Homeland (22 page)

Now that the Federals are closing in on Knoxville, we’re getting Federal corn and Federal beef, and most of Emory’s men ride horses with
U.S
. branded on their hips. Once they even hit Greeneville, and hanged two men whose sons had gone to fight for the Union.

I kept up the corn-patch Den and Mammy started, and in the full of the moon would sneak ears out, and hide them in the rafters of their old house. It was pretty scary, because there’s no way of knowing who’s riding around the countryside at night, but I was lucky; I got about three bushels up there before the nights got too dark to see my way. Good thing I did, too, because Pa took and handed all the rest of the crop over to the militia. Emory is teaching me to set trap-lines and dead-falls in the woods, and I’m pretty careful only to bring home part of what I catch. This takes up the greater part of my day.

I long for Justin’s books, up in Skull Cave. I’ve been up there three times, to make sure they’re safe, and it’s hard not to bring them back. I’m so desperate to read something—anything. So desperate
to have company other than Julia, who goes cheerfully about her housework, singing. Sometimes I’ll go in and talk to Tom, but between the pain and the moonshine the boys trade for him—it’s the only painkiller he has—he has little to say. Alone in the dark of my room these moonless nights, I listen to the voices of the men downstairs. I know any book I brought would end up kindling the fires. I’m sure they’d read it first—but it would end up in the fire in the end.

What are you reading now? Do you still take Miss Mercy across to Isle au Haut? Kiss her for me.

[not sent]

Dearest Susanna,

If I can not take comfort in reading these days—and how sorely I miss the disreputable Becky’s quest for gentility!—at least all the simple summer labors have the effect of quieting my heart. And, too, I find—set into my grief like jewels in sand—moments of beauty and peace: two yellow-winged butterflies playing over the long grass at the pond’s edge; the taste of
perfect
blackberry jam. Peggie is still listless, and of little help to Papa, when Mother has one of her head
aches. But, at least both are able—and Mother, too, often—to cut apples to dry, to thread miles of beans, to braid onion-tops, and churn butter. Like squirrels, we line our nest. All of my salary has gone to paying a man to cut the winter’s wood, and now he is gone.

A hundred and seven men crossed to Belfast last week. Draftees—to be examined for entry into the Army: one island man in five. A further forty were drafted, but vanished into the woods or took refuge on the myriad hundreds of islands that dot our Bay. Every man owns a boat, even if just a little pea-pod for trapping lobsters. Almost thirty men were able to raise the three hundred dollars needed to buy their way out, including Mother’s friend Jem Duffy, who mortgaged his house and farm to do so.

Papa returned to New Haven yesterday. I wish I could have crossed with him, and not simply walked him down to Green’s Landing. But every dollar counts now, and I could not spare the days from my work, nor he from his. He has lost flesh this summer, and looked so tired, bidding good-by to Peggie and Mother in the dark kitchen. Will has said he will make sure the rest of the wood gets in and stacked.

Home with the twilight, which falls earlier now, to find the laundry yet needing to be soaked for tomorrow’s washing, and the butter needing to be churned. It is midnight now, the kitchen full of softly-steaming wash-tubs, and this dark will not have passed when I must wake again for the milking.

A curious circumstance. Coming to the Town Landing this afternoon, and finding Will absent, I went aboard the
Lady Anne
, to put Mercy in the little pen Will made for her out of two lobster-traps. My daughter seems determined to grow up to be the heroine of a Shakespeare play, or of a novel by Fenimore Cooper—or if possible, the heroine’s intrepid companion, who actually does all the firing of pistols and climbing down ivy and riding sixty miles
à l’Amazone
in a night—rather than the more demure maiden of Miss Emily St. Aubert’s cut! Thus, she requires confinement while on-board, to her great disgruntlement.

