Widow of Gettysburg (14 page)

“Here?” Amelia, at her side, unfurled. “This is a private house, not for military use!”

“My apologies, ma’am, but I’m not asking. I’m telling. If you care to leave, do so, but at your own risk. Those bullets out there won’t dodge you just because you’re civilians.” His face was thin and pale, except for a drooping brown mustache and a tuft of beard below his lower lip. For a slight man, his voice was commanding.

“Now you listen to me—”

“Bring him in! Bring them all in!” The man was no longer talking to Amelia. A blustering widow and her mute companion were not his concern.

Bile replaced the words stuck in Liberty’s throat as she watched horse-drawn ambulance drivers unload a wounded soldier outside her home.
Stay out, stay out
, her heart cried with every thud.
Not here, stay out, not here!

But they came anyway. Past her roses, knocking over the rockers on her porch, into her home, they came. The man being carried met Libbie’s horrified eyes and threw her a single word: “Water.” His eyes pleaded, then closed in a grimace that twisted his face.

“And just where do you think you’re going to put him?” Amelia squawked.

The men shoved past her, around the corner and carried the
patient into the first bedroom they came to—Amelia’s room. Before depositing him on the featherbed, one of the men pulled the sheets from beneath the quilt and began tearing them into bandages. Hurriedly, the patient was lowered onto Libbie’s best quilt, the lifeblood spilling from his shredded leg. One man drove a staple into the ceiling above the bed while another threaded a rope and pulley through it to create a swing to elevate the leg.

“You don’t have to stay here,” Dr. Stephens said to Liberty. “And I frankly recommend you don’t. But if you’re not going to leave, I would be much obliged if you would bring this man some water.”

Liberty backed out of the room, her wobbly knees threatening to betray her.

Amelia grabbed her by the elbow in the hallway. “You can’t.”

She licked her lips. “I can’t what?”

“You were about to bring them water, weren’t you? Don’t you care this is the enemy? It was a Yankee gun that shot this Rebel. You want to waste our ammunition? If you help this man live, he will go right back and try to kill our own men. You can’t help, Liberty. You will only make things worse.”

Memory ripped open inside her.
You can’t help, Liberty.
It was Aunt Helen’s voice.
You can’t do anything right. Don’t try to help, you will just make things worse.
Every time Libbie tried to learn something new, this was the mantra driven into her head. This was why Bella had to teach her the most basic things about keeping house. Liberty’s lips thinned as her mind spun back to the day she heard that Levi was injured. Weren’t these the same words that had held her back from going to him?
You can’t help. Don’t even try. You will only make things worse.
The forked tongue of deception had flickered in her ear, and she had believed the lie long enough to cause unending regret.

Liberty found her voice. “I can help. I’m going to help. This man is no longer a threat to the Union army, but he is still someone’s son, brother, or husband.”

Amelia’s eyes shimmered. “And what about
your
husband, Liberty?
Putting away your mourning clothes is one thing, but deliberately helping the army that put him in the ground? Have you lost your mind, child?”

Libbie swayed with the force of Amelia’s anger.

Then she tasted her own. She was not a child. Even when she was young, she had had no childhood, and her prime courting years were spent in mourning.

“Aren’t you known around here for your patriotism, your sacrifice? You told me they call you the Widow of Gettysburg. How would it look for you to turn your back on everything the Union stands for?”

“I take a different view of it.” She moved to sidestep her, but Amelia blocked her path.

“Your name is Liberty.
Liberty.
Will you make a mockery of your very name by aiding the enemy of freedom itself? Whether you like it or not, young lady, you are at a crossroads. You must decide, today—this moment—who you are. And then act like it.”

The words buffeted Libbie’s ears.
Decide who I am?
It seemed too large a question to ask over the simple request for some water. But she did know who she did not want to be. A woman of guilt and regret. A woman who hid behind the lie she could not possibly do any good. Those were skins that itched and chafed, the scales she wanted to shed, as she had shed her Widow’s Weeds.

“I am going to help. There is little I can do, but I will do it.”

“They will ruin your house.”

“I am going to help.”

“They will take everything from you, Liberty. Your past, your present, your future.”

The sound of tearing fabric split the air between them as men tore her linens to shreds.
They are only sheets.

“Where is the water?” the doctor growled from inside the room.

Amelia remained planted in the hallway, but Libbie pushed past her, grabbed two pails from the kitchen and ran out to the well. The breath of the battle blew in her face, choked her, as she pumped. With
each splash of water into the pail, she told herself she was doing the right thing.

The pails full, she carefully carried them in through the back door, grabbed a couple of old tin dippers from the kitchen, and walked to the great hall.

She gasped. While she had been pumping the water, men had brought in hay from the barn and spread it all over the floors, every inch, until it looked like her furniture had been brought out to the barn. Several more men had been carried in from the ambulances lining up outside the house, and their groaning mingled with the distant roar of battle. Blood darkened the straw beneath broken and shattered—and missing—limbs.

“God! God! Oh God!” one cried as he clawed for a leg that was not there.

Liberty could avert her gaze but with sloshing pails in her hands, she could not stop up her ears as she navigated a path through the men back to Amelia’s room. One man called out for his mother. Another cursed her up and down when she nearly stepped on him, dribbling some precious water down the side of her bucket. One of them
—whistled?

Slowly, she turned, and found Major, completely unbothered by the grotesque chorus, licking a soldier’s face and nuzzling against his chest for affection—though whether it was to receive or bestow it, Liberty could not tell. She watched in awe as the former regimental canine did his work, blind to the color of the uniforms. He gently nudged their faces, offered a paw in handshake, and even laid his huge, black, one-eyed head on a drummer boy’s chest while the boy clutched his fur and wept into his neck.

