The Last, Long Night (#5 in the Bregdan Chronicles Historical Fiction Romance Series) (37 page)

Carrie watched as emotions played over Georgia’s face but was distracted when May called them into dinner. 

Georgia ate quickly and left the table just as quickly. 

Carrie followed her and watched from the doorway as Georgia threw some belongings into a bag.  “You’re leaving,” she stated.

Georgia glanced up.  “Yep.  It’s time.  I’ve gotten real comfortable being here in this house in a nice, warm bed; but we still got a war going on.  My arm is as good as it’s going to be,” she said, flexing it to almost full extension.  “It’s my place to fight.”

“Is it?” Carrie asked quietly, knowing she couldn’t stop her, but hating the idea of Georgia going back into battle.

“Yes,” Georgia said firmly.  “I made a commitment, and I aim to keep it.  I don’t know what I’ll do when this war is over – whether I’ll choose to live as a man or a woman – but I know what I have to do right now.”

Carrie blinked back the tears in her eyes.  “I’m going to miss you.”

Georgia scowled for a moment as if she wanted to ignore the deep emotion and then sighed heavily and sat on her bed.  “I’m going to miss you, too,” she admitted.  “You.  Janie.  May.”  She had to blink back her own tears.  “I will miss your father, too.  I lost mine so young.  We’ve had some good talks in the last few weeks.”

“You always have a family here,” Carrie said firmly.  “We’ll pray for you every day.”  She reached over and took Georgia’s hand.  “If they give you any leave, you come back here.”

Georgia took several deep breaths, obviously to control her emotions, but met Carrie’s eyes squarely, and nodded.  “You have changed my life, Carrie Cromwell.  Thank you.  I can’t even imagine what things would be like right now if you hadn’t been the one in that hospital ward.”

“You’ve changed mine, too,” Carrie said softly.  “You’ve made me understand how truly hard it is to be a woman in the South, but you’ve also made me more open minded when it comes to the choices people make about their lives.”

“What difference does all that make to you?” Georgia asked, watching her closely.

“This war will end,” Carrie answered.  “When it does, I know I’m going to have to fight to become a doctor, but I’m also more determined than ever to fight for women’s rights.  I have a good friend up North who is already very involved.  It’s time Southern women stepped into the battle.  I intend to be right at the front.”  She squeezed Georgia’s hand tightly.  “Whether you decide to live as a man or a woman, I don’t want the choice to have to be made because you have so few options as a woman.”

Georgia nodded thoughtfully.  “Thank you for teaching me how to read.”

Carrie laughed.  “You’ve been devouring Father’s library.”

“I knew I didn’t have very long.  I wanted to absorb as much as I could while I was here.”  Georgia reached over and picked up the book on her nightstand.  “Please put this back in the library.  I reckon everything I’ve soaked up will stay with me.”

“And you’ll have the rest of your life to learn more,” Carrie said firmly, refusing to even consider that Georgia might not make it through the war. 

“I ain’t saying goodbye to everyone,” Georgia said suddenly.

“But…”

Georgia shook her head firmly.  “I just can’t,” she whispered brokenly, dashing at the tears pooling in her eyes as she looked at Carrie beseechingly.  “I’m going to slip out tonight when everyone is asleep.  Please let me do it my way.  You can tell them goodbye and thank them for me.”

Carrie nodded slowly.  “May will be very sad.”

Georgia smiled through her tears.  “Who would have thought you could become so close to a slave?” she said with wonder.  “I swear that woman has become like a mother to me.  We’ve had such good times reading books and talking about them.”

“You opened up a whole new world for May,” Carrie said tenderly.  “I’m so proud of you.” 

Georgia flushed a bright red, but the pleased look in her eyes spoke volumes. 

Carrie stepped forward to wrap her in a warm embrace.  “Please be safe and come back to us,” she said softly.

Georgia nodded and turned back to her packing.  Carrie slipped back down the stairs to be with her father.

