Yankee Belles in Dixie (6 page)

“Oh, Jeff! Then you'll have to go,” Leah said.

“Yes, I'm afraid you will, my boy. You wouldn't want to be a deserter.”

Jeff glanced quickly at the older man and saw that he was being honest. He thought again,
Yankees can't be all that they told us they were. But I
guess people have told them the same kind of stuff about us.
Aloud he said, “I'll have to go tell Pa.”

“Go by yourself this time. Take the horse,” Mr. Carter said. “I'll find out about the trains and see about tickets.”

Jeff left at once. He tied the horse outside the Old Capitol Prison, was admitted, and once again passed under the hard eyes of Lieutenant Simpkins. “Well, at least I won't have to see him anymore,” he muttered to himself.

In the prison cell he found his father shaving.

“Sit down, Jeff, while I scrape these whiskers off.” Lieutenant Majors drew the blade carefully down his cheek, wiped the lather onto a towel, and then took another pass at his face. “What's been going on?”

Jeff hesitated, then he told his father about President Lincoln and how he felt about him and how it had disturbed him.

Nelson Majors finished the shave, listening carefully. Then he put the razor away. “Well, Yankees are just people like we are. We can't hate them, Jeff. We believe differently, but we're one people.”

“I guess I'll have to change the way I think a little bit, Pa.” He knew he had to tell his father something else. “I got a letter from Tom. He said I'd have to go back or be posted as a deserter.”

At once Nelson Majors said, “I've been half expecting that, and you'll have to go, of course.”

“Yes, that's what Mr. Carter says, but I hate to leave you, Pa.”

They talked for a long while, knowing it would be the last time. When Jeff got up to go, he cried out, “Pa, it's awful! I just can't go and leave you alone like this!”

“Son,” the lieutenant said, putting his arm around Jeff's shoulder, “you're almost a man now, and one of the things you learn as a man is that you can't always control circumstances. Bad things do happen. Nothing you can do about it.” He looked at Jeff carefully, his handsome face very sober. “But a man can always control how he acts in the circumstances. So that's what we'll have to do. For now, it's your job to go back to be a soldier. It's my job to stay here until the Lord sees fit to release me. We'll just have to do our job, even though it's hard. All right?”

“Sure, Pa. It's just not easy.”

“Hard things are what make a man better. Not easy things. It's hard for me too, but you can write to me, and we'll both believe the Lord to bring us through it all.”

Jeff did not stay longer. He still could not bear the thought of leaving his father.

When he got back to camp, Dan Carter must have seen the boy was upset, but he merely said, “The train leaves at three o'clock. We'll take you—me and Leah.”

“Yes, sir. And I want to thank you for all you've done for my father and for me. I don't know how we would have made it without the Carters.”

“We're neighbors, aren't we? You'd do the same for us.”

* * *

   That afternoon when it was time to go, Jeff was out by the creek when Leah found him. She knew it was the one place he could find quiet, and they'd walked along this stream many times, watching the minnows and frogs.

He was standing beside the bank, looking down into the water, as she came up beside him. “Almost time to go, Jeff.”

Jeff looked at her, then put his boot in the stream and watched the water curl over his toe, making a miniature waterfall. “Just like the creek back home, isn't it, Leah? Do you ever think of those times we fished there?”

“Yes, I think about that a lot.”

“I wish we could go back! I wish we could go back to what we were. Remember? I'd like to be hunting birds' nests, and running a trot line, and going coon hunting doing all the things we used to do. Those were the best days of my life.”

Leah felt so sorry for him she wanted to cry. She felt sorry for herself too. She made herself say, as cheerfully as possible, “I guess it's like this creek. The water passes us, it goes somewhere else, it can't go back.”

“My grandpa,” Jeff said, “always told me you couldn't step in the same river twice. I guess that's what that means, the river goes, and it's gone. Just like us.”

“Oh, not quite like that, Jeff. The river can't remember, but we can. We can remember those days, and somehow that means they're not altogether gone if we can remember them together.”

Jeff turned and admired the sheen of her blonde hair as the sun struck it. “You're growing up fast,” he said, “and getting to be a wise woman too. Sound like a philosopher.”

“Oh, you know I'm not that, Jeff.”

“Well, all I can say is that I'm getting tired of saying good-bye to folks. I wish we didn't have to, but we do.”

Leah took his hand, then hesitated. “Come on, let's go to the train, and we'll write each other often. Remember, say something real, real sweet to me, will you, Jeff?”

Jeff stared at her, his cheeks flushing. “I can't do that!”

“Yes, you can. It'll be in code, so nobody will know it.”

“I don't know how to write in code!”

“It's easy,” Leah said, her eyes glowing. “I read about it in a novel. What we'll do is this, we'll write with lots of space between the lines. Then we'll write with a special ink in the spaces. Then when we put the letters in the oven or over a fire, they'll turn brown!”

“We don't have any magic ink like that,” Jeff protested.

“We can use lemon juice. I've already tried it, and it works real good. It's invisible until you heat it up.”

“Well, it might be a good idea,” Jeff said slowly. “There'll be some things I wouldn't want anybody to read. But what do you mean about writing sweet things?”

“You know, tell me something about me that you like real well.”

Jeff laughed aloud. “You are a vain little thing, aren't you? All right, I'll do that. I promise.”

Standing at the train, Jeff shook Mr. Carter's hand. Then he awkwardly shook hands with Leah. “I'll do what I said,” he promised her. “Goodbye.”

He boarded the train, and soon it was out of sight.

“Hard to give him up, isn't it, Pet?” her father said.

“Yes, it is. I'm going to be so lonely.” She looked up at him, and tears glittered in her eyes. “I wish we never had to say good-bye to anybody.”