A tug on her skirt. She looked down. “Water?” he said.

She set down her pails, fished a dipper out of her apron pocket and poured some water into his mouth. He choked and sputtered. “Here,” she said, and lifted his head onto her lap. “Let’s try again.” This time, a few tablespoonfuls made it into his parched throat. He looked up at her
and smiled, a beautiful smile. “Be my girl?”

“What?” Nervous laughter escaped her.

“Oh come on.” He lifted a blood-gloved hand from his arm. “Old saw-bones will take it off soon, and I’ve seen too many fellers give up their limbs only to lose their lives soon after. Always wanted a sweetheart to know I would be missed once I left this earth. Just never got around to it. Won’t you say you’ll be mine?”

“I—I’m a Yankee, you understand.”

“Don’t you worry about that. I won’t hold it against you, if you won’t hold it against me that I’m messing up your house like this. Just be my girl.”

Ridiculous request.
A dying wish.

“Just pretend, just let me pretend, somebody’s going to care when I die. Such a pretty lie. I don’t believe it would be a sin if you and I both know it ain’t true, would it? If we just agree upon it?”

Liberty’s heart buckled. “I’ll be your girl.” She forced a smile through her tears.

“Nice to meet you. My name is Isaac. I never dreamed I’d have such a pretty girl as you, Miss …”

“Liberty.” She smiled again. “My name is Liberty.”

“Well if that don’t just beat all.” His eyes closed. “The very thing we’re fighting for. ‘Give me Liberty or give me death’ …” He faded, and Liberty stood.

“Nurse!” someone called. She spun on her heel to find the owner of the voice. “Water! Nurse!”
Is that what I am now?
Her rebellious stomach rejected the idea as she crushed the straw beneath her feet. But it did not matter what they called her. She would give them water.

When she finally arrived in Amelia’s room, Dr. Stephens instructed her to put the pails down and go fetch more. “You see only dozens of men now. There will be hundreds. Maybe more. Each will have a wound needing to be washed and dressed. And each will need to drink. Every bowl, every pail, every pan you have—fill it. It will not be too much. Go, nurse!”

“I’m not a nurse. My name is—”

“Not important. What matters is what you do. Now go! Nurse!” It was a verb, not a noun. Right now, who she was did not matter. Her actions did. This time, she would make them count.

I
know a shortcut.”

Hettie Shriver led her daughters, Tillie, and Bella down Baltimore Street, while cannons boomed incessantly, until veering off the road to cut into Evergreen Cemetery. A placard at the entrance read, “All persons are prohibited from destroying any flower or shrubs within these grounds.” Inside, Union soldiers planted their cannon, and removed marble headstones from the graves, laying them flat on the lush green grass.

“Hurry along.” An officer wiped the sweat from his brow. “You are in great danger of being shot. The Rebels will fire their shells at us here any moment.”

The women needed no other persuasion. Hettie lifted Sadie, Bella carried Mollie, and along with Tillie they fairly ran off the hill. A glance back toward the seminary showed the confusion of the battle. Troops
double-timed into their positions, shells bursting in the air above them to form a great battle cloud over the ridge. Invisible waves of undulating air swept over Bella before each artillery blast could be heard.

This was no place for little girls. It was no place for women at all.

Once on Taneytown Road, they slacked their pace, put the girls down to walk on their own again, and caught their breath. Bella read in Hettie’s face the fierce mother love that would stop at nothing to protect her daughters, and knew it was the same love that had sent Tillie Pierce away from her mother, to safety. It was love that drove Moses’s mother to put him in a basket and send him down the Nile River.

Love like that was easy for Bella to understand.
Away from danger, whatever the cost.
Even if it meant not being his mother anymore. Yes, Bella knew. She knew the pain of separation, like a chamber of her heart being ripped away. Bella clutched at her chest, felt the erratic beating against her hand. She could live with a heart that was less than whole. She could not live with herself if she hadn’t done everything in her power to ensure her daughter would be safe from the kind of life Bella had known.
Where is she now? Is she safe?

An ambulance wagon overtook them then. Hettie called out, “What news?”

“Hard fighting,” said the soldier. “General Reynolds shot through the head already this forenoon. He lies in back, we must see his body to safety. I would offer you a ride, but with a corpse in the back … it would not be pleasant for you or the children.” The wagon continued to roll by.

“Where was the general killed?” Bella called out after them.

“In a field west of Seminary Ridge. We must go.”

Liberty.
The Holloway Farm was west of Seminary Ridge. The fighting could have been a mile or two distant from her, or it could have been within sight of her front porch. And she was alone. Bella’s heart flipped.

“Bella.” Hettie, several paces ahead of her on the road by now, looked over her shoulder at her. “Why ever are you just standing there? This is no time for dawdling.”

Mud sucked at Bella’s shoes, holding her there on the road as she
turned her head toward the boom of cannons and rattle of musketry. The smoke over Seminary Ridge glowed orange with fire. Finally, “I must go.”

“Yes! So make haste!”

“Not with you.”

“What?” Hettie retraced her steps in the mud until she stood, chest heaving, right in front of Bella. “Where will you go?”

“Miss Holloway is alone. Over there, in that mess.” She pointed west.

Hettie huffed. “I admire your loyalty to your employer, but may I remind you, I am your employer too, and today, Wednesday, is your day to serve
me.
And I am ordering you to come with us. I need your help—and besides, getting yourself killed will not help Liberty Holloway.”

The words hung in the air between them. Bella looked once more at the ridge. How was she planning on getting through the lines of battle?