In quest of the water-jar, I looked into the little “cabin,” a sort of rabbit-hutch on the deck, and saw, among the packages that Will takes for delivery, one wrapped in a shirt made of faded red calico, as if someone had cut up a worn dress. I knew the dress. I’ve seen its wearer about Green’s Landing all summer, and only last week saw her two children in shirts of the identical cloth. Wrapped in that shirt were two loaves of bread, a paper screw containing salt and another of bird-shot, a chunk of cheese and a package of fish-hooks; information which I put together with my knowledge that this woman’s husband was one of those who had disappeared after being drafted. There was no address at all in the package—few packages that Will delivers contain them, for he knows everyone on the islands, even as he knows every islet and rock-ledge of Merchant Row and the Bay beyond. By which I cleverly deduce that Will is the one taking provision to the forty-some men who have chosen to leave their families and go into hiding, rather than be drafted.

[not sent]

Dear Cora,

Sometimes I pretend I’ve just gotten a letter from you! Sometimes I pretend that one day I will, or could. Thank you for the kind words you would have sent, and that long list of books you’ve read. When I go to bed at night now, I’ll take one down off that imaginary list, and start to read it through, starting with Chapter One. Last night I got up to Mr. Collins asking Elizabeth Bennet to marry him, and her father telling her, “I’m afraid you must inevitably lose one of your parents; for if you do not marry him, your mother says she will never speak to you again, and if you
do
marry him,
I
will never speak to you …” Or words to that effect. Looking back, I realize how much Mr. Bennet is like Pa: funny and charming. And never there when you really need him.

Pa is gone again. I could see it coming, ever since Regal was killed, two weeks ago. Even before Regal’s death, I could see Pa was getting bored. But of course he said that “Someone has to represent this section where his voice will be heard, and if I do say so myself, I’m a sort of unofficial advisor to old Jeff …” Which is not what Aunt Sally wrote, back in July. Julia fainted (need I say it?) and there was tumult, as you can see from my sketch. I hope you like the other sketches. I still try to keep up with Mr. Cameron’s instruction, and your own urging, to keep myself prepared to go to the art academy, though it seems very far away now. I can’t see how I’ll manage—though once the War is over, I
know
I’ll be able to figure something out. Right now I simply feel trapped in a box, and waiting, and praying I don’t starve to death before everyone gets tired of fighting.

In the meantime, berries are ripe all through the woods, and I gather nuts to beat any squirrel in the county. I have about six places in the woods—cabins and farmhouses mostly, where people have been driven out, and tiny clearings in the laurel hells where I’ve got the berries laid out to dry—where with luck the bush-whackers won’t stumble across them. They know the houses are empty, so don’t go through them again. I’ve been watching for chickens and pigs, too, that got away from foragers on both sides. I’ve seen tracks, and have found several nests, but haven’t caught anything yet.

Sometimes it’s pretty frightening. Last week I found a man hanging in the woods, Union or Secesh I couldn’t tell, but he’d been there awhile. But to tell you the truth, I’d rather forage than do housework. In addition to the food situation, all those things we kept stores of are pretty much gone, too, like scouring-sand and soap: we have plenty of ashes, but no fat, and if we had any, we’d eat it rather than make soap with it. It also means even if I had books I couldn’t read them. I’ve cut pine-knots to burn at night, but the light they give isn’t good, and I’m always terrified someone’s going to knock one over, and burn down the house. The men sleep on the porch, and burn pine-knot torches to play cards in the evening. (Drunk, of course: Pappy Weevil’s still seems to be the only going business left in the county. I think the boys provide him with grain taken from the Federals, as part payment for the resulting liquor.) When the weather turns—if the fighting isn’t over by then—I don’t know what we’ll do.

[sketches]

It’s funny: I still miss Payne terribly (I wear his clothes, when I go foraging), but barely think about my brother Regal at all. I never really knew him, even in good times. Then when he rode with the militia he changed even more. He hated our neighbors for becoming Pa’s enemies, and hated the world, I think, for no longer being what it was. I try to think of any book that talks about this change in the heart: in
Sense and Sensibility
, the Dashwood Sisters are just too
brave and good to turn sour that way, when they lose their home. Can you think of one?

