Leigh Ann's Civil War (12 page)

Camille got him in the back parlor and kissed him and whispered him out of it.

He and Primus spent an afternoon talking in the barn.

In the end, he didn't go, but he spent a lot of time alone. One cold night we couldn't find him, so I went out looking for him with Teddy. There he was, down by the stream.

He had built a small fire. Four long logs jutted out on each side and in the middle of these were smaller pieces of wood. Cooking in the center were pieces of venison. A great deal of smoke curled up overhead.

His only clothing was a leather breechclout to cover his private parts. His legs, folded under him, were bare, as was his chest. Around his neck he wore a large silver medallion. He huddled in an old gray blanket. His hair was wet, as if he had just come out of the stream. He was moving his lips, praying.

And on his shoulder was a hooty owl. It stared at us out of yellow-green eyes. But it never moved.

I became frightened and moved closer to Teddy, who put a protective arm around my shoulder and said, "Don't be afraid."

But I was. This was my beloved Louis, my darling brother, whom I looked up to so. Had he gone mad? I looked up at Teddy.

"Eh, Louis," he said, "you going to include us in your prayers?"

Louis nodded yes. He had heard.

"Look at that," Teddy told me. "There's wind around us. But none around him."

It was true. The bitter February wind that whipped around us stopped in the line bounding Louis. My mouth fell open. Teddy grinned down at me.

"Damn, that venison smells good," he said.

That Teddy was taking this all so lightly made me feel better.

"Is he going to stay here all night?" I asked.

"He better not. Or I'll have Primus fetch him in. Well, good night now, brother. I've got to get to the mill. Can I trust you to tell the Indian powers good night and come in soon to see to the safety of our women?"

Louis looked at us placidly, first at Teddy, then at me. "Go in peace," he said. It was in his regular Louis voice.

We turned and left. I felt a sense of peace come over me, as if everything was going to be all right and I would never have to worry again.

***

The elderly lady I was assigned to by Louis, Mrs. Stapleton, lived alone with a sixteen-year-old grandson. But I never met him. Yet for the first three Saturdays, when I was writing letters to her sister in England, stirring the soup her negro servant had made, and having lunch with her, all she did was talk about him.

It was James this and it was James that.

"I raised him since he was a knee-baby."

And, "He looks just like his father."

And, "His father was killed in a terrible fight in Dranesville, Virginia, on the twentieth of December. Right before Christmas. I haven't been able to get that boy to go to church since."

And, "His mother died when he was a child."

And, "He loves me so, that boy. He couldn't love me more if I were his mother."

Then why,
I wondered,
is he never around?
But I did not ask.

She told me anyway. "He is fading away into nothing. He wanted to join the Roswell Troopers. I had to let him. But they discharged him because he is too young. Now he stays away from home a good deal. I don't know where he goes. Someone told me he goes to the town square to watch the young men drill. But after that, where? I hope he isn't falling in with bad company. Sometimes he doesn't even come home for supper. Oh, I am so worried about him."

She fell silent. We were in her solarium and she was knitting him a muffler. Gray. Then she said to me, "Leigh Ann, I would ask a favor of you, child."

"Yes, ma'am."

"If you would just do this one thing for me. Your brother Louis is the commander of the Roswell Battalion, is he not?"

"Yes, ma'am."

She leaned forward and put a hand on my knee. "Leigh Ann, would you ask him if he would please take my James in his battalion? At least ask him if I may send my James around to see him about it. When he meets James I just know he will take him."

"But, ma'am, I don't understand. You lost your son. Aren't you afraid you'll lose James, too?"

A look of peaceful understanding came over her face. "Oh, child, I've already lost my James. There is more than one way to lose people. If he could go away and fight, at least I know I will find him again. Or at least he'll find himself. And I don't want him to think he has to stay home for an old lady like me."

I hugged her. I told her I would ask Louis. And I did.

***

Louis listened solemnly to me about James Stapleton. We lingered over the supper table one night to talk. And I poured out the story of James.

He understood. I saw it in his face. He understood James's need to go to war. James had an ally in my brother Louis.

