Yankee in Atlanta

by Jocelyn Green

  “Where is Miss McKae? Why isn’t she home yet?” The girl’s face pinched as she asked the same questions she’d been asking since she woke up this morning.

  “She left us!” Susan burst out, not caring one whit how it must have sounded to the child, not even bothering to measure her reaction. It was the truth. Caitlin had left, selfishly, irresponsibly, and without warning. She said she’d come back, and she didn’t. Liar.

  Was this to be Susan’s lot in life, to be left alone when she needed help the most? Truly, she should be used to it by now. This time, it was her turn to leave.

  “Annie, I’m stepping out,” she called out. “Naomi will be home soon.” Probably.

  She let the door slam behind her without looking back.

  Susan’s breath shortened as she drew near to her escape, so terrified was she of her lifeline being yanked from her grasp. Life and death mingled hideously together in the Car Shed. Convalescent soldiers buzzed between moaning patients awaiting treatment, evacuation, or merciful sleep from which they would never wake. Haggard white women crooned to their children, and rich women were followed by their entourages of colored folks shouldering whatever their white folks asked them to: a huge parlor mirror bound in gold, pots, kettles, baskets, bags, barrels, kegs, bacon, and bedsteads. A pet goat bleated on the end of its rope, and birds in their cages added their shrill songs to the cacophony. The smells were as layered as the sounds.

  Just outside the depot, wounded Union prisoners were laid on the unshaded grounds of the City Park between corpses already straining their buttons. Some were missing legs, some their arms. The stench of gangrene was their only covering beneath the blistering sun. Only a couple of Negro men worked frantically among them washing and dressing their wounds while heavily armed Confederate cavalry galloped by.

  “I’ll pay you! In greenbacks!” One of the Negro men looked up from a maggoty stump and called out to other dark-skinned folks looking on. “Buy some food, bring water, tell the slaves at the Ponder estate to come help!”

  Susan turned from the ghastly scene. She had her own problems to worry about.

  Between the train whistles, frantic voices caught in Susan’s ears until she had no choice but to interrupt them. “What are you talking about?”

  “That explosion today.”

  “Yes I heard it. What of it?”

  “Why, Sherman’s begun shelling the city, that’s what!”

  “It was not an accident?”

  “No. It’s Sherman, and I vouch he’ll do it again. Killed a little girl out walking with her parents today. War on the doorstep is one thing, but bringing it inside our city—uh-uh. Atlanta is too hot for me—but there’s no place in hell too hot for Sherman!”

  A tide of terror bore down upon Susan. She was perfectly right in fleeing, she could not stay, not now that she was in danger! She would beg her father’s forgiveness if she could just get out of this fiery path of war and stop running! Though she once thought she needed Ana for her family to take her in, now, surely, her smallpox scars would be enough for them to take pity on her. Traveling light suited her. A child would only slow her down. Her lips set firmly, she elbowed her way to a railroad official.

  “Please, sir.” Susan grabbed his arm, schooling her features to manipulate. “I need to get on that train.” It did not matter where it was headed, as long as it was away from here. She could worry about connections to other cities later.

  “Sorry, lady. This here car is carrying the wounded away. There’s just no more room.”

  Susan glanced past him. This was a coach car, with actual seats. How badly could the men be wounded if they could sit like proper passengers? “I have a passport! And I have barely any luggage at all!”

  He brushed past her to help a different woman and her two children climb aboard. What? Susan seethed. Hadn’t he just told her there was no more room? Sullenly, she crossed her arms and glared at the homely woman bouncing a toddler on her hip while the other child hid behind her apron. They would steam away soon, and Susan would still be stuck in this quagmire of refugees and stick-thin wounded men, where the air was a liquid stench and the sky was on fire around them.

  Then hope sparked in her chest. If it was children that now trumped charm, Susan Kent was still in the game. Hoisting her skirt above her ankles, she jockeyed her way out of the depot.

  “Annie, put your shoes on,” Susan called out as soon as she entered the house. “Annie! We are going. Make haste.”

