Beauty From Ashes (62 page)

call upstairs for Selina. She’s young and strong and will be a big help to us. Bedding can be heavy to carry. And wipe that impish grin off your face! I know Selina’s probably just claiming to be a Unionist to please you and me. After all, George Stubinger is a captain in the Confederate Army. Selina lives and breathes that young man.”

By the time Pete and Anne had delivered their hospital bedding, Selina, who had eagerly accepted their offer of a ride as far as the Marietta post office, was already home—soaking wet but so beside herself with excitement and worry, she seemed not even to realize how drenched she was. Anne and Pete found her in the front hall, dripping with rain and tears. In her hands she clutched an already crumpled, damp letter.

“You got it! Oh, Selina, you received your letter from George, didn’t you?” her mother asked.

“Yes, yes! Mama, Pete, he’s coming here! George has been wounded and is probably right now on a train heading for Marietta. Oh, Mama, you don’t think he’s horribly hurt, do you?”

“What a question to ask poor Mama!” 841 Pete scolded. “Didn’t he tell you in the letter?”

“Just that he’s feeling very downhearted because the Confederate Army can’t use him anymore.”

“Then he must be really injured,” Pete said.

“Let’s not jump to any irrational conclusions, Pete,” Anne said sharply. “Your sister has enough to worry about. I remember way back when your father was wounded near the St. Marys River while he was fighting for the British in their war against us early in the century. Dear old Mr. James Gould made a special trip to Cannon’s Point to let us know John was hurt. It almost killed me! I let my imagination run wild. He had a rather bad arm wound, but not mortal at all. Selina, dear, you must get hold of yourself. Captain George will need you to be strong when he gets here. When do you think that will be?”

“He wrote to me from a Richmond hospital that they were relieving him of all duty. Would they let him leave the hospital if he’s so terribly hurt they had to relieve him of duty, Mama? Don’t you answer me, Pete! You always say too much.”

“Well, I have only one question. Are you going to marry him when he does get here?” Pete asked.

“If I could figure a way to take our rector, the Reverend Benedict, to the railroad depot, I’d marry him the instant he sets foot on Marietta soil!”

“John Couper has already written to Pete that it wouldn’t be wise for her to marry now because the economy is worse than it’s been since 1857, and wartime is no time for a fancy, expensive church wedding anyway,” their mother said.

“Mama, a fancy church wedding has stopped mattering at all to me! All I want is to know for sure that I’m finally George’s wife.” Then, Selina turned abruptly to Pete. “When were you thinking of marrying Dr. Sam, Pete? You didn’t say one word to me about it. I’m your own sister! I’d certainly think you’d want me to be your maid of honor, especially since Fanny’s off applying bandages in Ringgold. When George and I are married, I want you to be my maid of honor.”

“This is no time for an argument,” Anne said. “Just try to think straight, Selina. Didn’t

George give you any clue to when he 843 might arrive in Marietta?”

Selina scanned the last page of his letter quickly. “Yes! Oh, Mama, there’s so little time, but still such a long time to wait. He says he should be here sometime in the afternoon of November 24.”

“That’s day after tomorrow.”

“Yes,” Selina breathed. “But that’s still nearly two whole days to wait!”

On the morning of November 24, Eve and June were up earlier than usual. Because it took June longer to bathe, shave, and dress these days, he was up before daylight, shuffling and clattering around their cabin.

June was a man of such regular habits, it always frightened Eve when he deviated even a tiny bit. “You all right, June?” she asked, sitting up in their bed to get a good look at him. “How come you up befo’ daylight? You ain’t plannin’ to go to the depot with Big Boy an’ Miss Selina, is you?”

“Co’se I ain’t,” the old man said, taking the time as he always did to give her a big, almost toothless smile and a kiss. “You done tol’ me

S’lina made it plain she gonna meet Cap’n George by herself. ‘Cept for Big Boy to drive ‘em in de carriage.”

“Miss Anne, she don’ like that one bit,” Eve said, rubbing her eyes. “She thinks it ain’t hospitable for the whole family not to be there to help Selina, since her man be so bad hurt he done got put outa de Army.”

“What Miss Anne reckon Big Boy do wif all them bulgin’ muscles if not to help Selina’s man?”

Out of bed now, beginning to bathe, Eve answered, “We ain’t none of us got any zact idea how bad Cap’n George be hurt.”

“Dat lil thing, she been known to faint dead away when she upset ‘bout somepin,” June answered, using his sharp razor around his chin.

