Beauty From Ashes (69 page)

“Oh, Selina, don’t be sorry about anything! Just let me see my new grandchild. Where is he?”

“With his proud-z-a-peacock father, both hiding from you in Pete’s room until Pete gives them the signal to appear.”

“And where is Pete? I thought Eve said she was with you.”

“I’m right here, Mama,” Pete said in her most mischievous voice as she stepped out from behind

Selina’s draperies where she’d been 937 hiding, waiting for the chance to signal George.

Mother and daughter embraced and Anne chided, “This house will be home to two children now because Pete, you’ll never really grow up, will you? Well, don’t. I like you just the way you are, and whatever your signal is, give it to George this minute so I can see my new grandchild for myself.”

Pete stepped into the upstairs hall and whistled shrilly on two fingers.

“For goodness’ sake,” Anne laughed. “I thought you’d forgotten long ago how to make that ear-splitting sound!”

“You’d be surprised at what I know that you don’t,” Pete teased, standing in the open doorway looking for George to arrive with the infant. “Like what you’re going to find out in just a matter of minutes now, Mama!”

To Selina, whose hand she was still holding, Anne said, “I know dear George is just bursting with pride. I also know his poor leg keeps him from walking very fast.”

“He’d better not try,” Selina said with a smile. “He’ll be carrying the most beautiful baby God ever created! Oh, Mama, wait

till you see. I know all mothers think their babies are beautiful, but mine really is. He’s going to look like a cross between Papa and my handsome brother.”

“Have you given him a name yet?” Anne wanted to know.

“Wait! Just wait for all things. Don’t be so fidgety, Mama.”

“They’re coming,” Pete announced. “Blow the trumpets, someone.”

Anne could hear the uneven thump of George’s bad limp from the hallway outside Selina’s room and, without realizing it, held her breath for her first sight of the gift she fully believed God had sent to her to help fill her suddenly empty life.

“George?” Selina gasped. “Oh, George, he’s so good, isn’t he? I haven’t heard him cry once since Mama got here.”

“Good morning, Mrs. Fraser,” George Stubinger called, beaming but concentrating fully on holding the tiny bundle in his arms just right. “I guess you can tell I’ve never carried a new baby before!”

“George, you’re doing fine,” 939 Anne whispered, straining for a glimpse of the tiny face under the corner of the blanket.

“Now, Mama,” Selina announced breathlessly, “George has a real presentation to make to you.”

“Indeed I have, Mrs. Fraser,” George said, holding the baby out to her. “My lovely wife, Selina, and I want to present to you, with both our hearts, your grandson, whose name is, from this moment forward—John Couper Fraser Stubinger!”

Anne reached for the child, took him tenderly in her arms, looked down at Selina and up at George, then at Pete, standing at the foot of Selina’s bed and beaming. When Pete could stand it no longer, she prodded: “Mama? Aren’t you going to say anything? Isn’t that the most beautiful baby you’ve ever seen in your whole life?”

“Pete, there are times when—no matter how much I love words—there just are none.” She looked at Selina, then at George. “Is this really true? Is he really John—Couper—Fraser —Stubinger?”

“He is, Mother Fraser,” George said in his soft voice. “And we both hope—in fact,

we’ve prayed—that our child, your grandson, will give you a happy, laughter-filled, real reason for waking up in the morning. …”

Then, lifting the corner of the blue blanket, Anne addressed her grandchild: “Somewhere in heaven right now, son, you have a grandfather, Lieutenant John Fraser, and an uncle, Captain John Couper Fraser. They are smiling and saluting you! Both are brave men. And they both salute you for being already brave enough to have come into this ugly, uneasy, battle-scarred place. Somehow you will give us the strength and the vision to find beauty in the world again simply because you’re here in it with us. …”

For the remainder of the cold, mostly overcast month of February 1864, Anne’s heart was somewhat lighter, although there were signs and sounds all around Marietta that the war was indeed coming their way. Each morning she begged God for His protection, but she also gave thanks because right under her own roof she had a new, interesting, and extraordinarily beautiful grandchild to watch over and love.

Twice during the months of February and March Dix drove Louisa into town to visit Anne, and she further primed Anne’s own joy in the new baby by freely showing her own: “This child is so unusually pert and pretty, I find it difficult to believe that he hasn’t yet smiled at the sight of us peering down at him! But when a baby’s face remains impassive like his for the first few weeks, there’s no way to know just how handsome he’ll be eventually. How can you wait for his first smile?”

