right for now, we
do
have that plank, and from here at least there are people who can get letters across into Kentucky, and mail them to you. I keep your letters near me and re-read your last letter, and it’s like looking through a window. Just because the room I’m in is pitch dark doesn’t mean the sun has been snuffed out. I truly wish I was with you in your room with Peggie and Ollie, huddled under the covers listening to you read
A Christmas Carol—ox
that I could go to one of those Daughters of the Union meetings and pull your friend Elinor’s hair for you!

My Dear Friend,

A letter from you—though of course it contains not one word of where you are now!

Weeks before I came around the corner of the station house to find you in Justin Poole’s arms, I was aware of his love for you. Yet I had heard the dreadful stories of him, not from gossip or rumor, but from his own son, whom he neglected and suffered to grow up like a Red Indian in the woods. I know not what to say or advise. I trust your good sense, dearest Susie, yet I know how love intoxicates.
It surely was never possible for me to think clearly, when I was in Emory’s arms.

Only remember that you do not have to decide anything now. You have no power over what will befall Justin, before you meet him again, nor over what will befall you. Use wisely the time that God has taken pains to interpose between you. Thus my advice is: to prepare yourself for the art academy in Philadelphia, when the opportunity shall present itself for you to go there. Such action will preclude no further decision—and the reverse cannot be said.

And please forgive me if I sound coarse, or prudish, or as if I mistrust your virtue—but if this man should by any chance return before the War’s end, I beg of you, remember how easily a woman’s freedom can be lost! Much as I adore my Darling-Who-Is-To-Be-Born, I know that, whatever happens to Emory in this war, I must now take Her into account, in what I myself can choose to do, henceforth and forever.

I should not say this. I should say instead, “All my hunger for a life of learning vanished like the dew when first I guessed I would be a mother.” But it hasn’t. Sometimes I feel that I have been cheated, tricked, led into a trap—a trap whose barbs are forged out of love, so that escaping would bring more pain than remaining in its meshes.

Is this, then, what it is to be educated, to be trained like athletes for a race we will never be allowed to run? Beware of your heart, Susie!

There! I have said what I think! It is snowing still, and the wind and the cold and the darkness in this house render me prey to morbid reflection.

It would help if I could believe spring would come soon. When I was at school, if there were no milk and no fresh vegetables—and we girls had been living on salt meat and salt fish and bread and
corn mush for close to a month with no end in sight—at least we didn’t have to go down to the cellar and see how low the supplies were getting. Such things could be readily bought. The Reach that separates Deer Isle from the mainland is frozen solid, the roads on the island impassable. There has been much sickness hereabouts, and many children have died. Few of Mother’s friends can visit. I feel more isolated than ever.

Yet before dawn this morning, crossing to the barn in a luminous world of silence and starlight, I saw a fox making his way over deep snow smooth and white as marble, homeward bound to his den in the woods. God’s creation, and innocent of human malice.

You will rejoice to hear that I have at last made the acquaintance of your friend Quasimodo the Hunchback, and Esmeralda the Gypsy, and all the others in that astonishing tale. They have helped me through many an endless night. Mother is right, when she says that in reading the Bible, one touches God’s hand, and so cannot ever be lonely or afraid. But sometimes one needs to touch the hands of one’s fellow humans. Since reading Mr. Dickens, and Miss Austen—and, I blush to report, Mrs. Radcliffe—now you know the depth of my depravity!—I have realized this about novels: they are like conversations, or acquaintanceships, that change us deeply by widening our experience. They are like
friends
. Naturally my father would warn me against unwholesome conversations, or against the sort of fascinating friends who would lead one into foolish acts by making them seem right and justified. Yet, to limit one’s friendships to the narrowest of like-minded circles is to become provincial, perhaps self-righteous … like too many people on this island!

I will send this to Mrs. Johnson in the hopes that she will know where to send it on to you. But, as I read that her husband was so vociferous in his demands for the invasion of Tennessee, I fear that some retaliation may force her from her home.

I pray that it finds you safe.

Dear Cora,

Charley Johnson brought news that the Federal Army entered Nashville yesterday. What this will mean I haven’t the least idea. Nor does anyone, really. Because the railroad doesn’t run straight from Nashville to the eastern counties, the Federals can’t push through to liberate us without taking Chattanooga first, and of course it’s massively defended.

Regal (finally!) came here Saturday, with the regular CSA Commander from Knoxville, your compatriot, of all things, from Maine. Regal ordered Julia and me back to Bayberry. Since Bayberry gets raided once or twice a month by the Lincolnites and since the only Secesh boarding-house in Greeneville charges five dollars a week, it was eventually agreed that we two women would continue under “that skunk traitor Johnson’s” unhallowed roof (only Regal didn’t say
skunk)
.

So here we are. For how long, no one knows. The rumor is that Senator Johnson will be named Military Governor of Tennessee, and I know it’s only a matter of time before the Confederate States of America sequesters the house. Julia’s baby is due in a few weeks. I asked Dolly (you remember Mrs. J’s Dolly?) to tell me exactly what happens when a baby comes: what it looks like, what has to be done, what can go wrong, in case Julia should go into labor when there’s nobody but me around. You’d have thought I’d asked her how to carve up and stew Baby Tommy (or Baby Aurora Victoria) (!) when little he-or-she arrives. It “wasn’t fittin’” that a young girl (meaning a virgin, I guess) should know things like that.