  Rubbing her eyes, Ana appeared from the doorway of the dining room where she’d been sleeping on the floor. “Going where?”

  “Away from here. The Yankees are coming.”

  “But where is Miss McKae?” Her eyes were hooded, Susan suspected, with distrust. She had no time for arguing.

  “I have no idea where she is, so you might as well forget about her. We’re getting out of here tonight; I can’t stand this place a moment longer!”

  “No thank you.”

  Susan glared down at the child. “What did you say?”

  “I want to stay and wait for Miss McKae. And Papa. He said he would come back. I have to be here when he comes.”

  Susan gripped Ana’s shoulders and shook her. “Do you know what happened today? A little girl was killed by a shell here in Atlanta. The Yankees are bombarding the city. Who do you think will keep you safe? Not your Papa. He left you, like he left me. Caitlin left for God knows where, Minnie is gone with her new one-eyed husband, and if Naomi went on the train evacuating patients to Macon, she’d be a fool to come back to Atlanta now. You and I are the only ones left.”

  Ana frowned. “My Papa is coming back. I want my Papa. I want to stay here.”

  Anger boiled in Susan’s breast. She could be bested by smallpox, by an invading army, by a lover who broke his promise to her. She would not be bested by an eight-year-old child. My child.

  Susan bent, her face just inches from Ana’s. “You listen to me, you little brat. I am your mother whether you like it or not, and you will come with me even if I have to drag you kicking and screaming.”

  “I am not a brat! Why do you say such mean things to me? I don’t believe you’re my mother at all! Mothers love their children! You’re nothing like Papa!” Her bright blue eyes glittered with tears, her face knotted in defiance.

  Susan balled her hands into trembling fists. “I’m the only person you’ve got in this world, and we’re leaving this horrid place right now. If you don’t put your shoes on this instant, I’ll take you barefoot.”

  Ana’s lips screwed to the side, but she stomped up the stairs, presumably to obey. But when she didn’t return soon enough, Susan marched right up and retrieved the girl—with shoes and scowl both firmly in place—and dragged her out the door.

  Atlanta, Georgia

  Saturday, July 23, 1864

  The hotel windows rattled with the crescendo of activity outside as more and more people fled town. Caitlin had spent two nights here, waiting for Jones to release her, but Jones had never returned. Now that the city was under fire, he may have evacuated Atlanta and left her here for all she knew.

  Convinced she was no longer a primary concern, she picked up the washstand and battered it, legs first, against the locked window until it broke. The sound of slivering glass fit right in with Atlanta’s ambient noise. Fearless for her own safety, she climbed out and jumped to the dirt below without incident.

  Hunger nibbling at her strength, thoughts of Ana pulled her down Decatur Street. What must they think has become of me?

  The rumble of black-covered ambulances turned her head. Blood trickled from the backs of the wagons, turning the mud road a crimson hue. Grown men and one boy clung to the sides, fanning slit-paper fly brushes at the open windows, trying to keep away the terrible swarms that hovered over wounded men.

  Mere blocks from home, City Hall Square had been transformed into an open-air, mass operating room. Stretcher bearers unloaded their moaning, shrieking cargo from ambulance wagons and la
id them on long wooden tables. The green grass beneath grew red as the surgeons hastened in their work, for surely more were coming. A gravedigger paced by the open windows of City Hall, now a hospital, calling out: “Bring out your dead! Any dead in there?”

  “Please, not Noah. Not Jack.” Her whisper cracked on the thick stench of bodies being cut open.

  A low-pitched “ooooooooooo” sailed overhead and crashed into the road not ten yards from her, spraying dirt and shrapnel in concentric circles. The gaping hole that was left beneath the sulfurous plume was large enough to swallow an army wagon and its mules. Anger licked through Caitlin then, and propelled her home double-time.

  She found it empty, except for Rascal, whose clicking claws on the hardwood floor only magnified the silence in the house.

  “Lord!” Caitlin cried out as she fell to her knees. “I can’t do this alone! Any strength and courage I’ve ever had is from You. I need You now, Lord. I can’t lose Ana. Keep her safe, wherever she is. Hold her hand. Wrap her with Your love. And please show me where to look!”