“Not this time!”

“What you mean, ole woman?”

“I ain’t ole an’ Selina she got too much of Miss Anne in her to faint when her man he needs her! Miss Anne, she always been a strong woman an’ now she stronger than ever ‘cause she done growed up. You wait an’ see.”

June rinsed the lather from his kind, 845 brown face and toweled himself. “Eve? Ain’t no time at all till we gonna see all kind of bad, bloody doins ‘roun’ this town. Might even one white gent’man fly into another white gent’man ‘cause one’s fo’ the Union an’ one’s fo’ keepin’ you an’ me in bonds.”

“We ain’t in no bonds! Tell me, what we do wifout Miss Anne an’ John Couper to look after us? Someday Miss Anne kin pay me ef she’s got the money to do it, but ain’t no place I aim to go without her, so hush ‘bout yo’ bonds! You an’ Big Boy bof be bad off wifout Miss Anne an’ me, an’ wherever Miss Anne is, I be too!” She pulled on a pair of clean stockings and slipped her feet into her shoes. “You been seein’ too much of that Barber James Johnson lately. He puttin’ troublin’ ideas in yo’ white head.”

“You jus’ talkin’, Evie. You forgit you ole man got a sieve in his head. I kin listen this way an’ that, but I always knows what to let go through that sieve an’ why I let’s it. Barber Johnson’s my frien’. He needs me to talk to an’ I needs him. This be one big,

bloody war an’ if it has somepin to do with the colored, the colored oughta sort out every idea ‘bout it. Johnson, he dead sure Pres’dent Linkum, he gonna fix eberthing for eber nigger wif some kind of freedom proclamation January 1 next year. I sift dat ‘roun’ an’ ‘roun’. I neber stops thinkin’ when Barber Johnson is preachin’ at me. I knows how he favors the United States, but I also knows he’d like to be right in the middle of eberthing helpin’ the Yanks.” June grinned broadly. “You knows, Evie, how proud Barber Johnson be dat him an’ Mr. Henry Greene Cole be good friends. I got me a feelin’ dat between ‘em dey hatchin’ somepin to help de Yanks on de sly.”

“Well, you stay out of all that,” Eve ordered. “We got us a good home wif good folks an’ I don’ want no boats rockin’ nowhere! Now, lemme make you some breakfus. By the time we eats, because she’s spectin company, Miss Anne’ll be up an’ ready for her breakfus, too.”

A full half hour before George Stubinger’s

train was even due to pull into the 847 Marietta depot, Big Boy did his best to keep up with Miss Selina without her knowing it. She seemed bent on moving briskly from the wooden station itself, along the baggage platform as far as she’d been told the train would eventually stop, although there was still no train in sight, no whistle blowing. The gentle giant of a man knew he stood taller and had wider shoulders than other colored men waiting for their white folk to arrive. But he had to be especially careful since Selina had been determined to come alone except for him, and many whites thought white women needed special scrutiny out in town alone with a colored.

Of course, Big Boy knew well that Northern folk in Marietta had little reason to understand the easygoing whites and Negroes down on the Georgia coast, where both Selina and Big Boy had grown up. Even Captain George, before he went off to war, had taken the time to admonish Big Boy, however kindly, that he should never, never go out in town alone with Mrs. Fraser, Selina, or the other Fraser daughters. “It’s just not safe for you, Big

Boy,” he’d said. “A lot of people, no matter how much they believe in the Union, don’t like that. In times like these, it’s wiser to be careful before trouble begins.”

Big Boy remembered smiling at that remark, because his mentor, June, had trained him well for all the years since his boyhood, when he first reached St. Simons Island as the property of Anne’s father, John Couper.

Throngs of people from Marietta and nearby pushed toward the noisy, grinding, steaming train when it finally slowed. Most of them, Selina had already learned as they all waited, worried and impatient, were meeting the wounded who, like her George, were heroes from the bloodiest fighting so far near Sharpsburg and Antietam Creek on the border dividing Maryland and Virginia. Some, she noticed as she strained to find George among the bandaged, battered young men, were limping, some were crawling, others were being carried from the coach steps as their families and friends waited to greet them. Arms and legs were set with crude, makeshift splints of wood and wire, and all bandages were bloodsoaked and encrusted. Every dressing needed

to be changed. 849

Over her shoulder in the direction she knew Big Boy waited at a proper distance, Selina called, “Not George! Big Boy, George can’t be so hurt!”

