Yankee in Atlanta

by Jocelyn Green

  Hastily, she rolled up the envelope and tucked it inside her left glove just as the boy surrendered to his fate.

  “Well well well, this is my lucky day.”

  Caitlin turned toward the officer and stared into his gleaming eyes. “Pardon me?”

  Lee snickered. “Jones, would you believe that Caitlin McKae has requested a passport to travel north?”

  Jones laughed. “Just the type of thing I’ve been waiting for.”

  “What is the meaning of this?” Prudence’s voice trembled just slightly, in spite of her erect posture.

  “Take him away, then come on back. This one’s for you.”

  “What?” Fear squeezed the word from Caitlin’s throat. “If you are thinking of arresting me, I demand to know the charges!”

  “In a word, disloyalty.”

  “What in God’s name have I ever done that ever amounted to disloyalty?” She sagged, and Prudy’s arm belted her waist.

  “You’ve kept your head down quite nicely, Miss McKae. A little too far, however. It isn’t what you’ve done so much as it is what you haven’t done. Since before he was named provost marshal, Oliver Jones has been following you.”

  Prudence gasped, while anger fired in Caitlin’s veins. “How dare you?”

  “You are not a member of the Atlanta Hospital Visiting Committee.”

  Prudence huffed. “Young, unmarried women do not go to the hospitals; it isn’t ladylike!”

  “And you are not a member of the Ladies Aid Society.”

  “I have my own aid society of refugees living under my roof.”

  “It was reported that on Sunday, September 13, you stormed out of the Central Presbyterian Church right after the pastor prayed for General Bragg.”

  Caitlin sealed her lips. It wasn’t that the pastor had prayed for him, but that he had placed him with the Holy Trinity.

  “It was further reported that when said pastor asked his congregation to come to an afternoon prayer service for the Confederacy, you did not attend.”

  “Did everyone else?”

  “No. Neither did Cyrena Stone or Emily Farnsworth, both known Union sympathizers as well.”

  “A rather flimsy prosecution.”

  “On October 29, Jefferson Davis came to town. You did not go to see him. The president of our Confederacy visits this city, and you could not trouble yourself to be there for the glorious event? Even if I could overlook your accent and unknown history, the rest of the evidence combines for quite a case against you.” Lee scribbled something on Prudy’s passport and handed it to her. “I’ve signed for Jones, he won’t mind, especially since I’m delivering Miss McKae into his hands.”

  Jones appeared in the door again, the sunlight bouncing from his handcuffs into Caitlin’s eyes. “I’m escorting you home, where you will stay.” He stepped toward her. “I’m taking your pass until further notice. If you’re caught walking around Atlanta without a pass, you’ll be arrested.”

  “Wait!” She held up a shaking hand. “Allow me to bid Miss Periwinkle goodbye. In private.”

  “Out of the question.”

  Caitlin bristled. She turned to Prudence. “Godspeed. It will be cold in the north this time of year. You must take my gloves.” She pulled her gloves off her hands by the fingertips.

  “No child, you keep them.”

  “You heard the man, I won’t be going anywhere anyway. I insist.” Caitlin pressed them into Prudy’s grasp. “I pray you find what you’re looking for.”

  The envelope hiding in the glove whispered under Prudy’s thumb, and her eyes grew round. So did her mouth. Caitlin shot her a look of warning.

  Prudy frowned as she pulled the gloves onto her hands. “I hope I know what to do when I do.”

  Caitlin smoothed a smile from her jangling spirit. “Just deliver the package on home. You’ll be fine.” She hugged Prudence then, whispered “Trust me” in her ear, and felt herself pulled away by large hands.

  “Enough. It’s time. And I’ll not be losing you on your way home, either.” Jones yanked Caitlin’s wrists behind her and clicked the cold metal into place. To Caitlin, it was the sound of a cage door slamming shut. Memories, long-shackled, broke loose again, battering her heart. Though she prayed her face did not betray her, inside, Caitlin became unhinged.

  It was the handcuffs, Caitlin decided later, long after the rest of the household had gone to bed. She sat on the bedroom floor in front of the fire, knees pulled up under her chin, rocking back and forth with her hands clasped around her ankles. The handcuffs.