Louisa stepped out onto the porch and breathed in deeply, delighted when her baby kicked.  She grinned when Perry came out to join her.  “I feel certain this baby of ours is a boy.  I can’t imagine a girl kicking this hard.”

“It could be a girl if she has the same spirit as her mama,” Perry said, answering her grin with one just as big.  “It’s a beautiful day.  I’ll do some work on the cotton gin today and work on building a bigger storage building.  This war has to end at some point.  When it does, I aim to be ready to handle the cotton our neighbors will grow.”

He let his gaze sweep over the fields that spread out as far as the eye could see on either side of their house.  “I aim to become one of the largest cotton processors in this area.  I may not have the most land, but I know how to gin the cotton better than just about anyone around here, and having just one leg won’t slow me down.”

Thrilled by the happy look on his face, Louisa gazed up at her handsome husband.  They’d been home for over two months; those two months had worked miracles.  Perry’s battlefield nightmares had almost subsided entirely.  The phantom pain from his missing leg was practically gone, and he had learned how to do every chore with his wooden stump.  During the mild fall months, her sweet husband had winterized their home and built a crib for their first baby.  If she had less confidence than he did about his plans to dominate the cotton market, Louisa certainly did not intend to express them.

“What are you thinking, Mrs. Appleton?” Perry asked suddenly, watching her with narrowed eyes.

Louisa should have known she couldn’t hide her thoughts from Perry’s knowing eyes.  In the last two months, without the pressure of her mother requiring constant care, they had become closer and closer.  “Oh, I’m thinking about what a wonderful fall this has been,” she said lightly.

“Yes, it has,” Perry agreed immediately, “but you’re thinking something else.  How long will you make me pry?”

Louisa sighed.  “I know you can gin cotton better than anyone, but how are our neighbors going to grow cotton without slaves?  It’s quite labor intensive.”

“Your father would be proud of you for knowing about growing cotton,” Perry observed.

That got a laugh out of Louisa.  “He certainly would.  I couldn’t have cared less about what it took to grow tobacco when I was growing up.  I really didn’t care about anything but dances, parties, and shopping,” she admitted as she tried to conjure solid memories of those years.  After more than three years of war, her recollections seemed nothing but a vague mist.  “Those years were like living a different life.”

“They were,” Perry said, bitterness tingeing his voice.  Then he took her hand and gazed down into her eyes.  “That life will never return,” he said matter-of-factly, the bitterness swallowed by practicality, “but cotton will always be a staple of the South.  Plantations will be smaller, and less cotton will be grown, but that will only make it more valuable.  It will take a long time for the South to come back from this war, but we’ll come back. I intend to be a major part of it,” he said firmly, his gaze sweeping across the land.

Louisa’s eyes followed his.  While fields stretched out on either side, the back of their home was sheltered by a grove of woods.  More leaves had fallen during the night and created a deeper carpet of red and gold that she dreamed of her baby playing in soon, joined by siblings in the future.  In her dreams, delightful laughter rolled through the air, and everyone felt safe.

“When will it end?” Louisa asked quietly, knowing Perry could not answer her question. 

“Sherman still occupies Atlanta the last I heard.  He’ll have to go back up through Tennessee to have a way to move his troops.  He may send some of his men through Georgia, but he has to have a steady supply of food and forage to move his large army.  He’ll have to stay close to the railroad.”

“And far away from our little farm,” Louisa said contentedly.  “You and I will stay right here and be happy together until our baby is born.  And then there will be one more of us, which will make us even happier.”  She reached down and patted her swollen belly. 

Perry smiled tenderly and wrapped her in his arms to protect her and his baby from the morning chill.

The last two months had been busy, but rows of stored food in the cellar would carry them through the winter.  Their garden had still been producing when they returned from Atlanta, and a mild fall had kept the crops coming.  A hard frost the week before had ended the growing season, with the exception of pumpkins dotting the field and apples gleaming in the trees.  The smell of apple and pumpkin pies would soon fill the house with their delicious aroma.