“I just—wait, Louisa,” Anne laughed,

“but not very gracefully.”

“Daily, sometimes many times a day, I thank God that you have a new grandchild, Anne. No one, no one anywhere but God, really knows what horrors might lie ahead for all of us in Cobb County! I know my little grandson, Daniel Webster, and his sister keep us all laughing between bouts of genuine fear and dread. My daughter vows that the Rebel officers bivouaced here watch her husband like hawks. Henry does allow his patriotic fervor for the Northern Cause to loosen his tongue. Evidently he is slipping information to the Yankee lines, and Georgia expects every day to learn that he’s been arrested as a spy! Actually, Anne, I think Georgia’s wrong. Henry’s too smart not to curb his tongue when need be, but who can really tell where a man’s pride is concerned? Do you hear the guns thundering near town at times? We can, out at Woodlawn now. And how I loathe and despise the hideous sound of them.”

Anne knew it was apparent to everyone that there would be some property loss in Cobb County. Despite her rapidly returning Unionist sympathies, her heart went out to the men who had

come as pioneers in the 1830’s and, too 943 old now to fight themselves, gave their sons to the Southern Cause and were expected to lose most of their hard-earned property.

Because of his own devotion to the Southern Cause, George Stubinger had come to know some of these pathetic older men and worried about them aloud until Anne had to curb her own distraction. In fact, George kept her and Selina and Pete upset much of the time during April, while spring was struggling to spread its green and flowery beauty outside. George seemed unable to accept the Confederate Army’s refusal, because of his severe wounds, to let him reenlist. His restlessness had grown so unbearable to him by the end of May that he talked almost incessantly of joining the colorful, dangerous forces of Morgan’s Raiders. Any man daring to do this truly took his very life in his hands. Some citizens were justifiably wary of John Hunt Morgan’s troops, although most almost worshiped the daring young man because he alone could still offer men like George the glory of real service to the South. His lax requirements, somehow obtained from the Confederate Army itself, were far less stringent. That, of course, was why poor,

wounded George would be allowed to join the Raiders.

Anne thought George selfish because of Selina and his new son, now called Johnny. George’s shattered leg would not prevent Morgan’s accepting him into his Raiders. But when possible, each newly enlisted Raider had to supply his own horse, and George’s money from the Confederate Army no longer arrived each month. In fact, there were no funds for anything, and even the thought of poverty terrified Anne almost as much as did the sound of the guns coming nearer with every passing day. Since January, when Morgan had begun to assemble his Raiders at Decatur, George had been agitating to find out more about how he might become one of them. By the time Morgan had issued an emotional plea for men to join, a plea printed and reprinted in the papers, George evidently had made up his mind to become a Raider as soon as possible after the baby arrived.

Anne had been so preoccupied with little Johnny, the horror of George’s decision didn’t begin to keep her awake until May, when Selina told her he had already decided

to sell his treasured heirloom watch in 945 order to buy the horse he would need.

On May 10, in a letter from Hannah, her brother William Audley’s wife, Anne learned that Hannah’s father, her old friend Anna Matilda’s adored husband, had died peacefully at Waresboro, Georgia, where he had taken refuge from St. Simons Island. The sorrowful news further depressed Anne’s spirits until she realized that at long last, Thomas Butler King, Sr., and Anna Matilda were together again in a place where he would never, never say another good-bye. The thought of her once beloved birthplace, St. Simons Island, no longer gave Anne any solace. In her once peaceful house in Marietta, which had for years given her only delight, the increasing roar of the big guns and the turmoil in the wide, once prosperous and attractive streets of Marietta cut her off from St. Simons in a way understood by no one but Pete and Eve.

Without fail, Anne thanked God each day that with Fanny in Atlanta now for heaven knew how long, nursing wounded Rebel soldiers, she still

had Selina and Pete and her new, healthy, almost constantly smiling grandson, Johnny. Miss Eliza Mackay had always believed that a thankful heart would remain a strong heart, and Anne had determined to be strong for the loved ones still with her.

