Brides of Grasshopper Creek

by Faith-Ann Smith

  You are what I have to fight for now.

  Everything I have made for you has been because it made me think of you. Delicate, perfect, and entirely unexpected. This I made because it made me think of us.

  I lowered the note to the table and reached to touch the wreath, letting my fingers run over the tightly bound strands. The door to the staircase opened and I turned to look at Joseph. He approached me silently, his eyes moving from the wreath to me.

  "When I started the dough yesterday, I thought of you," he said softly, coming close to me and reaching down to lift my hand, "One part of it is sweet and tender," he straightened our hands so that our palms touched and my fingers stretched to match his, "the other is a little coarse. But the coarse strengthens the tender," he folded his fingers down, intertwining them with mine so that his covered the soft valleys between them, "and the sweet softens the coarse. Together they make something beautiful."

  "Joseph," I sighed.

  "I'm sorry that I have not been able to tell you before now how much you mean to me."

  "You have," I told him, looking up into eyes that held softness I understood now and that I knew I reflected in my own gaze, "You told me more without saying anything than anyone ever has with all the words in the world."

  "I am so happy that you came here for your brother," he said, leaning forward to touch his forehead to mine.

  "I didn't," I told him, "Victor came here on his own. God led me here for you."

  I knew in that moment that my words were absolutely true. As Joseph had said, we were like the beautifully crafted wreath he had presented me, the ends so carefully intertwined it was one continuous circle. We had no beginning, and no end.

  Though we had said our vows in August, that cold November morning was when I finally felt married to him, and every year after that it would be on that date that we would celebrate when our hearts came together.

  THE END

  Mail Order Bride: Betsy

  Brides Of Grasshopper Creek

  Faith-Ann Smith

  Mail Order Bride Betsy

  Betsy always knew that love would find her eventually, and until then, she would be happy watching the young men who lived in her mother’s boarding house court their sweethearts on the front porch. Everything seemed perfect until the War came too close to home, and what was once an elegant and privileged boarding school became a bloody hospital. Left to suffer the aftermath, Betsy decides that her only hope is to get out of her hometown and go as far away as she could. In order to do that, however, she would have to find a husband.

  Chapter 1

  December, 1862

  Dear Diary,

  I have never been so happy to have a year come to an end. It seems another lifetime when I so eagerly anticipated the winter so that Christmas would finally come and I would get to spend the holiday so filled with joy and excitement as I celebrated with my family. Now I am excited only for the chill to grow deeper around me so that it more closely resembles the cold that has lingered within me for more than a year.

  I long for the year to change and the days to begin again. I know it will do little to actually change the feelings that I have been suffering, and it will not take the memories away, but I feel that there will be something somewhat comforting about writing a different year. Just thinking that this year is behind me will distance me from all that it I have experienced in it.

  I wonder what the New Year has ahead of me. To be honest, I wonder if it holds anything at all. I realize that that sounds morbid and hopeless, but I assure you that I am truly neither. It is not that I feel hopeless about my future. In order to do that, I think I would have to actually feel something. It is simply that I have come to the point in my life that I do not feel that I have anything within me leading me forward toward anything.

  This year has taken everything from me.

  Betsy

  Chapter 2

  "Betsy!"

  I heard my mother calling to me from across the house and my chest clenched painfully. Gone were the days when hearing my mother's voice brought any kind of happy emotions. The only surviving child of the six that my mother bore, I was very close to her when I was young and was always happy to spend time helping her with the tasks of managing her boarding house.

  Those days had quickly faded, though, after the war began. The boarding house had one been the most esteemed in town. Only the sons of the most elite families came to live in the rooms of our home while they studied at the university, and we were known for maintaining the strictest of decorum. While some houses often had their boarders return shamelessly drunken from their nights of revelry, our young men knew that they were expected to be back at the house for supper and then would spend their evenings studying and writing letters in the parlor, having discussions in the living room, or, on occasion, entertaining their sweethearts on the front veranda.

  I loved to bring these couples tea and lemonade and watch the way that they gazed at one another across the small tables that we had set along the porch, or from where they sat on the gliders. Most of the other young ladies in town figured that since I was of marriageable age that I must be overcome with envy when I watched these couples, or even embarrassed that I was having to serve them, but it was one of my favorite parts of having the boarding house.

  Yes, I was of marriageable age and there were plenty of times that I thought about possibly finding a husband one day and going ahead with my life away from home, but it wasn't something that bothered me, and I never thought about it when I was with the young couples. Instead, seeing them was almost like reading the fairy tales and romantic novels that my mother had tucked here and there in our library amongst the dusty tomes that my father used to read and that were rarely touched now except when one of the young men wanted to look esteemed. I got to watch as they gazed at one another and exchanged sweet, gentle words that seemed at once so proper and so intimate.