“On a day like today, it’s easy to believe the war isn’t going on,” Louisa said contentedly.

“What’s that?” Perry asked suddenly, shading his eyes as he peered at a cloud of dust in the distance.

They both waited quietly, Louisa trying to shake off her feeling of alarm as the dust turned into a lone horseman riding at full speed.  He rode right up to the porch and quickly halted the horse before he pushed his hat back from his eyes with dust and sweat tracing rivulets down his cheeks.  His horse’s sweaty flanks were heaving.

“Sherman is headed this way!”

“What are you talking about, man?” Perry asked sharply. 

“Just what I said.  Sherman’s entire army – looks like over sixty thousand men – is making its way across Georgia.”

Louisa stared at the messenger.  “That’s not possible,” she protested.  “How can an army survive without supplies?”  Her mind spun as she tried to grasp the implications of what she was hearing – wanting to deny the possibility - but her intuition telling her he spoke the truth.  She gazed hard at the horizon, but all she could see were the same blue sky and puffy white clouds. 

“Word leaked out after he burned Atlanta…”

Perry stepped forward and grasped the porch railing so tightly his knuckles whitened.  “Sherman burned Atlanta?  The whole city?”

“Might as well have.  He had his men set fire to all public buildings, the machine shops, the depots, and the arsenals.”  The messenger’s voice faltered.  “The city is ruined.”

“And now?”  Louisa asked quietly, trying to calm her shaking hands as she touched her stomach.

“I hear tell the army will be living off the land.  A spy in the city got out some of Sherman’s plans.”

“Which are?” Perry asked, taking a deep breath.

“They’re heading for Savannah.”

“They’re crossing the whole state?” Louisa asked in disbelief.

“Yep.  They’re planning on living off all our crops and livestock.  They aim to take whatever they want and…”

Perry leaned forward when the messenger faltered.  “Go on.  Tell us everything.”  His voice was as hard and flat as his eyes.

“They aim to destroy all our cotton gins and mills and anything else that supports food making.”
              “Like our barns and crops,” Perry finished, a quiet anger ringing in his voice.  “They’re going to burn Georgia like they did the Shenandoah Valley.”

“Yep,” the messenger agreed, regret and anger reverberating in his tired voice.
              “Are they killing people and burning homes, too?” Louisa asked, panic making her voice wobble.

“Not unless you put up a fight,” the messenger said earnestly.  “That’s why a bunch of us are trying to spread the news.  We knew about your cotton gin, Perry.” He glanced at Louisa.  “We also know you done gave a leg for the war and that you got a new baby on the way.  We made sure your house would be one of our stops.”

Perry nodded, gratitude glimmering through the anger.  “How long do we have?”

“I reckon they’re about four hours behind me,” the messenger responded.  He spun his horse around.  “I got more stops to make.  I wish you the best.”

“Wait!” Louisa ordered and then dashed to the well to pull up a bucket of water.  “For your horse,” she said as she came striding back and then dipped up a cup and handed it to the rider.

Both drank thirstily for several minutes.  “Thank you, ma’am,” the rider said gratefully.

Within moments, the only evidence of his being there was a plume of dust in the distance.

Louisa grasped Perry’s hand and tried to take even breaths.  “What are we going to do?”

“I’m not letting them destroy the cotton gin!” Perry said fiercely, his burning eyes flying to the sturdily built barn about a hundred feet from the house.  Housed inside were all his hopes and dreams.

“What?” Louisa cried.  “You heard the man.  They’re not hurting anyone or burning houses unless people fight back.”  She planted her hands on her hips and tried to force back panic.  “Just how you do you plan on defeating a whole band of soldiers?  Even with both of us shooting, there’s no way we’ll do anything but make them angry and insure they’ll destroy everything we own.”  She didn’t mention she could hardly shoot a target, though Perry had insisted on giving her shooting lessons.

She watched as the truth sank into Perry’s mind and took all his earlier hope with it.  “So we’re not safe from the war even here,” he said bitterly.