Widow of Gettysburg (11 page)

“No, by Jove, we can’t. The rest of the press sure won’t.” White paused. “Coffee, Harris? You look as though you hadn’t quite time for a cup yet today.”

“Yes, thank you.” Harrison smiled. It was a simple question with a simple answer, a relief to his muddled brain.

“No war correspondent should be without it. I’ll go find some.”

“I’ll wait outside.” The warm breath of a summer day filmed Harrison’s skin as soon as he escaped the stuffy hotel lobby. In the distance, white steeples glinted in the sun and poked the cloud-flecked sky. Beneath them, no doubt, citizens sat in hardwood pews and listened to preachers tell them God was their protection. If he listened only to the birdsongs while a sticky breeze ruffled his hair, Harrison could imagine what a peaceful Sunday ought to be.

Until the earth shook once more. While churches swelled with hymn singing, here on the streets, men perspired under scratchy wool collars pushing 20-pounder cast and wrought iron Parrott Rifles, each one weighing more than 1750 pounds. Behind those, bronze 12-pounder guns, cast and wrought iron 10-pounder Parrott Rifles, 12-pounder Napoleon guns, and 3-inch ordnance rifles followed.

Today may be Sabbath, but it won’t be peaceful for long.

I
t’s right that I should be here with you, Liberty.” Amelia’s knitting needles clicked as she squinted at Seminary Ridge in the east. Rumor had it that Confederate soldiers had been spotted there not long ago. No one knew where they would turn up next. “Levi would not have wanted you to be alone at a time like this.”

Libbie forced a smile as she sat in her rocker on the front porch and pieced together some blocks of fabric for a Union stars quilt. Near constant references to Levi in the past three days were not helping her “forget what is past” and “reach forth unto what is before.” Hiram’s burial at Evergreen Cemetery yesterday had been another emotional drain. But Liberty had to admit she would not have relished solitude right now, either.

The town’s telegraph lines were cut. The railroad bridge over Rock Creek had been burned, and seventeen cars pushed over the edge, smashing
into the creek bed below. There had been no mail since Friday. No news, except for the rumors slinging back and forth between farmers and townspeople. No trains bringing visitors or supplies. When Liberty had ridden into town with Amelia on Sunday for church, they had found the pulpit empty. Even the reverend had fled town.

Most folks called it annoying isolation. Only a few called it the calm before the storm.

For Liberty Holloway, however, it felt more like the fate of Gettysburg was a pendulum, swinging from one dramatic possibility to the opposite extreme. It was exhausting.

“What do we have for weapons here?”

Liberty pricked her finger and winced as a tiny dot of scarlet beaded on her fingertip. “Weapons?”

“Seminary Ridge is not that far away. If they come much closer, we’ll need to defend ourselves, won’t we? Do you at least have Levi’s rifle?”

“What? Of course not, that was army-issued. All of his equipment belonged to the government and went straight back to the quartermaster when he died. But I do have a couple of washboards.” She chuckled as she ripped out a seam and started over, stitching her own dreams back into place with every plunge and pull of the needle.

Amelia’s laugh was thin. “I suppose humor is your way of dealing with grief. Although I must say, you do seem to have recovered quite fully.”

Liberty’s cheeks grew warm, and she fixed her gaze on the flash of her needle as it seamed together the patchwork. If only she could afford one of those Isaac Singer sewing machines like Hettie Shriver had …

“It’s really quite remarkable. And his murderers just up on that ridge over there. I only wish I had the same talent for resilience that you display.”

Amelia’s words bit Liberty’s ears like a sudden frost nipping the buds off her apple trees. Her hands stilled in her lap. “Murderers?”

“It was Rebels who killed him. Didn’t they?”

Libbie tucked her head down again. She had heard that a mother’s love was so strong, so fierce, that it could compel heroic acts in the face of danger—or be twisted beyond all logic in the face of grief. She should tread lightly.

“Well?” Amelia pressed. “I can read your face plain as day, my girl, you might as well say it outright.”

“It’s just that, well—‘murderer’ seems a bit strong.”

Amelia’s paper-pale face darkened into parchment, her eyes narrowed into slits. “What do
you
call it when someone deliberately kills someone else? Tell me, because if there’s another name for it, I really need an education. Enlighten me, please.”

The needle Libbie pinched grew slippery.
War?
But she said nothing.

The older woman threw back her head and laughed. “You look as though I might bite your head off! My mama bear growl was coming back just then, wasn’t it? You mustn’t be afraid of me. I’m sure your mother felt the same about you.”

Liberty’s skin prickled. “I’m sure she didn’t.” She stabbed the needle through a patch of dark blue.

“Liberty, look at me.” Amelia set her knitting in her basket and reached between the rockers to lay a hand on Liberty’s. “You are beautiful. You are smart. You are kind. Levi told me. He also told me your mother died when you were very young, correct? If she didn’t love you the way every child deserves to be loved, it’s only because she didn’t have a chance to know you.”

She had a chance.

Amelia settled back into her rocker and picked up her knitting needles once again. With a gentle push of her foot, she set her chair in motion, and her needles tapped to the swaying rhythm, a half-finished sock dangling beneath them. All traces of mama bear were gone, replaced instead with the countenance of a mother hen. “I would love to hear about your parents, Liberty, if you would care to share. It would do me good to get my mind off my own troubles—and those Rebels who may be on the ridge.”

Liberty pulled brown thread through the square until it caught from the other side. “There isn’t much to share.” She poked the needle through the fabric for another even stitch.