  It was not merely that her plan to leave had been thwarted and her local pass confiscated, or the humiliation of being escorted home in handcuffs. Jones only used them, she knew, to intimidate her and mark her to onlookers as a suspicious character not to be trusted. But it wasn’t his face that loomed before her now. It was her mother’s. Yes, this was a guilt she could chew on.

  The scar on her jaw tingled, and she buried it into her shoulder, still rocking gently before the popping fire. When she closed her eyes her mind reeled back to April 19, 1861. Memories rained down upon her, slowly at first, then in a downpour.

  Get out! I don’t want to see you here again! You’ve done enough!

  The slam of the door as Caitlin left, steaming.

  Why did you send her away? Bernard’s growl.

  I had to. You’ve got no business with her. I’ll do my duty to you, but you leave her out of it.

  A murmur. A hard slap. Get!

  Caitlin’s blood rushing, her heart pounding right along with the drumbeats rallying the Seventh Regiment to fight. Women can fight, too. Cheers reached a fever pitch outside—thousands must have turned out to send the state’s first soldiers to the war. The fife and drum, the cheering throng whipped her small swell of courage into a foaming tide. She slammed back through the door, and straight into Bernard’s straining uniform, his copper police badge embossing her chest as he caught her to him.

  “It’s about time,” he had whispered, the scent of hard liquor reeking from his rotten mouth.

  Caitlin writhed against his hold, lunged backward until his drunken grip on her faltered. Her braid pulled loose from her pins and uncoiled, falling heavily onto her shoulder.

  Another step back, and another, until they were out of the apartment and at the top of the stairs in the dimly lit hall. He threw his weight against her, and she smashed into the sconce behind her. When he pressed his face toward hers, she jerked her head away, the jagged glass of the broken hurricane slicing the edge of her jaw.

  Lord, help! She prayed, but did not cry out. She would not give her mother another reason to come within arm’s reach of this man.

  With barely time for a single thought, she broke off the shard of glass that had slit her and brandished it against Bernard.

  “Are you assaulting an officer of the law?” A sloppy grin smeared his face as he pulled out his handcuffs. “You will submit to the proper authorities, one way or another. Just like your mother.”

  Scales peeled from Caitlin’s eyes. The marks on her mother’s wrists. The handcuffs. They were a match. Visions of her mother suffering untold abuse by this monster ricocheted in her spirit. What has she suffered while I’ve been blind to it all?

  Huzzahs and Hoorays undulated through the open windows. Strength Caitlin didn’t know she possessed flooded her being as she slammed her knee into his groin and shoved him from her.

  Bernard stumbled, leaned on the wall for support, then sought her with his bloodshot eyes. Dark, leathery laughter flapped erratically from his throat. “Yeah, your mother used to fight back, too.” He shook his head. “Enough. It’s time.”

  Fear seeped from Caitlin’s pores, and the glass in her grip grew slick with it.

  Dingy light gleamed on the handcuffs as he reached for her again. With the speed of lightning, she slashed his neck with the glass. He cursed, and in the break of his stride, she threw her shoulder against him.

  Bernard’s hand lashed out, grabbed
the end of her braid, but she yanked it from his grip. With her green velvet ribbon clenched in his fist, he staggered backward, until the floor betrayed his step. He crashed down the stairs just as the crowd outside sent up a cheer for the band’s performance. Caitlin gaped after him, the throng’s Huzzah! buzzing in her veins. She only meant to keep him away from her. She had not intended to truly harm him. Had she?

  At the bottom of the stairs, he lay still, ripping new horror open inside her. Have I killed him?

  She flew down the steps, her unraveling braid hanging like a rope against her neck. Or a noose.

  Caitlin knelt by Bernard’s body. Booze-flavored breath puffed from his nose. He was still alive, just unconscious. Inebriated. She inspected his neck where she had managed to mark him. It was only a scratch. He may not even need sutures. Relief cooled her flaming pulse, but did not slow its pell-mell rhythm. He would remember this.

  Between the jaunty strains of martial music clinging to the April breeze, Caitlin thought she heard muffled voices behind apartment doors. She turned, scanning the hallway for signs of movement. If anyone saw her, a girl with a police officer’s blood on her hands, what would they think?