Julia has cut one of Gaius’s coats into a uniform jacket for Emory, and dyed it. (You can make a pretty good dye out of walnut-shells.) Sometimes I’ll go into the nursery, and wonder, about Henriette and Tristan and Leonella. I try to think of some giant Mr. Thackeray in the sky, the Author who’s chronicling their adventures, wherever they are, so they’ll return unexpectedly in Chapter LVII, and we’ll all cry, “Oh, my gosh,
that’s
where they were!” and have Tristan fall in love with Mercy (they both being sixteen by then).

Until then, as Don Quixote says, “Patience, and shuffle the cards!”

[sketches]

[not sent]

Dearest Susanna

President Lincoln has called for three hundred thousand more volunteers! Will is disgusted: “The man has frittered away the greatest gift—the greatest weapon—ever laid in the hand of a ruler: an army of volunteers who fight, not for booty, but for a cause they believe to be just. And what does he put to command it? Political hacks who can get his party votes, like Burnside and Sickles. And when they
get their men butchered through sheer stupidity, and no one wants to play anymore, what right does he have, to continue the slaughter with men who have families to feed, and their lives to live?”

The fleet has returned. Uncle M and Papa will slaughter our bull-calf Saturday, so that we can begin with the cheese-making, while there is yet enough milk coming to do so.

Too tired, to write more than a line. But that line is, I miss you, my friend.

Last Friday the moon being full, I went with Will, as he sailed among the islands with provisions for the men in hiding. I have done this once before, ten days ago, with less of a moon, and later in the night. On both occasions I left Mercy with Mrs. Barter for the night, telling her that I feared to cross with my daughter by moonlight, which is true. Fig N—from Green’s Landing, hiding on Spoon Island—is cutting wood there, which Will delivers and sells, the money to support Fig’s wife and children.

Cheese-making all week, and heavy labor, cutting and mixing the curds. Mother no longer asks why we are in mourning, but I see her face puzzled sometimes. I dare not ask what it is that she has forgotten. In the evenings I read to her from the Bible, while Peggie churns butter, neglected in the press of all other work of the day. Always so tired, and it seems, never a moment to myself. The pasture is a glowing lake of goldenrod.

The Grand Recitation: the harvest of
my
summer’s labors. Small girls hesitantly reciting “The Kitten and the Tiger,” boys parsing long sentences at the blackboard, or identifying State Capitals upon wavery maps that could be Arabia for all the resemblance they bear to the States of the Union. A dinner in my honor by the parents of my flock, which touched me very much. Yet, every cent of the money I made is already gone. Salt is forty cents a box at Lufkin’s store, that was eight cents a box the year before last. The first week I came home, I remember flour was five dollars a barrel; it’s now twenty-two, and thread is almost a dollar a spool. Mother and I both need shoes, and I’ve arranged to trade butter to Mr. Harrod in Southeast Harbor, to have ours re-soled. There are signs all over the island, asking us to donate a portion of our crops to the Army, as well.

It is cruelly cold tonight, but calm. Coming home across the bay, the stars seemed bright, like diamonds on a curtain, burning clear down to the horizon. Peggie, bless her, had the house spotless for Papa’s homecoming, and together we read the Bible to Mother, who had a headache today, the worst in weeks. Will gave me, as he always does, a great quantity of newspapers, but even the news that Grant’s army has arrived to break the Confederate seige of Chattanooga brought me no comfort. First, because it is so close to Greeneville, to Bayberry
—surely
you are not there, my rash girl?—to all those people I met and still think of, kindly and with terrible concern. And second … In September’s battles there, when the Confederates trapped the Union forces in the town, twenty-five thousand men were killed or wounded.
Twenty-five thousand!
Nearly one man in three, of those who left their homes to fight!