by William Gear
Reverend Nelson laughed and laid a hand on James’s shoulder. “I’ll mention it to Isaac, as no doubt you will, but he’s got enough trouble given the state of the banking industry. Bank notes, Federal dollars, Confederate currency coming in. For the moment everything is chaos.”
Every time Doc glanced Ann Marie’s way, her smile would warm as if in encouragement.
Dr. Morton added, “Things should settle down now that Mr. Lincoln’s had his nose bloodied at Manassas Junction. We’ve established ourselves as a force to be reckoned with.”
Doc took the glass of lemonade that Mrs. Morton handed him. “I hope you are right, Benjamin. My fears, however, are that this is far from over.”
“How is that, Dr. Hancock?” the Reverend asked.
“I suspect we have a long and rocky road to hoe. The pit in the rooster’s craw, as my father used to say, comes first from the abolitionists. Those people are maniacal in their cause. But with the surrender of Fort Sumter and the drubbing the Federals took at Manassas, Mr. Lincoln has not only his war, but a cause now sanctified in Union blood.”
“Then we shall just have to beat them again and again,” Ann Marie cried with spirit. She shared another beguiling glance with Doc, adding, “It doesn’t seem as if there is a Federal army that can stand against us.”
The Reverend finished his lemonade. “I can tell you that my good friend General Polk has every confidence that he can repulse any Federal incursions into Tennessee. He is even now fortifying the river against Federal gunboats.”
Felicia Morton placed a lace-gloved hand on her husband’s arm, saying, “Enough talk of war, gentlemen. Elijia has prepared a marvelous roasted goose. If you will be so kind as to follow me into the dining room?”
To Doc’s delight, Mrs. Morton seated him beside Ann Marie before the fish was served.
She began by asking, “I hear that you are lodging at the Gayoso House during your stay in Memphis. How do you find it?”
“Quite satisfactory. I’ve enjoyed Memphis. And working with your father has been both challenging and delightful.”
His heart was beating too fast, he felt awkward. Bedazzled by her smile and those sparkling green eyes, he savored just being close to her. Again he caught the faint scent of her perfume as he poured her wine.
“I must confess,” she told him conspiratorially, “when I heard you were from the wilds of Arkansas, and that you wanted to go back there, I wasn’t sure what sort of man you’d be.”
Doc chuckled. “Expected me to be picking my teeth with a Bowie knife? Wiping my mouth on my sleeve?”
“Well, your state does have something of a reputation.”
“I was raised in the backwoods, Miss Morton, so I can tell you it is well deserved.”
“And after that you still wish to return to Arkansas?”
“I’ve seen remarkable changes to the upper White River Valley during my lifetime. With our mountains and streams, last I heard, we have thirty-eight mills and no shortage of tanyards. We’re sawing milled lumber, building furniture, and processing, carding, and weaving more cotton into cloth than in the rest of the state. Most of our textiles are exported to Texas and Missouri.”
“Then, how, Doctor, did you end up in Boston? Was your father a Northern man?”
“Actually his family came from eastern Tennessee. The mountains east of Knoxville. As a young man he ended up in St. Louis. Went west with Colonel Ashley. Trapped beaver. It was there that he met an Englishman, Sir William Drummond Stewart. Stewart encouraged him to read and better his position in society. In the early years we had the only bookshelf in either Benton or Washington Counties.”
She arched a teasing eyebrow that he thought irresistible. “And did he insist that you be the perfect gentleman out there in the wilds with your backwoodsmen, Indians, and bookshelf?”
“That, Miss Morton, was suggested during my medical training. The nicer habits of a gentleman? That was a hard-won skill that I’m still struggling to master. Boston society, more than anywhere, decries the actions of the vulgar, but meeting their standards? Learning which fork to use? I fear that challenged me to an extent far beyond the intricacies of anatomy.”
She laughed. “Father says you’re a natural when it comes to medicine. We really appreciate the help you’ve been giving him.”
“It was fortuitous. I suppose he’s told you how we met?”
“Not really.”
He realized that she had a dusting of freckles across her nose and cheeks.