“June, he keep ‘mindin’ me to tell you to be brabe, Miss Selina, so be brabe, you hear? Big Boy right here to help wif Cap’n George whatever shape he be in. Be brabe, Miss Selina, be brabe.”

“I don’t even see him! You’re a giant, Big Boy. Stand on your tiptoes and help me find George. And stop telling me to be brave. I’m not brave, I’m scared. I’m so scared of what he might look like!”

“But Big Boy an’ June an’ Eve an’ Mina, we all help wif Cap’n George. You see. Go on be scared. Don’t be ‘shamed. If you scared, be scared. Big Boy right here wif you.”

The words were no sooner out of Big Boy’s mouth than Selina, looking hard for George’s dear brown head, the graceful, swinging gait, stood like a stone statue staring at the thin, bent, bearded man who might have been fifty years old

as he struggled, one twisted leg in splints, to stand in the narrow train doorway, his sunken eyes hunting for Selina.

“Get him, Big Boy! Go up those steps and help George! He’ll never get down those steep steps without you to help him. Big Boy! Hurry, hurry!”

“You reckon they let me go right up to the cap’n?”

“Who cares? I say go help him. My family owns you, so go, Big Boy. You promised to help me.”

“Yes’m. But you got to promise to be brabe, like June say. Look at you, Miss Selina, white as June’s head an’ shakin’ all over! You gotta be brabe.”

Without realizing it, she had begun to tremble from head to foot and to sob so loud, Mama would have been embarrassed. “Oh, yes! I know I have to be brave. And if you’ll just help George, I will be. You’ll see, Big Boy. From now on, I’ll be as brave as any other woman in this noisy crowd.”

Selina and Big Boy knew at the same

instant, once George was helped down 851 the train steps and onto the ground, that he not only limped pathetically—each step tossed his emaciated body from one side to the other—but the long hours of sitting on the train had so stiffened him that Big Boy would have to carry him like a baby in his arms. To George’s humiliation, Big Boy carried him and lifted him up onto the carriage seat.

Selina could hear herself prattling but could not stop her incessant talk. Not one plan had been made with Mama, with the Episcopal rector, the Reverend Benedict—with anyone—but all of life had been turned upside down since her first glimpse of the shattered, crippled, broken young man, and it seemed perfectly natural now to hear herself say, “Just as soon as you think you can stand long enough for the wedding ceremony, George, we’ll be married at St. James. And even though Mama’s friend Mrs. Fletcher says he’s a crosspatch about allowing anyone not an Episcopalian to share Communion at the altar, you are Episcopalian so I know the Reverend Benedict will change whatever plans he needs to change to marry us. Oh, my darling, there isn’t

any money for a special wedding dress, but I don’t need one anyway. I don’t even need a veil, George. I just need to be your wife, and how I’ve prayed that you’re being truthful when you wrote to me that you did understand why I wanted to wait until all this dreadful war is over. Now I only want to be your wife! Isn’t that right, Big Boy, don’t I talk all the time about how dumb I was not to agree to marry George before he went to war?”

A pitying smile on his broad, brown face, Big Boy turned on his driver’s seat to look at them. “You sure is talkin’ all the time, Miss Selina, I knows that! It look like you’d let de cap’n get in a word.”

“I thank you, Big Boy!” George laughed. “You do a much better job controlling her than I ever hope to do. But this word I must get in, Selina.”

“Oh, darling George, please, yes. Talk, talk, talk!”

“Does this lecture on the Reverend Benedict and no need for a wedding veil mean you’re actually going to marry me anytime soon?”

“Well, I thought about day after tomorrow, November

26, unless you don’t feel up to it.” 853

“I thought about tomorrow, November 25,” George teased.

“Nothing they did to you in those horrible battles stopped your making jokes. I’m glad! Oh, I’m so glad. Mama always said one of the reasons she loves you so much is that you make her think of my papa and his sense of humor. She vows he could even laugh at himself back in the days when he was first learning how to be a planter.”

“I may have a sense of humor like his, but I refuse to laugh at myself. I want to be praised. I demand to be praised. I’m a Confederate war hero. And even if you are Unionists at your house, except for that fine, patriotic Fanny, off in Ringgold caring for other Confederate heroes, I want to be praised —by you—for my valor.” His almost merry laugh ran under his talk. “Selina, are you still a Union sympathizer after what they did to me?”

“Oh, George, I probably never was one! It’s always easier to agree with Mother and Pete, but all I really think about is you. And even though your poor body is all bruised and your leg is in splints, at least you’re alive and you’ve come