As a result of her seemingly growing strength, Anne somehow found the courage to remain thankful even when Louisa appeared at her door just after breakfast on June 10 with the terrifying news that Henry Greene Cole had been arrested as a Yankee spy and immediately sent to Atlanta!

“My daughter is half out of her mind with worry, but somehow I feel a man of his stature won’t be terribly mistreated. He must have boasted to the wrong person about his really splendid Yankee activities. I can’t stay long enough even to sit down, Anne, so do forgive me. I must get back to the Cole cottage to be with Georgia.”

Anne said good-bye to her friend, went straight to Selina’s room where the baby was taking a nap in his little crib, and was struck by even more frightening news.

White as a sheet, Selina stood in the

middle of the bedroom floor, staring at a 947 letter. “Mama!” she cried before breaking into tears. “Sweet, gentle, kind George has gone! I was sure he was too considerate ever to treat me like this, but—he just left! He left, before I woke up this morning, to join John Hunt Morgan’s Raiders in Decatur.”

And almost as soon as Selina began to weep in her mother’s arms, Eve appeared in the doorway, demanding to know what had happened.

When Anne told her, or tried to, knowing so little herself, Eve said, “It all be a part of the war, Miss Anne. Ain’t no woman nowhere dat’s gonna know for certain what any man be thinkin’ when they’s war goin’ on. Somepin ‘bout war make even nice men like Cap’n George act crazy! June, he be too old to do more’n hol’ me close in de bed at night, but at least he too old to fight even if colored could. You know Mausa John, he be safe with God now an’ I know June be home in our brick cabin. Ain’t it time to let me fix up de baby so’s you kin take him outside to git some air? You an’ Pete an’ me, we’s got to keep on doin’ the things we always do. We got

us a baby to look after. Lil Johnny, he need his grandmama now.”

Selina whirled to face Eve. “No! The baby’s all right, Eve! I need Mama with me. Who gave you permission to order us around?”

In a calm, steady voice, Eve replied, “No, you don’t need yo’ mama, Selina. You got me. Eve she sit right here an’ hol’ you an’ comfort you an we talk all you need to talk ‘bout why Cap’n George he go racin’ off to war when he don’ have to go.”

Selina’s weeping calmed almost abruptly. “All right, Eve. I know you’re right. I’m being a baby. I’ll stop it right now. Go, Mama, and you and Johnny have a happy time out in the yard. There are all sorts of pretty flowers to show him. I’m worried half sick over George, but this is no time for me to act like a child. I have a child of my own now.”

The once charming Marietta streets Anne had known were more crowded than ever with family after family fleeing for safety to relatives and friends. She had no thought of taking the baby far from the sanctity of her house and sat down on a

garden bench near her white picket 949 fence. With Johnny on her lap, she tried to remember other early summer days in the city where she’d chosen to live the remainder of her life. Even now, every balcony was arched by honeysuckle blooms, every garden, even with its owners too busy to tend it, bloomed in profusion, and the bright green of summer foliage adorned every shrub and small bush.

Somehow she would find a way to keep Johnny surrounded by the beauty remaining within her nine acres of Marietta land. She had just seen Selina act, with no persuasion from anyone beyond one short speech from Eve, as a grown-up woman. Her own youngest daughter had stiffened her mother’s spine, and Anne vowed to keep it that way. Even with the soft, living beauty growing around her now, there was no way anyone could know how long nine acres of quiet safety might be found anywhere in the city, which surely lay directly in the path of the bloody, deadly war. Marietta, where elegant hotels and thriving businesses and warehouses had given way to hospitals, was now overflowing with wounded, moaning, heavily bandaged soldiers. Where pleasure seekers used to roam and idle away the

time, soldiers now crowded about. Occasionally, a Rebel general, with his well-dressed staff, jostled for room on the streets with ambulance wagons bringing in still more wounded and suffering young men, some pitifully maimed, others sick with fever to the point of death. Anne knew from Louisa’s reporting that the road between Marietta and Atlanta was jammed with long lines of canvas-covered wagon trains, all filled with supplies for Rebel General Joseph Johnston’s Army, and everything was caked with mud caused by almost incessant rain.

Anne and her grandson had been outside in the fresh air among her flowers and honeysuckle only an hour or so when the rain, which had poured down into every June day, began again. She hurried the baby back inside the house and found Eve waiting, as usual, to give her a hand.