“A large crate fell upon a workman unloading a wagon on First Street. I happened to be at hand, and while treating him as best I could, was told of your father’s surgery two blocks away. I attended the poor fellow as he was carried to your father’s … and, well, we both worked on him at the same time.”
“That I did hear. Father said it was like you had been working side by side for years.”
“Your father saved the man’s arm while I worked on his leg. Afterward, we enjoyed a sherry, talked for no little time, and he asked if I might be persuaded to occasionally contribute my services to his practice.”
As the various courses were served, Doc barely noticed the food. His entire world had funneled down to Ann Marie: her eyes, her enchanting laugh, and that smile that seemed to wring his very soul.
Too quickly the food was gone, the plates collected. Doc hated to stand, hold her chair, and leave her behind as he retired to the parlor with the men.
“Still thinking of heading back to Arkansas at your first opportunity, Dr. Hancock?” Reverend Nelson asked at the end of the evening. He indicated Ann Marie with a casual tilt of the head. She sat listening attentively to Mrs. Nelson, though she kept sneaking glances Doc’s way. “Someone, I think, would miss your company should you leave.”
“I am sure that Miss Morton has no shortage of gentleman callers, Reverend.”
After he thanked Benjamin and Felicia for their hospitality, Ann Marie stepped forward, a gleam of delight in her eyes. “Do come again, Dr. Hancock. I can’t think of when I have so enjoyed an evening. Mother and I would find your company most agreeable.”
“Of course.”
As he turned to leave, Dr. Morton had a suspiciously satisfied smile on his face.
So smitten was Doc by green eyes, a dusting of freckles, that musical laugh and auburn hair, that he got lost twice on his way back to his room.
5
August 10, 1861
Hoe in hand, Sarah chopped a gap in the ditch bank, watching water flood down the row of maturing green corn, intermixed as it was with spreading squash and the beans just starting their pods. Her bonnet shaded her eyes and face, and her bare feet gripped the grass-covered soil. She’d tied her pale blond hair into a ponytail that hung down her back.
Behind her, Billy used his spade to block yesterday’s diversions and rechannel the ditch water downstream. The garden plot was only six acres, but with the war, food prices—along with everything else—were already soaring. The floodplain fields below the house were covered with twenty acres of wheat, ten of cotton, and five of tobacco.
In the three months since Paw and Butler had left to enlist, gold, silver, and even copper coins had nearly vanished from the country. State-issued Arkansas war bonds had begun to circulate in place of currency, but they were failing. Devalued to seventy cents on the dollar last she’d heard.
Barter—always the heart of the northwestern Arkansas economy—now resurged with a vengeance. Pratt’s store, up on the Telegraph Wire Road, carried only locally produced goods. Down in Fayetteville—so the stories said—merchants’ shelves were picked bare. Only last week General Ben McCulloch had marched his troops north into Missouri to “go whip the Federals.”
Sarah and Billy had taken the springboard up to Elkhorn Tavern to watch them pass. And that was an army? That motley hoard? She’d seen a ragged mismatch of men bearing just about every sort of weapon from flintlock fowling pieces, to muskets, to engraved-and-inlaid hunting rifles. The poorest o
f them, barefoot and half naked, had only carried cane knives. They’d shuffled along, joking and jesting, as they choked Telegraph Wire Road. From the heights, she’d watched them funnel down into Cross Timber Hollow and on into Missouri.
All of her life Paw and Butler had told her stories of armies marching off to war. She’d been forced to read the histories. Armies were supposed to step high with their colorful banners, gleaming armor and steel, and dash and pomp. She’d expected something grand.
To say she’d been disappointed was an understatement.
More than anything, she wanted to get on with her life. Paw had taken her to Little Rock when she was fifteen, and she’d fallen in love with the bustling city. Given Paw’s status in the legislature, she’d been introduced to some of Little Rock’s most prominent ladies. Paw had taken her to one of the Conways’ receptions. Awed by the peoples’ manners, their fine clothes, servants, and the stunningly furnished brick houses they lived in, she felt that night had changed her life. She had marveled at the embroidered—
“Hey!” Billy’s voice snapped her back to the present. “You dreaming again? You don’t cut that bank right soon, it’s gonna wash out the damn ditch!”
