Widow of Gettysburg (29 page)

“Wait,” gasped Liberty when they reached the first floor, with more women trudging up behind them with their living cargo. “I cannot stand this a moment longer. May we set you down for just a moment before continuing on?”

They lowered him gently and Liberty pulled the back of her skirt up between her legs and tucked it into the belt at her waist, forming pantaloons.

“Miss Liberty!”

“I don’t care what it looks like. I’m completely covered, anyway. There is simply no way I would be able to carry these men up four flights of stairs tripping over this skirt with every step. I’m quite sure the patients prefer their safety to propriety.” She paused. “Try it!”

Chuckling, Bella came up with her own solution by simply gathering her hem and tying a knot at one side of the skirt, effectively freeing
her ankles for movement. “Ready.”

They bent at the knees, grasped the handles of the stretcher and hefted the patient up once more. Three more flights of stairs to go.

At the second floor landing, Liberty’s arms ached from holding the man’s weight above her head while climbing the stairs. They switched places, and Liberty went backwards for the next flight, stooping low while Bella held high.

At the third floor, her muscles quivered with effort.

By the time they reached the fourth floor, they fairly screamed for mercy. Compared to the damp cool of the basement, this top level of the building felt like an oven. Once they moved the patient to a blanket on the floor, Liberty pulled Bella aside. “I don’t know how many more times I can do this!”

“Can you do once more?”

Liberty blinked. “Yes.”

“Then just think about the one more time. One more patient, one more life saved from drowning in a seminary.”

And they did. Again, and again, and again.

After just five patients, they had carried a total of seven hundred fifty pounds of soldier up twenty
flights
of stairs.

There were many more to carry.

Both women were panting for breath on the first floor before going down for their sixth man. “How on earth did this happen?” Liberty asked a patient not far from where they stood.

The man pulled on some new woolen stockings, then told the story. “Last Wednesday, the wounded men were taken into the seminary for shelter during the heat of battle. On Thursday and Friday, the Rebels planted a battery just behind the seminary. Our boys, attempting to silence it, could not avoid throwing some shells into the building.”

Some entered several of the rooms, and injured one of the end walls, and the basement became the only safe place for the patients. The Rebels took control of the town and building on July 1 and captured all medical supplies. Some Union doctors stayed with the wounded in
captivity but had no instruments to perform amputations, no medicines to relieve pain, no food or refreshment of any kind.

“Then the rains came after the battle,” Liberty prompted.

“Sure enough, and the basement flooded. But the door had been closed over the stairway this whole time, until one of your ladies there heard someone calling out today.”

Liberty shuddered. “The poor men. How much they have endured.”

“We’ve many more to fetch.” Bella arched her back and rubbed her sore muscles. “‘The LORD is my strength and my shield; my heart trusted in him, and I am helped.’ Do you remember that psalm, Miss Liberty?”

She nodded.

“Your turn. Give me a verse with strength.”

Liberty smiled. From the time Liberty was a child, whenever Bella wanted to encourage her, she quoted the Bible to her. At some point in her adolescence, Liberty began quoting it back. “The Lord will give strength unto his people; the Lord will bless his people with peace.”

Her soft brown skin shining, Bella slid her glance toward the stairs. “Let’s take our strength and peace to His people. Ready?”

“I’m sure they are.”

The work went slowly, but steadily. Though their muscles still burned, Bella and Liberty volleyed Scriptures up the stairs whenever they could spare the breath, and down the stairs as they passed other laboring women, Catholic and Protestant, all grateful for the reinforcements from God’s Word. A few men even joined in with their own favorite verses on God’s strength.

God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.

My flesh and my heart faileth: but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever.

But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.

Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God:
I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee.

And He did. Though it had taken hours to accomplish, thestretcher bearers had moved one hundred men out of a flooded basement and up to the fourth floor of the seminary. Fifteen thousand pounds of living, breathing cargo, four hundred flights up, and four hundred flights down, covering a total of thirteen thousand stairs. Liberty’s muscles felt like rubber, her palms bubbled with blisters, and another dress was ruined.

But not one man had been lost.

“WHAT IN MY GIRLHOOD
was a teeming and attractive landscape spread out by the Omnipotent Hand to teach us of His Goodness, has by His direction, become a field for profound thought, where, through coming ages, will be taught lessons of loyalty, patriotism, and sacrifice.”

—MATILDA “TILLIE” PIERCE ALLEMAN, Gettysburg schoolgirl, age 15

“WHILE I WOULD NOT
care to live ever that summer again, yet I would not willingly erase that chapter from my life’s experience; and I shall always be thankful that I was permitted to minister to the wants and soothe the last hours of some of the brave men who lay suffering and dying for the dear old flag.”

