Lavinia Wheeler stopped the buggy before her house to let off her driver, George. He stepped stiffly down from the buggy, cast a grim look at her, and started to climb the steps to the front door.
"You tell Callie and Bathsheba I'll be right in now, George!" she called after him.
His frown deepened. It had taken an argument followed by a twinge of his lumbago to convince him to allow her to take care of stabling the mule and putting the buggy away. Even with a pain that he described as a bar of hot iron across his back, it sat poorly with him.
The evening sky had not yet darkened; sunset's glow lingered in the velvety, brilliant blue that still peeked out between the stars. If she looked westward she could just barely see the mountains. If she let her eyes drop slightly to the fields outside the town, she could see a constellation of campfires marking the Federals' campground. Someone was singing; she could hear the notes plainly upon the freshening breeze. She raised her head and listened, and in a moment she caught a snatch of softly voiced words.
...dying on the old camp ground...
The words made her shudder. She had seen too much of death in the past three years, death in her family, distant death touching those around her with sons, fathers and sweethearts fighting on battlefields whose names she could barely pronounce. In the past week she had smelled death, and in her own house had done her best to fight off death, for she didn't want anyone to feel the anguish that she had witnessed, no matter from what side of the Mason-Dixon line he might have come.
Her memories of the arrival of the armies and the battle had the murky quality of scenes dredged up from the dreaming depths of memory after fifty years of oblivion. They seemed set, like motions in a dance glimpsed from a distance by fitful light. And yet, only a few days had passed.
General Dillon's Alabama troops had come streaming toward the town, and she had heard that there would be fighting. Women and men screamed, children ran about shrieking, weapons were checked and then tucked into belts or pockets. Her neighbors had loaded wagons with treasures chosen with the illogic of utter panic and left town.
She had chosen to remain: she was a Wheeler, after all. Even if that had not been so, her mule, Absalom, was old and easily tired now. He could not pull a cart loaded with her belongings even if she, working alone in the absence of her servants, all but three of which had run away, had been able to load it. She had left her house and gone to the town, moving among the empty outbuildings as though in a dream, staring around at the deserted houses and listening to the thunder from the north growing louder and deeper until it replaced her heartbeat.
Boom!
The sound had been followed by a crash and a fountain of earth surging skyward and then spattering about her like rain. She had picked up her skirts and run all the way back to her house. She had flung the door wide and run inside, calling for her people to gather up their things, especially the pottery, and hurry to the root cellar
Lavinia sighed and leaned back against the doorpost, trying to remember. She had a confused impression of herself huddled against the wall with her best shawl about her head and her arms full of pots, wishing she had never left the safety of Savannah to come west to her summer home in Wheelerville. Callie and George, the two old servants who had been with her family since their births, huddled in beside her as the earth splintered and screamed about her with the sound of human voices. Bathsheba, Callie's fifteen-year-old granddaughter, had been with them, crying.
Somehow the hours had passed until she had looked around in the painful stillness and had known that it was over. She had climbed the steps from the cellar and emerged dazed and disheveled to the smell of iron and earth, raw meat and sweat.
The ground was ripped and red, sweet spring grass jagged with pieces of twisted, broken metal. The old willow tree she used to sit beneath was splintered, half of it split away from the trunk and leaning crazily toward the ground.
She had turned in a circle, her hand pressed against her mouth, her wide eyes taking in the damage, the dead and mutilated horses, the twisted wreckage of human bodies, as the stillness faded horribly into shrieks of pain. She had blinked, looked down, and seen the men lying in the streets. To her dazed eyes they looked as though they had been bathed in blood and set in the sun to dry. People were moving among them, stooping now and then, speaking in tones barely audible above the din. She had begun to tremble.
"Water!"
The quavering word had broken the spell of horror that seemed to have been laid on her. She looked down to see a man lying almost at her feet, one leg twisted and useless behind him.