She shook herself, chopping with the hoe.
“Let me guess,” Billy told her snidely. “Dreaming of Little Rock again.”
Paw’s house on the upper White might be among the most imposing in Benton County, but compared to what she’d seen in Little Rock, it was less than second rate. “What if I was? I gotta marry somebody. If I stay in Benton County, my choices will be farming, tanning, or tavern trade. Not only do you keep beating up any beau who sets foot here, but I ain’t interested. Now, in Little Rock—”
“You still think Paw’s gonna take you come November?”
“He promised.” Her father made his seasonal journey to the capital every fall. Sure, Paw had his own motives for parading his beautiful blond daughter among Little Rock’s rich and influential. He undoubtedly figured she’d give him an advantage while playing one beau off against another.
Sarah smiled warily. Two could play that game.
She knew exactly the sort of man she’d be interested in. Solid, smart, and ambitious. Little Rock, she’d been led to believe, was bursting with eligible young bachelors. And Paw would be her avenue into the finest parlors in the city.
“Promised, huh?” Billy muttered. “But there’s no telling how the war’s going to reshuffle the deck. Paw might still be fighting.”
“War’s gonna be over soon,” she declared. But Billy had a point. Although in a way he hadn’t intended. Young officers—men who previously had had limited opportunities—would rise to prominence. Everything hinged on finding the right man. Someone she could love and respect. Someone seeking the same advancement of his position. The town belles, however, might have the benefits of the inside track with their fine dresses and houses.
“Which means I just have to be smarter, stronger, and quicker,” she whispered as she frowned down at the ditch.
Quick-eared like an owl, Billy said, “Yeah, I heard all this before. Gonna get your Little Rock gentleman with his big fancy house and slaves. Can’t wait to see how you get around owning slaves. You know how Paw feels about it.”
Sarah shrugged. Paw might rail against slavery. Butler might decry it as immoral. And, raised the way she’d been, the notion of it left her uneasy. But enough to scuttle the deal? Well, she’d have to attend to that problem if and when she encountered it.
And, by all that was holy, she’d have nice clothes.
Especially her dresses, many of which would be imported from Paris. Paw had bought her an imported dress the time he’d taken her to Little Rock. Real royal-blue silk from Paris. The lace had been from Belgium, and the collar and trim had been velvet. Though she’d outgrown it, she still had it up in her trunk. She’d figured she’d work on Paw to find her something before the fall trip.
Assuming Paw could get time from the war to take her like he’d promised. That it was now August, and no word—
“Damn all Friday!” Billy called. “You worthless today, or what? We’re trying to water the crops.”
She cut another channel in the ditch bank. “You swear like that again, I’ll have Maw whip you with a green willow switch, Billy Hancock.”
Across the ditch, hazelnut trees gave way to the forested slope, thick with maple, oak, hickory, and gum. Farther along, the giant mulberry trees beyond the field marked the yard around the two-story Hancock house. Behind it, a grove of pines and sumac obscured the old cabin. In the flat above the river stood the corrals, barns, tobacco fields, and stables.
“Gotta do something to get your attention,” Billy muttered. “You already wasted more of your life dreaming about living in a fancy house than you’ll ever spend living in one. And what is so exciting about this theater that Mrs. Pennoyer is running in Little Rock? You went on about it all through breakfast. It’s just people pretending to be other people.”
“You’ll never understand.”
Billy’s old yellow dog, Fly, lay in the shade beneath a tangle of honeysuckle and scratched as he dealt with a pesky flea. The yellow dog was a mongrel with light brown eyes. Sarah considered him more trouble than he was worth, but he kept the raccoons and deer from raiding the corn. Unfortunately crows and cutworms were a perplexing reality entirely beyond the old dog’s comprehension.
Sarah checked her water and stepped off the distance to the next row. The midsummer sun burned down hot on her back, baking the faded blue of her worn and threadbare cotton dress.