  Susan was beyond exhausted. They had not been permitted room on any train all night, and had spent it sitting up inside the Car Shed and being stepped upon. “Hush up.” Susan whipped her words at Ana for the hundredth time since leaving Noah’s house last night, but the girl would not stop crying. Her nose ran, her eyes watered, her entire face was one soggy mess. “Wipe that snot off your face. Use your sleeve if you have to.” But she only cried harder.

  A railroad official cast a pitying glance at Ana, and Susan leapt to lasso that sympathy and steer it to her advantage.

  “All of this is just too much for the girl.” Susan swept her arm in a wide arc over the depot. “Can’t we board soon?”

  He cocked his head, and she seized once more upon his hesitation. “Her father is fighting in the army, but if he can’t protect us from Sherman, he would want us to be safe.” Susan pinched Ana, hard, and the girl wailed right on cue. “That little girl who was killed by a shell on Wednesday—that was her best friend.” Plausible, though untrue. “We really must scuttle away from here.”

  The gullible man was putty in her hands, she could see that in the twitch of mustache. “All right. But this is a hospital car. Squeeze on if you can, but it’s not the travel you’re used to, I assure you.”

  “Fine. Thank you.”

  The man swung Ana up into the boxcar, and then helped Susan in after her. Confusion rippled her brow as her eyes adjusted to the darkness. There was nowhere to sit in this car. Ana pulled at her skirt, and she swatted her away like the droning flies. Oh no. The drone was coming from the floor. A layer of broken, bleeding men covered it. The ones who hadn’t passed out moaned faintly inside their blood-stiffened bandages.

  Before she had time to second-guess her mode of transportation, the door rattled shut, enclosing her in this tomb of the living dead.

  “Air,” one of them rasped. “Air! Just a little!”

  Susan couldn’t agree more. With trembling hands, she grasped the door’s metal frame and pushed until it screeched open about a foot. The air that stirred was hot, but at least the fetid car was no longer as breathless as Susan.

  Finally, the train lurched and squealed into motion.

  “I don’t want to go!” Ana wailed as she stumbled to keep her balance in the swaying car. “I want my Papa!”

  “Susan! Ana!” Caitlin’s voice rose above the grinding wheels of a train chugging to life. “Analiese Becker! Don’t go!”

  Astonished, Susan peered through the opening in time to see Caitlin jostling through the crowd to be closer to the train. In her wake, a slave lost his grip on a ten-foot-tall parlor mirror and it struck the floor, shards of glass splintering from the frame. A woman, who Susan guessed was the mirror’s owner, shrieked in dismay.

  “Ana! Stay with me!” Caitlin’s voice faded into the tumult as the woman grabbed her by the wrist and spoke in shrill tones, pointing to the shattered mirror. Caitlin tried, but in vain, to lunge free. “Ana!” But the train was leaving the station, as indifferent to Caitlin’s plea as Susan was.

  Ana pushed herself next to Susan, both of them rocking with the car’s motion. “Miss McKae? She’s here?”

  Susan chafed at the hope in Ana’s voice. “She left you, remember.”

  “She got my note!”

  “Your what?”

  “Upstairs, before I put my shoes on, I wrote her and Papa a note that you were taking me from Atlanta and she came back! She’s here! She wants me!”

  “Well, thank God someone does.” But no one wanted Susan. How had life come to this, that Noah should have the undying love of a child not his own, and a woman who stayed in harm’s way for him? Susan Kent had no one. How was it that she was the only one who knew this pain? It wasn’t right. Noah should hurt the way Susan had been hurt. It was only fair. A smile curled on Susan’s scarred face. She would break his heart, indeed. Ana looked up at her. “But you begged me to come with you.”

  “As my ticket aboard this train. Feel free to leave any time.”

  “I don’t think I can jump!”