"Send him to me, here, tomorrow night at eight," he said.

I sent a note around to Mrs. Stapleton.

***

At eight precisely, James knocked on our front door. Careen let him in. She curtsied to him and showed him in to the library, where Louis waited. I was standing in the doorway of the front parlor where I could get a glimpse of him.

He was tall and thin, but someday he would grow into those shoulders just as my brothers had into theirs, and when he did I wanted to be around.

He had a shock of dark brown hair and a well-shaped, pleasant face, and he stood straight and tall. He nodded graciously at Careen, stopped at seeing me, and bowed, then did something that near broke my heart.

He saluted me, a perfect salute.

I curtsied. And in that brief moment all eternity stopped and I fell in love with this young man.

Louis appeared in the doorway of the library just in time to see this exchange, to see us staring at each other. Just in time to understand what was happening.

"Are you coming in, young man?" he asked.

"Yes, sir." But still James stared at me.

"Is this how you obey orders? Allow yourself to be distracted by a pretty girl?"

James collected himself and went into the library. The door closed behind them.

They were in there a good hour. I stood in the doorway of the front parlor that long. Careen came to me.

"Doan make it so obvious," she told me. "He comes out an' sees you here, he'll know you fancy him from the get-go."

"I don't care," I said. "I've never seen anyone so beautiful. You've been in there. Tell me, what's going on?"

"I just brung them some coffee and cakes. Your brother, he stop talkin' when I come in. You know how they do. But I see he give that young man some rum. Suppose he wanna see how much of a man he be. That James, he come from a good family. That Stapleton family, they go way back. My mama, she know the lady what take care of Mrs. Stapleton."

"I don't care if they're nobody."

"You oughta sit down before you fall down. I gonna get you a cuppa tea."

Careen was my age, but she was physically more mature. She no longer ran around getting into mischief with me. She had a respectable bosom already, at twelve, and had gotten her woman's time of the month. She was now chief housegirl, which meant she answered the doors, showed people in, introduced them to my brothers and Viola, delivered notes and mail, saw to it that visitors' rooms were properly readied, and carried out myriad other responsibilities.

With all this, of course, came the "right" to scold the lot of us on occasion. Lovingly, of course.

She brought me tea and stood over me while I sipped it. "Your brother, he introduce you proper-like," she told me.

"How do you know?"

" 'Cause he be a proper-like gentleman. An' when he call you, you doan run. You come on out slow-like, makin' like you couldn't care a fig's worth."

She was right. After another agonizing fifteen minutes, when the door of that library finally opened and they came out and shook hands, Louis called my name.

I came out of the parlor, slow. Like I couldn't care a fig's worth.

"This is my little sister, Leigh Ann," Louis said. "Leigh Ann, this is James Stapleton, the newest member of the Roswell Battalion."

First, respectfully, I hugged Louis and thanked him. James stepped aside.

Then James bowed. I curtsied. He took my hand and kissed it. "Captain Conners," he asked, "may I have the honor of writing to your sister while I am away at war?"

I saw my brother's face. No expression. "Of course," he said, "but I think you ought to also ask my brother, Teddy. He's really her guardian."

"Yes, sir. I will."

Careen was waiting to open the door. I looked at Louis. He glanced at me speculatively, but I went ahead and did what I wanted to do, anyway.

I stood on tiptoe and kissed James on the cheek. "Good luck," I said.

That's all it was. A good luck kiss. Careen rolled her eyes. James left. The door closed behind him.

Louis said nothing except, "I think you ought to go to bed now."

"It's still early."

"I really think you ought to go to bed. Or else I'm going to have to give you a lecture about how to behave with boys. And I really don't feel like it."

Mr. Roche came to dinner on March ninth, the day of the battle of the Yankee
Monitor
against our
Merrimack,
two ironclad gunboats in Hampton Roads, Virginia.

Teddy had received word of the battle by telegraph, and after dinner he sent Jon down to the telegraph office for the results of the battle.

It was a draw.