“Then it won’t take long. I’m ready when you are.”

“All I know is what my aunt Helen told me.”

“The woman who raised you?”

“That’s right. Helen Holloway—this is her farm.
Was
her farm. My father, Gideon Holloway, was her brother.”
But his wife was not my mother.
She knew better than to say that aloud. “He lived in Virginia, not thirty miles from here, but more than distance separated them. My father held slaves, and my aunt never forgave him for it.”

Amelia’s eyebrows bounced, but her knitting did not falter. “Was he kind to them?”

“I don’t know. Aunt Helen never told me very much about him.”
But she did tell me my mother was a woman of the night.
Liberty focused on her stitching. Up, pull, down, pull. Up, down. Up, down. The steady bobbing of the silver needle, glinting in the morning sun, soothed her. Piecing scraps of mismatched cloth together until they looked like they belonged that way soothed her.

And she needed soothing right now, as Aunt Helen’s words came back to her—words she could never tell another. After an indiscretion with her father, Libbie’s mother tried to use her pregnancy as leverage to get him to marry her. When he refused to leave his wife, she wanted nothing to do with Libbie once she was born.
To my mother, I was a bargaining chip in a gamble that failed. To my father, I was a liability, but he kept me out of guilt. My father’s wife hated me.
She tied the thread in a knot and snipped the end off.

“So what became of your parents?”

Libbie threaded the needle once more and dove into the block again. “They were killed in a buggy accident when I was eleven months old. The will said I was to be sent here, to my aunt. So here I am.”

“Your aunt Helen was like a mother to you, then.”

“She tolerated me.” Barely.
You don’t deserve a real family
, were Aunt Helen’s exact words.

“Well.” Amelia started another row on the sock she was working on. “Someone certainly gave you a lovely name, dear.”

Another symbol.
But one Liberty was happy to represent. “I was born on the Fourth of July.”

The sock dropped to Amelia’s lap. “July fourth! Why, that’s only four days away! Let me think now—you’ll be twenty! Is that right?”

A smile spread on Libbie’s face. “Yes. Hopefully there will still be a parade on Independence Day. I look forward to it every year. It’s better than a party.”

“But that’s not for you, silly goose, that’s for the country. No no no, we need to celebrate. Something special, just for you. What do you like? Cake? Pie?”

Libbie looked up. “I—I’ve never thought about it before.”

“Do you mean to tell me, young lady, that no one has ever baked you a birthday cake?”

A lump lodged in Liberty’s throat that no words could squeeze around. If Amelia only knew the full story, she would not think her birth was worth celebrating.

Amelia gathered her black skirts around her and swept over to Liberty’s rocker. She bent down and placed two cool palms on Libbie’s cheeks, looking straight into her eyes. “You are worth celebrating. You always have been. I’m just the first person—who knows how to bake a cake—who can see that.”

“Please Amelia, you don’t have to—”

“I know you don’t want to call me Mama, Liberty. I hope one day you’ll change your mind about that. Because I’ve never had a daughter. And if it’s all right with you, it sure would be my pleasure if I could love on you, no matter what you call me. I can already see you are special.”

Special.
That’s what Geraldine had called her before she had clarified the word: symbol. Was she a symbol to Amelia, too?

Amelia pulled Liberty out of her rocker and into a tight embrace,
whispering, “You are worth celebrating. Not just because you were my darling son’s wife once upon a time, but because you are you. The sooner you realize that, the better.”

But as she was enveloped by the soft, lavender-scented hug, suspicion grabbed her harder.

Liberty bit her lip as she stared at the third place setting on the dining room table.

“We only need two plates for lunch, Amelia.” She gathered up the plate, napkin, and silverware and brought it back to the kitchen. “Unless there’s a ghost living with us I wasn’t aware of.” She smiled, but her attempt at levity fell flat, again.

Amelia took the plate from Libbie’s hands and plunked it back down on the table. “Perhaps, in a matter of speaking.”

Libbie frowned.

“Call it what you will! But we are not cutting him out of our lives.”

“Who?”

“Levi.”

What about your husband, Hiram?
But Liberty didn’t say it aloud. She certainly didn’t want two vacant place settings at every meal. One was more than enough. Still, she wondered. Why would Amelia be so bent on preserving her son’s memory when it was her own husband who most recently died? She wore bombazine now for Hiram, not Levi. Didn’t she?

Amelia gripped the back of the chair she had placed for Levi’s memory—
or his ghost
—and closed her eyes. “‘We shall meet, but we shall miss him.’”

Libbie blanched as Amelia recited the lines from “The Vacant Chair.” The poem had been written for a Massachusetts soldier after his death in the Battle of Ball’s Bluff in the fall of 1861 and had become popular all over the North and South. Now Amelia claimed it for Levi.

“‘There will be one vacant chair. We shall linger to caress him while we breathe our ev’ning prayer. When one year ago we gathered, Joy was
in his mild blue eye. Now the golden cord is severed, And our hopes in ruin lie.’”

Liberty scraped her chair, loudly, across the floor as she sat down. “Yes, that’s quite enough, thank you. Let me ask the blessing for the food.” Libbie said grace for the chicken dumplings before the next stanza could begin, though she was losing her appetite fast.
Our hopes in ruin lie?
There had been a time when the words would have resonated with Liberty, but not now. After all, it had been
two
years, not one, as the poem said. She was still young. Her hopes did not lie in ruins.