  Caitlin fled the building and washed up using a pump a few blocks away before returning an hour later to check on her mother. Her skin tingled with warning as soon as she rounded the corner. A handful of people who had not seen off the Seventh now craned their necks near the front door of the building.

  “You can’t go in there,” one of them said when she tried to pass through. “Coppers are investigating the crime scene.”

  Caitlin swallowed. “Crime scene?”

  The woman nodded. “Someone found a police officer dead on the floor. They’re questioning the tenants. Say, don’t you live in this building?”

  Firecrackers detonated in Caitlin’s mind, and she could barely hear herself think. “What? Dead? But he was—” Alive when I left him. She bit her tongue. How could he be dead? He was merely sodden with drink, passed out on the floor from a bump to his head! Had there been internal bleeding? Surely it was not the cut on his throat …

  Heads turned. “What do you know about it? He was what?”

  “He was an officer of the law.” Caitlin’s heartbeat pushed against her corset.

  The woman nodded. “That he was. You can bet the police will find the one what did it, though. They look out for their own.” She clucked her tongue. “Murdering a copper. Shameful. And stupid.”

  Caitlin closed her eyes as the world rocked beneath her feet.

  “You’re bleeding.” Caitlin’s eyes popped open to see the woman pointing to her jaw.

  She pressed a handkerchief to her skin. “Just an accident,” Caitlin said, and heard her mother’s voice.

  “Cut yourself shaving?” The woman laughed, turning back and craning her neck again. “I bet the murderer would just love to disappear right now. If he has any sense at all, he’s slipped into that crowd marching the soldiers down to the Jersey City ferry. We’ll never see him again, I wager.”

  Never. Caitlin would follow her mother’s advice. She would leave, and never come back, now that she knew Vivian was safe from Bernard. She would depend on no man.

  Instead, she would become one. She would enlist, find Jack, and in just a few days she’d be on the ferry crossing the Hudson, and then the train chugging down to Washington. She’d send her pay home to support her mother. It was a desperate escape plan, birthed from a desperate situation.

  And now, in Atlanta, she had managed to land herself in another one. Only this time, she could not see how to spring the trap.

  Outside Dalton, Georgia

  Wednesday, December 15, 1863

  “You in or out, Herr Becker?” Ross waved his hand of cards at Noah from his perch on the overturned barrel.

  “Out.” Noah strolled past the soldiers palming greasy cards, and headed toward the fiddler playing “When Johnny Comes Marching Home” into the crackling campfire. Two letters had arrived by the mail wagon for him today, and waiting until after evening roll call to read them had been torturous.

  Settling onto an upside-down crate, Noah opened his hands to the fire for a moment, then fished the letters out of his pocket. When he unfolded the paper, his breath caught in his throat. Ana had improved upon her usual drawing of a little girl and man in front of a house. This time, a woman stood with them. They were holding hands. Caitlin and Analiese got along famously, but he hadn’t imagined his daughter would be drawing her into the picture already. He tilted the paper toward the fire to better see the lines Ana had drawn. Good. Everyone is smiling. He spread his broad hand over the paper and sent up a silent prayer for Ana before turning it over and reading Caitlin’s letter.

  Dear Mr. Becker,

  We hope you are well and look forward to hearing from you. We are well but surprised that our houseguest Susan Kent tells us she is Ana’s mother.

  No. Noah squinted at the paper, dismay carving his brow. No. No. He had cut ties with her cleanly and simply. Right after their civil ceremony, they had moved to Decatur, Georgia, where Noah hoped his immigrant status would not prevent clients from coming to him, as it had in Richmond. Near the end of Susan’s pregnancy, he purchased a house in Atlanta for his growing family. A house Susan had visited once, but would never move into. Until now. But why? He read on, every line a stake being pounded into his spirit.

  Is this true? Her story is convincing but I need to hear the truth from you. Ana tries to please her, but all is in vain. Indeed, it seems none of us can please her. None of us can say what she wants. But to be a mother does not seem to be her heart’s desire.