But what if Paw couldn’t take her this year? She’d be near to eighteen when he finally got around to it. A whole ’nuther year!
“What’s the matter?” Billy asked as she halfheartedly attacked the ditch bank with her hoe. “Yer not pinin’ away for that Hank Adamson, are ya? He sure as spit ain’t never going to own no fancy brick house in Little Rock. That’s gospel, I tell you.”
“Lot of good it would do me if’n I was. You bloodied his nose a’fore he left for General Pearce’s state army.”
“Some soldier he’ll make,” Billy muttered. “Three years older than me, and I didn’t even dust up my britches whaling the tar outta his hide.”
She slashed angrily at the soil, cutting a channel. “You’ve gotta stop it, Billy. He wasn’t doing no harm.”
“Oh? Why’d he want you to give him a token?” Billy propped his shovel, callused hands cupped over the handle top. He cocked his head so the August sun illuminated his battered straw hat and the insolent set of his shoulders. His half-squinted blue eyes studied her skeptically.
“Lots of soldiers carry tokens, something to remind them of home and people who care for them.”
“You care for him?” Billy screwed his face up and spit. “He’s not worth toad suck. Shifty, that’s what Hank Adamson is. And lazy. And not only that, I figger all he was after was a kiss. Maybe more. Up at the tavern I heard how soldiers talk. If’n he was all so high and honorable, what was he doing, sneaking around trying to talk to you?”
“He was afraid you’d thrash him.”
“Guess there’s more sense in him than I thought.”
“Billy, you … you infuriate me!” She hammered the hoe blade at the water, splashing it. “The only callers I get are the ones that Maw and Paw bring by. I’d like the chance to get to know some boy, that’s all.”
“Oh, like Shirley Winston? She’s sixteen and married, sure nuff. ’Course Jackson Darrow, uh … ‘got her with child,’ ain’t that what they say? And now what? Darrow, he done gone off to war. Probably gonna get his ass shot off and kilt. Then where’s Shirley at? Widowed, with a baby, that’s where. And what upstanding gentleman is gonna marry her and take her off to Little Rock to live in a big house?”
He shook his head, adding, “Paw left me in charge. Ain’t no man gonna sweep my sister off her feet and leave me looking like a three-fingered fool.”
Sarah fought down the burning rage. “Bi
lly, ain’t no man in these parts gonna sweep me off my feet.” The last thing she wanted was to end up trapped in Benton County! But how was she going to learn how to enchant the right man without a little practice?
“I’m here to see to it, sis.” He gave her a blue-eyed and deadly look. “And it’s not just your honor. It’s that new rifle Paw promised. Ain’t nothing gonna get between me an’ a new rifle.”
She glared at him. “Why can’t you run off to war like Danny Goodman?”
“And leave you at the mercy of all them rascals from up at Elkhorn Tavern, the tannery, and clear down to Van Winkle’s mill?” He shook his head, grabbed up his shovel, and got back to work. “Paw left me in charge. It’s my responsibility.” He paused as he moved dirt. “’Sides, ain’t a man around that I ever seen was good enough for you.”
Which, of course, was why she was so desperate to get to Little Rock. “Last thing I’d ever stomach is one of them rascals from up to the tavern. And sure enough not one of them whiskey-sotted fools. The man I marry? He’s going to be an educated gentleman. Maybe like that lawyer John Mallory that Paw entertained last fall.”
“Him? He’s married!”
“Well, of course, you fool! I said a man ‘like’ him, not him. He had a way about him, graceful and strong. And I liked how he and Paw got on. You could see it. Paw respected him. And there ain’t many men Paw really respects.” She shot Billy a glance from beneath her bonnet. “Word is Mallory’s shot two men in duels.”
“You’re just taken with that talk about his house. Three stories, all brick.” Billy used the back of his shovel to slap the dirt flat where he banked the ditch. “And he’s got slaves, which brings us right back around. That’d set a splinter in Paw’s seat. He never cared much for the notion of folks having slaves.”