  Susan glanced through the one-foot-wide opening once more. Amid the commotion all about them, a knot of women looked up at the sound of Ana’s fragile cry, scanned the train briefly, then turned back to their own babies crying in their arms and to their toddlers tugging their skirts.

  And Susan turned back to Ana. “Let me help you. Remember this as you go. Your mother never wanted you, and neither did your father.”

  “Papa loves me!”

  “Noah Becker isn’t your father. He’s just a man who took pity on you! Your father is married to another woman and has his own children with her. Your real father never cared to even meet you once! That’s who your father is!” Susan raked her gaze over the soldiers lying at her feet. Clearly they were too sick to take an interest in the drama unfolding above them. Or at least, too sick to comment.

  Tears streamed down Ana’s face. But, “You’re lying. My Papa is my Papa, and he loves me.”

  “He isn’t.” Noah’s love for Ana was irrelevant and irritating. “I am your mother, and even I don’t want you.” As they neared the end of the platform, Susan budged the rickety boxcar door open a little further.

  A shove and the sniveling girl was gone. Screams pierced the air as Susan leaned back against the inside of the boxcar. A thud. The sound of running feet faded as the train juddered away. Maybe now they would know her pain.

  Fort Lafayette Prison, New York Harbor

  Tuesday, July 26, 1864

  The gentle dip and ripple of Edward’s oars through the New York Harbor soothed his spirit with every stroke. Seagulls stood sentinel on the pier behind him, but their squawk, like his worries, faded as he crossed the two hundred yards from the Brooklyn coast to the fort-turned-prison. After being at the hospitals all day, even the brackish water smelled sweet.

  Inside Room No. 3, however, the air soured with the odor of poorly cooked rations and seven men who had no real reason to clean up. Make that six dirty men. One man in this breathless casemate had made a point to groom himself, a fact which Edward fully appreciated now as he sat across the table from him.

  “Edward Goodrich.” Edward shook the prisoner’s hand. “I’m a chaplain, and I’ve come to see if there is anything I can do for you. Something I can pray about with you, or for you, perhaps.” He laid his small Bible on the rough wooden table and waited.

  “I don’t suppose you could get me out of here.” A dull gleam glimmered behind his brown eyes. “Not that I have anything to return to.”

  Edward smiled. “I can give you something better. Freedom from spiritual bondage.”

  The prisoner’s lips curled. “Hmmmm. I must confess I’m much more interested in freedom from physical bondage. You know, the literal variety. An escape plan.”

  “God has an escape plan for you. For all of us.”

  “From Lafayette Prison? Well done!”

  “From death itself.” Edw
ard opened his Bible to where Ruby’s braid marked the book of Romans at chapter 6. “For the wages of sin is death but—”

  “Oh yes, yes, the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. I know all about it.” His gaze flicked to Ruby’s hair. “Say, that’s quite a striking shade of red hair you’ve got in your Bible there. It’s the color of rubies, isn’t it?”

  Edward grazed the braid with his thumb and smiled. “Quite. She was named for her hair, in fact.”

  “Ruby? Her name is Ruby?” He leaned forward, elbows on the table. “I once knew a seamstress named Ruby.”

  Edward blinked, wondering at the sudden interest. “Why, yes. Her name is Ruby and she was a seamstress, too. Still is, in fact.”

  “Well chaplain, I had no idea you had it in you!” He slapped his hand on the table and laughed. “And how does the good Lord view a man of the cloth sticking his finger in that pie, however tasty it may be?”

  “I beg your pardon, sir! Just what are you insinuating?”

  “Gracious, have I assumed too much? I’m thinking of an Irish immigrant woman who also tried her hand at domestic service. Ruby O’Flannery is her name. She has a bastard son who should be—let me think now—just over two years old now.”

  “He is no bastard. His father died in the war and I am adopting him as my son. Ruby is my wife.” Edward’s response went against his strict policy of not discussing his personal life while on duty. But how could he let such a statement slide?

  The man’s jaw dropped for a moment. “So you really believe what the Bible says about forgiveness of sin, redemption, and all that? You really believe that God can snatch people from their downward spirals and set them on a course of righteousness?”