  No, it never was. Crumbling logs sprayed sparks into the sky while fire kindled in Noah’s belly. Susan never wanted Analiese, even for a moment. She had even left the naming of the baby completely up to Noah, saying she didn’t care either way since she would never be part of her life. Noah had had to secure a wet nurse and mammy for her when she was days old, and caring for an infant with a broken collarbone was no small task. As soon as Susan had recovered from the birth, she signed the papers ending their marriage, and fled to Chattanooga to invent a new life for herself. Soon after, Noah and Ana moved to Atlanta.

  The campfire flames lapped its logs, and Noah’s spirit felt singed. Susan had never loved him. He’d been a fool to be charmed by her. He should have suspected something when her father insisted on such a short courtship and engagement. It had been mere weeks! Before the ink had dried on their wedding certificate, however, she made her revulsion for him crystal clear.

  Susan. Her name had curled off his lips like smoke as he reached for her. Elusive. Hypnotic. Toxic.

  Stay away from me, you foreigner! She had hissed. He was only window dressing. Susan could not wait to get out of the marriage.

  If it was desperation that drove her to me once, she must be desperate to come again. But for what? Perhaps only for a place to stay. If she was still living in Chattanooga up until the battles took place there, she was a refugee, and that was reason enough to look for another roof with which to cover her blonde head. Why it had to be mine, though, I have no idea.

  At least Caitlin was still there.

  He scanned the rest of her letter until he landed on Ana’s handwriting.

  Dear Papa,

  Miss Kent says she is my mama. Why didn’t you tell me? I am trying to be very very good so she will love me like you do.

  Noah fought the urge to crumble the letter and throw it into the fire. Susan love Ana like Noah did? Impossible. If it weren’t for Noah, Ana would have been a ward of the state from day one! But how to explain this to a seven-year-old girl? He seethed.

  Do you like my picture? It’s you and me and Mama. Some day we will all be together and I will have a real family.

  Sorrow ached in his throat. A real family? She was unhappy with just a papa? He shook his head. Of course a girl wants a mother. But surely Susan was not fit for the job, her biological contribution notwithstanding. H
e rolled his neck and stifled a groan as he whipped out the second letter. Any hope he had for better news was soon snuffed out as he skimmed the text.

  Dear Mr. Becker,

  We thank God we do not see your name in the casualty lists, but look for word from yourself to confirm it.

  Prudence Periwinkle is going north to Gettysburg to retrieve the remains of her nephew. She has asked me to accompany her, and I have agreed. You know how much Prudy did for me when I first came to Atlanta. She needs me.

  And Ana does not, or so she says. She has Susan. I am “not her mother.” I wonder if you could write to your daughter and remind her that I do have some authority in your household while you’re gone. Or do you, too, prefer that I defer to your ex-wife in all things? If so, please release me from my obligation. I’d hate to accept pay for unnecessary employment.

  Noah could almost see the resentment flickering in Caitlin’s brown eyes as he read her words. But as he could imagine the havoc Susan was wreaking on the household, he could not blame her. He only wished he could convince her to stay.

  Don’t worry about Ana while I’m gone. In addition to Susan, Naomi and Minnie will still be here to manage her.

  Ana didn’t have time to write you today, but I’ve enclosed her latest drawing.

  Noah’s heart plunged when he turned the page over. There was his house. There was Ana. There was Susan. But Noah was nowhere in sight.

  New York City

  Saturday, December 19, 1863

  Edward could taste Christmas in the wind that sighed through the blue spruce, pine, and hemlock trees towering above their sleigh. Freshly fallen snow lay like a blanket of diamonds between the curving pathways of Central Park. With Ruby on the bench beside him, and Biggs up front driving the horses, winter was all beauty and no bite. Sleigh bells tinkled lightly over the snow, while the horses’ breath snagged in the air like clouds of glitter.

  Ruby arched her neck toward elm and empress branches dripping with icy jewels. “I’ve never seen anything so beautiful!”

  Neither have I. Edward wondered if Ruby had any idea why he’d arranged for their Aiden-free outing. Normally, he welcomed the curly-haired tot. Today, however, he wanted Ruby’s full attention. He had been praying about this every day since Thanksgiving, but the idea had planted itself in his heart even before then. He could no longer deny what had been growing within him.