Her hand had gone to her mouth again; she had whirled and run for the well. The bucket had splashed in and emerged dripping, and she had given the man his drink.
She had straightened - she could feel the stretch of cramped muscles even now - and had looked around. Men were moving through the town, bending over the huddled forms.
She had felt George's hand on her elbow. He was telling her to go inside the house and lock the door, and she seemed to remember telling him to gather what supplies he could and throw the house wide open. And then she had gone to the surgeons, located their chief and spoken to him.
Lavinia blinked. The smells and sounds were gone, and she was standing in the peaceful twilight and looking at her house. All was well for the time being, and she could go inside.
Lavinia speared a piece of sweet potato and eyed it thoughtfully. "Did you use honey on this, Callie?" she asked. "I thought I told you to keep it for the men."
"You may have done so," Callie said, "But I judged it best to give it to you. There's more where it came from, and you need the strengthening. Do you want to faint in the middle of your work?"
"I don't think honey will keep me from fainting if I get sick," Lavinia said with a smile. "You pamper me too much." She picked up a fried chicken wing and bit into it.
"Someone's got to do it!" Callie said. "Well, you went to see that Yankee general, just as the doctor said. Did it accomplish anything?"
"Maybe," Lavinia answered, turning the bones over with her hand. "He said he'd consider setting a guard over the pottery, but nothing was decided tonight."
Callie frowned at her. "Pottery!" she sniffed. "He'd be better advised to assign a guard for you! I told you as much!"
"I'll be fine," Lavinia said. She ignored Callie's expression and ate the rest of her supper in silence. "Thank you, Callie," she said when she was finished. "Are our guests comfortable now?"
"They're as comfortable as they can be this side of the grave, Miss Lavinia," she said. Callie had converted to Methodism twenty years before and had embraced its tenets with the fervor of a fanatic, though to her mind it was a little too cheerful. She eyed Lavinia's tired face and said, "I'll tend them this night. You won't be needed."
"Thank you, Callie," Lavinia said. "I'll go upstairs now."
"See you do!" Callie snapped. "Get some sleep!" She watched as Lavinia gathered her skirts and set a foot on the stairs. "I've told Bathsheba to warm the sheets for you. Heaven alone knows what we'd have done if she'd run off like the rest!"
Lavinia smiled wearily at her. "We'd have managed," she said.
"Just barely," Callie said. "The good Lord said we wouldn't be overcome, but He didn't say we wouldn't be beaten half to death before we triumphed. Well." Her expression softened. "Good night, Lamb," she said.
Lavinia smiled back at her. "Sleep tight, Callie," she said, and went up the stairs to her bedroom.
She had moved into the large bedroom that her parents had once shared, leaving her narrow, whitewashed bed without a moment's regret. She supposed it was sinful to enjoy a wide, deep bed; at least Callie said so, but she had no intention of leaving it, or of eschewing the books she read abed at night.
A large armoire stood against the far wall. She went to it and opened it and looked within as though it held in its shadows the key to her strength.
The shelves that had once held lavender-scented linens and petticoats were now crowded with pottery of all shapes and heights, all the colors of the earth. A forest of faces gazed back at her, and ranked before and behind them were ramekins, plates, cups, tankards, all formed of the earth, and all very, very old.
She took the largest one and touched the rough glaze. One of the settlers had dipped this in the James river and drunk from it. He and his family had probably sat of an evening and gazed into the fire, and maybe set this jug on the hearth to warm the wine that was in it. It must have been a hard life, as she had said to General Stanley. Hard, exhausting, frightening at times. But surely, surely nothing like this time of trial that had overtaken her world and split it apart!
She sighed and held the jug closer. Everything had changed so terribly that she felt lost. All the set phrases, all the carefully choreographed motions of life had broken down and fled before the maelstrom. Now it was important to bring some ceremony, some sanity back to everyday living. One clung to what was decent, one did what was right. But it was proving to be a strain..
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