  "Betsy!"

  As I heard my mother call to me again from the other side of the house, her voice sharper and more urgent now, those memories of the young couples sitting peacefully on the veranda seemed as though I had imagined them all. I couldn't even imagine such soft and tender moments existing any longer. Life simply didn't hold those feelings anymore.

  I ran toward the sound of my mother's voice, following it through the corridors that had once been so full of life, hope, and ambition, and now only held dust and lingering memories. As I made my way toward her I tried not to look in any of the rooms that I passed. I didn't want to see what was inside, or what wasn't. They all carried too many memories, too much heartache for me to even bear.

  I knew that any of the rooms I glanced into would be nothing like what they were when I was a child. Instead of seeing my mother and father sneaking a kiss in one of the lounges, I would see the furniture that had been pushed to the very edges of the room and covered with large, thick cloths to protect them, and the patterns of blood soaking into the wooden floor. Instead of seeing the polished young men hovering over their books as they studied, or worrying over their next love letter to their sweethearts, I would see the men suffering, lying in beds that we had squeezed into the rooms as closely as possible to ensure we could accommodate as many of the wounded and dying that we could.

  The house had gone from a beautiful, welcoming space filled with laughter and life, to a dark and horrible place of death, suffering, and loss. Every time that I saw one of the men dragged inside from the battlefields, the blood discoloring his uniform and the look of fear making even the oldest of them look childlike and vulnerable, my mind immediately turned to who that man might be. A son, a brother, a husband, a father, a friend. In his greatest suffering, who was he wishing was by his side?

  All too often I would watch the life drain from their eyes and their ribcages still without ever knowing what they were thinking about or whose face was the last thing that they saw against the background of their minds.

  No matter how painful it was to watch
them suffer, however, I sat by their sides and held their hands as they fought against their injuries, struggling to live through their agony. Sometimes I had to sit with them as the field doctors amputated limbs or cut bullets out of their flesh. The feeling of their hands tightening on mine until it was painful and the mist of blood that would sometimes fall on my skin was horrifying in a way that I could never have imagined, but any time that I even thought of stepping away from the men who lay on those beds or the temporary cots brought in, I would look into their eyes and think of my father. I hoped that in his last brutal moments there had been someone there to sit by his side and hold his hand. And I would stay there.

  I could hear a painful gurgling sound as I approached the room where my mother had been that morning, scrubbing the floors after a surgery the night before. When I pushed the door open and found her sitting in the middle of the floor, one arm clutched over her chest and the other gripping a handkerchief to her mouth, I didn't understand what was happening. I saw the faint trace of blood speckling the front of her dress and thought for a moment that another injured man had been brought to the house, but I hadn't heard any of the horrible, haunting sounds that came along with those arrivals.

  "Mama?" I said, stepping into the room.

  Her eyes lifted to me and I could see the terror in them. It was unlike anything I had ever seen before. She was the strongest person I had ever known and even in the face of the horrific scenes that we had witnessed since the beginning of the war, she had never weakened, never shown fear or reluctance to help the men in whatever way she could. In that moment, however, I could see fear that sent a chill through my body and made me reach for the doorframe to give myself strength.

  Without saying another word, my mother pulled the cloth away from her face and I saw that it was soaked in blood.

  Chapter 3

  January, 1863

  Dear Diary,

  The New Year has come, but I feel no better. I had hoped that the fresh beginning would have some form of a calming, soothing effect and I would be better able to focus, but now that it has arrived I find myself only feeling worse.

  Instead of each day that passes making me feel as though I am soldiering forwarding, pushing further and further away from the pain and sadness of last year, I feel that each time I go to sleep at night I am even more intensely reminded that it is another day that my mother has suffered and another day closer to her end. I do not want to think about it, Diary, and I truly am as committed as I can be to being trusting and faithful, praying that the Lord holds her and protects her, but I find it more difficult with each passing moment to feel anything but heartache and worry.

  The quiet of the house seems so strange now. With all of the wounded and dying men that had found their way from the battlefields into the rooms of our house, all of our focus had been on helping them through their pain and either assist them through their recovery or comfort them as they suffered their last, agonizing moments. We never thought about how caring for those men could have impacted our bodies as much as they impacted our minds. We never thought that any of the men who came in wounded could also be harboring one of the terrible diseases that burned through the field camps.

  The house is empty now. The battles have moved and the men who lay in our rooms were brought away. Some were transferred to formal hospitals to receive more advanced care while others began their journeys back to their homes. Still others left in simple boxes, loaded into the backs of carts and brought away. Those whose families lived close enough would find their way back home where they could be buried properly. Others would end up in anonymous cemeteries or potter's fields.