I couldn't see why everyone was so worried about two boats, clad in iron, fighting each other. Our armies had taken so many losses lately, all over the place, and we had so many men killed. It looked as if we were losing. My brothers went around grim-faced and sharp-tongued. I stayed out of their way and dared not sass them.

Viola, of course, was in a state of controlled hysteria. The last she'd heard, her Johnnie was with Van Dorn, the commander headed toward Arkansas and Pea Ridge. She'd had no letter yet saying if Johnnie was dead or alive.

Then our brave old Confederate Congress passed a measure saying that authorities should destroy cotton, tobacco, and other property before they fell into enemy hands.

Needless to say, the dinner was a quiet business. Mr. Roche did not even gush over me. And it was concluded quickly, after which Pa, who'd come out of his reverie, and Louis and Teddy went into the library with Mr. Roche. He left soon after.

Louis brought an end to my sentence at the Stapleton house. He didn't want me there, he said, possibly unchaperoned, with James. He would take no buts.

"You haven't got the sense of a guinea hen when it comes to boys, sweetie," he said. He also said that he would personally educate me.

James approached Teddy outside the mill one morning and asked permission to write to me. Teddy came home to glare at me and Louis.

"Who in hell is this boy? He's sixteen? And he wants to write to my sister?"

Louis explained it to him and Teddy gave permission. James left for war with the Roswell Battalion, and we all settled down again. I continued to go and visit Mrs. Staple-ton on my own time, at least once a week. We had become friends, and we compared letters from James. By the beginning of April he wrote me from southeast of Richmond, at Yorktown, where he and fifteen thousand other Confederates were holding the line against the Yankee general McClellan.

Viola finally received a letter from Johnnie. He had been wounded at Pea Ridge and he was in a makeshift hospital in Arkansas. She read the letter to us at the supper table.

My arm is shot up, but I am in fine fettle and am being cared for by some wonderful women. They are giving me a lot of beef tea, which is a heap better than the terrible chemical mixture some of the other fellows are being made to swallow. And I am fortunate, love. My frame is not wasted, nor are my vital energies. We have Yankees here, too. But somehow, it doesn't matter when they are lying half dead in the bed next to you. The man next to me was from Maryland, Richard Hammond Key, grandson of Francis Scott Key, who wrote "The Star-Spangled Banner." He had the same pale face and bloodless lips of all who are about to die. Hoping that he would not, they nursed him around the clock and plied him with good brandy. The third day of all this, he gave me trinkets to send to his family and a special button he had made for me. He begged the nurses to bury him apart from others so his family might find him, and then he quietly slipped away. Oh, love, I will not. I promise you. I will come home to you. Even if it's only as far as Richmond, where they are sending me soon, to a hospital. Pray for me. Your beloved, Johnnie.

Viola wept. She got up and made as if to leave the room. Teddy stopped her, went to her, and gathered her in his arms. Together they walked across the hall to the library, where he closed the door. They both missed supper, but they were back for dessert and Viola was smiling.

When Johnnie was shipped to the hospital in Richmond, Viola would be allowed to go and visit him, he told us, providing she was properly chaperoned.

Cannice would go with her. Careen, well taught by her mother, would do the cooking.

I stared at Teddy, my mouth open. He looked sternly back at me, daring me to say a word. I didn't.

***

We had some food shortages.

We were getting short of salt, coffee, tea, sugar, molasses, and bicarbonate of soda for raising bread. All, of course, because of the Yankee blockade.

I don't know what we would have done without Anne Smith, Camille's mother. Since they not only lived in that spacious farmhouse but farmed, they knew the means of survival.

"The ashes of corncobs have the alkaline needed for raising dough," she told us.

Coffee was thirty dollars a pound. "The seeds of the okra plant, nicely browned, for coffee," she advised. "For tea, use raspberry leaves. If you run out of kerosene, the oil of cotton seed and ground pease, together with the oil of compressed lard, will do. Any more questions?"

"Has Louis asked Camille to marry him yet?" I asked.

"Leigh Ann, that's none of your affair!" Viola gripped my shoulder.