—ELIZABETH SALOME “SALLIE” MYERS, Gettysburg schoolteacher

 

L
iberty dredged up a smile as a bandage-wrapped soldier shuffled over to her in red plush—slippered feet, a handkerchief in his hand. She had gotten somewhat used to her own smell, but obviously, her stink was ripe to those who hadn’t. Still he approached.

“Hello, beautiful.” His tobacco-stained smile looked more like a sneer. Liberty bristled.

“Do I know you?”

“Of course you do. I’m Jonathan Welch. And you’re Liberty Holloway.”

He looked to be at least forty years old, pale and puffy, with eyes like raisins sunk into a hot cross bun. Shock tremored through Liberty.
No.
“No.”

“No? What do you mean, no? Aren’t you Liberty Holloway?
Widow of a man who fought at First Manassas?”

Confusion fogged her mind. “Yes, but—how do you know that?” She glanced at Bella, whose brown eyes were narrowed on this soldier.

“I told you. I’m Jonathan Welch. We’ve been writing letters nigh unto two years now—except for when you stopped responding to me about eight months ago. Why was that, anyhow, Libbie? Or did they just get lost in the mail?” He sneered again and snorted. Was that a laugh?

“Her name is
Liberty
.” Bella’s voice was firm. “But you may call her Miss Holloway.”

“Well excuse me, Chocolate! But after so many letters, I do believe I’ve earned the right of using her first name. Or maybe I’ll just call you Gorgeous.”

“You? You’re Johnny?”

He rolled his eyes. “As in Johnny Reb? No, never. It’s Jonathan, only. Or you can call me Handsome.”

Johnny Reb.
Just call me Johnny.
Had she been such a fool? The room spun. She fought to maintain her composure.

“When is the last time you wrote me a letter?” She steeled herself for the answer.

“I wrote you one as soon as we got to Gettysburg. Best one I ever wrote, too. Pinned it to the inside of my jacket.”

Bella hissed in Liberty’s ear. “Miss Liberty, I don’t trust this man. We’d best be on our way.” She helped Libbie to her feet, and her muscles throbbed in protest.

“Where is that letter now?”

“It’s the darnedest thing, Lib. I was wounded in a wheat field, hit my head on the way down,” he pointed to his bandage, “and when I came to, my jacket was gone. Thank goodness the scoundrel didn’t take my trousers, too.”

“He’s lying.” Bella held Liberty’s elbow as her knees threatened to buckle. “Don’t listen to him. He’s making this up. You know who the real Johnny is. This man is a fool, like Isaac.”

Jonathan frowned. “The real Johnny? Have you got a Johnny of
your own now?” His eyes popped. “Is he pretending to be me? Did he have my jacket?”

Liberty stared at the man in front of her. Was he an imposter? Or was the man at her home the fraud? The one whose life she’d helped save, the one she’d dressed in her late husband’s clothes. The one who had drawn her out of her old grief, then turned her away in his own.

“You’re right, Bella. It’s time to go.” To Jonathan, she added: “Stay away from me.”

“Aw, that’s not right at all! You’ve fallen for him, haven’t you? He used me! He used my letter to get you! Wait! Listen, listen: ‘Never forget how much I love you, and if my last breath escapes me on the battlefield, it will whisper your name.’ Did the letter say that? I wrote that!”

“Don’t follow me,” she threw over her shoulder.

“Suit yourself. You’re not the only widow I’ve set my sights on you know. There’s thousands of you out there. You’re not so special. Your hair springs every which way, did you know that? I like a woman who knows how to use a comb! Did you hear me? You’re nothing special!” His taunts chased after them as they left the building, nipping at her ears. She never cared to see this Jonathan Welch again.

But if this is Jonathan Welch, who is the man who has stolen my heart?
Her face burned with mortification.

Outside the seminary, night shrouded the blighted land. But it was nothing compared to the darkness in her heart.

The boom sounded so loudly Harrison Caldwell jumped awake and slammed his body to the floor, disoriented, heart racing as his eyes adjusting to the darkness. Slowly, shapes came into focus: newspapers, a bookcase crammed with too many books, a cup of stale coffee, a half-eaten square of gingerbread from his landlady, a book turned upside
down on the arm of a chair. His fingers clutched the fibers of a rug, not grass, or mud, or stone.

He was not in battle, but home, in his boardinghouse in Philadelphia—and drenched in sweat, though all he wore were his silkaline drawers and undershirt.

Of course.
The blast he had heard was only Fort Brown, the cannon sitting at the foot of a flagstaff on Washington Avenue. It was a signal that throngs of hungry men—soldiers or prisoners—would be here before too long. At the sound, no matter the time of day or night, housewives all over the old Southwark neighborhood left their homes and families to prepare coffee, bread, beef, potatoes, and pie at either the Cooper Shop Volunteer Refreshment Saloon or the Union Volunteer Refreshment Saloon. Both were run entirely without help of the government, and between the two of them, seven barrels of coffee and fifteen thousand cooked rations were prepared in the average day.