“So do I, Pet. So do I!”

O
n returning to Richmond, Jeff soon found that things had changed greatly. The excitement after the victory at Bull Run was still there to a degree, but the casualties of the battle were horrible. The Federals had 1,500 dead and wounded and had lost more than 1,400 as prisoners. These, Jeff learned, had been herded through Richmond, where crowds chanted, “Live Yankees! Live Yankees!”

“How many did our side lose in all, Tom?” Jeff asked. The two of them were trudging along a dusty road in a column of Richmond Blues.

It was late September now. The August heat was gone, while just over the horizon there was a hint of cold weather even this early.

Tom glanced at his younger brother. The dust coated his dark face but did not disguise his good looks. “Well,” he said thoughtfully, “we lost about two thousand killed, wounded, and captured.”

Jeff looked up, startled, “Two thousand of our men? That's awful!”

“Yes, it is,” Tom agreed glumly. “We captured about six thousand small arms and fifty-four cannon, and lots of rounds of ammunition, but that doesn't make up for the fellows we lost.”

“I don't see why we didn't go on in when we won the battle and take Washington,” Jeff grumbled. He
shifted his drum to a more comfortable position and looked down the long line of marching men. “Everybody says we could have done it—even Stonewall said so.”

Tom shook his head. “I kind of doubt it. We were just about as worn out as they were. If we'd gotten to Washington, they'd have had lots of fresh troops. The thing that worries me is that we don't seem to be taking this war seriously.”

“What do you mean?”

“Why, from what I hear, the North is gearing up to make all kinds of guns, muskets, and cannons but we don't seem to realize that we're going to be coming up against that sort of thing. Matter of fact, from what I hear, all our leaders are doing is just quarreling with each other. Jeff Davis seems to be catching a lot of it. Not easy to be a president, I guess.”

A flight of blackbirds flew over, making their raucous cries. Jeff watched, then put his mind back to the journey in front of them. “Where's this place we're going to, Tom?”

“A place called Cheat Mountain. The Federals have taken a pass there, and General Lee says we've got to get them out.”

The column marched on until the sun grew low over the hills. Then the troops broke out their gear for preparing supper, and soon the smell of cooking meat tantalized Jeff's nostrils.

He and five others had banded together to form a little group. One of them carried a pot, which the other squads seemed anxious to borrow.

Charlie Bowers, at the age of thirteen, was probably the youngest drummer in the Confederate Army. He and Jeff wolfed down their portions, sitting off
to one side. Charlie looked at his empty plate and shook his head. “I don't ever get enough to eat.”

Jeff grinned at the smaller boy. “I don't see where you put it all. The food you eat is bigger than you are.”

Curly Henson, a huge red-haired man, was sitting across the fire from Jeff. He had been a bully when Jeff first joined up, but the two had become fast friends when Henson saved his life. Now he said, “You two tadpoles need to be back home. This war is a job for men.”

Jeff picked up a stone and tossed it over at him. “You watch your mouth, Curly,” he said. “You won't be able to keep up with me on this march, hauling all that excess weight you got.”

Laughter went around the campfire, and Sergeant Henry Mapes, a tall, rangy man with black hair and eyes, said, “You better save some of that for the fight that's coming up.”

“Why, we'll push them Yankees right out of their holes,” Curly said confidently. “We showed 'em at Bull Run, didn't we?”

“Yeah! And this time we got General Lee commanding,” Jeff said.

He had unlimited confidence in Lee, as had most of the men. Lee received his full general's commission a few months ago and was leading the attack.

Suddenly Sergeant Mapes said, “Look at that!”

They all turned to look at a large man on horseback who had ridden by them, headed for the commander's tent. As he dismounted, Sergeant Mapes said, “That's Rooney Lee, General Lee's second son.”

“He's a big'un, ain't he?” Jed Hawkins was a small, lean man with black hair. He had brought
along his guitar which was strictly against orders. He was plucking the strings lightly now. “I don't see how he gets a horse big enough to carry him.”

Mapes frowned. “One of the problems about this whole campaign is there's too many chiefs and not enough Indians.”

“What do you mean by that?” Jeff inquired.

“I mean we got four commanding officers, and that's too many.” He named them, holding up one finger at a time. “We got General Loring, who's supposed to be sort of head of the whole thing. Then we got General Henry Wise, who used to be governor of Virginia. And we got John B. Floyd—he's an ex-governor too. Then, of course, we got General Lee.”

Jed Hawkins laughed. “There's enough generals to fight all by themselves. We ought to go back to Richmond.” He began plunking a tune on his guitar and soon raised his fine tenor voice in a rollicking song.

After the last word of the song died down, Tom came by and sat beside Jeff. The others were carrying on a card game very noisily across the fire. “Tell me again about Pa,” he said.

Jeff had told Tom several times about his visits to his father. He shook his head, saying, “I can't tell you any more, Tom. Just that he doesn't look good. Of course, he's a lot better since Mr. Carter and Leah started taking that good food in. I think he might have died if he hadn't gotten a little nourishment.”

Tom stared into the fire silently, occupied with his thoughts. Finally he picked up a stick and stuck the end of it in the fire until it burst into flame and held it up as he would a candle. The darkness was falling, and his face was tense. “I hate everything about it,” he said, “but I guess there's nothing we can do.”

“Well, at least we're sure he'll be fed.” Jeff took another bite of one of the biscuits he'd brought with him and chewed it thoughtfully. “As long as the Carters are there, they'll see that he gets good food
and warm blankets and whatever else that will make life better.”

“I got a letter from Sarah,” Tom said abruptly. His face brightened. “I sure do miss that girl. She's the prettiest thing I've ever seen.” Then he grew gloomy. “But she says she'll never marry me, not with things like they are.”