  I still think they are the fortunate ones. By surviving just long enough to get to our house they escaped the indignity and horror of being buried right in the field where they fell, left to be forgotten, their families never to know where they were or what happened to them.

  I can hear my mother coughing now from her room. During the time the wounded were here, I gave up my bedroom so that there would be more space for the soldiers and slept on a small pallet by her bed. Soon after discovering her illness, however, she told me that I could no longer sleep in there where I would be in such close proximity. Instead I have returned to my former bedroom. It does not feel the same. It is as if the heartache and pain of the men who had lain there had soaked into the walls and are now pressing in on me every time I am in this room.

  The first month of the year is nearly gone, but I cannot look ahead. Rather than trying to imagine what lies in the rest of the year, I can think only of the next moment. When I attempt to think any further ahead than that, I cannot see my mother with me, and that is something that I simply am not ready to handle. I will look to a moment from now, and when I am there, I will try to see the next, and simply carry on. It is all I can do.

  Betsy

  Chapter 4

  "What are you going to do?"

  Valerie placed a teacup and saucer on the table in front of me and lowered herself into the chair across the table. She wrapped her palms around the cup in front of her, leaning slightly forward so that the steam from the cup could touch her face. Usually we would visit in the front parlor or on the veranda of her house, but the weather outside was still bitterly cold, driving us inside the warmth and comfort of the kitchen.

  Now sitting at the table near the heat radiating off of the big wood stove, we sat talking, trying to pretend that this one was like any of the other conversations that we had had throughout our many years of friendship, but knowing that it wasn't. Valerie and I had grown up together, playing in the gardens behind our homes and traipsing back and forth between them as if the two spaces were indeed one large play area designed just for our amusement.

  In all the years that we had been friends, however, and it had now been twenty of them, I had never seen the level of darkness and concern on my dear friend's face that I did now. Even when my father died she remained strong for me and did everything she could to make me laugh and remember the good things rather than the painful ones. She comforted me and reassured me, helping me to see that I was not alone and that everything about my life and my future had not simply disappeared the moment my father closed his eyes for the last time.

  Now, however, she seemed to be staring at me through different eyes. Gone was the sparkle and the optimism that she had held then. Instead, they held heartache and dismay. It was almost as though she could see what lay ahead of me in a way that I couldn't and was already suffering for me.

  "I don't know," I answered, lifting my cup to take a sip but then lowering it again before it touched my lips. "What can I do?"

  "Oh, Betsy," Valerie said. There were tears in her voice and it made my stomach feel even sicker than it already did. "You know I wish I could help you."

  Valerie had coped with her own sadness over the last year, though different from my own. Her home had once nearly overflowed with the sounds of her five brothers and two sisters laughing and playing. Even as they grew into their late teenage years and beyond they were lively and always making the house ring with the sounds of their voices. In the course of just one year, however, she had lost all but two of her siblings to the war and disease. The house was quiet now, the same kind of heavy, pain-filled silence of my house.

  "The doctor says that Mama isn't getting any better," I said, lowering my voice for fear that if I said the words too loudly they may work to make her illness even more severe.

  "Did he say how long she has had it?" Valerie asked carefully.

  I shook my head, finally taking a sip of the tea though the taste of it on my tongue and the feeling of it going down my throat made me shudder. It had been three days since I had eaten and I was beginning to feel the weakness taking over my body.

  "He said that tuberculosis is a disease that can linger in your body for years without showing any signs. It is possible that that sickness she had when she lost her last baby was actually tuberculosis and didn't realize it. It nearly kill
ed her then, but she was younger and was able to pull through. Now that it has returned, though, she might not be able to fight it as she had before."

  "I'm so sorry, Betsy."

  "What am I supposed to do if she dies, Valerie? How am I to go on by myself?"

  My head dropped and I finally felt myself let my tears fall. I had been trying to hold them back for so long, fighting them as hard as I could as I watched my mother fade. I knew that seeing me cry would only hurt my mother and make it more difficult for her to keep going. I wanted her to see how strong I could be, how I was carrying on.

  I felt Valerie's hand cover mine. She didn't say anything, but held my hand as I cried, giving me all of the strength and comfort she could. In that moment, it was all I could have asked from her.

  Chapter 5

  March, 1863

  Dear Diary,

  What do I even say?

  The house is even quieter now. I am sitting in the parlor with a carafe of coffee long cold sitting in front of me. I remember the days when I was younger and would hide away in my bedroom to write in you, Diary. I would never have sat out here in the parlor, my pages open to anyone who may pass by to read them. Fearing the boys would catch me writing and read all of the thoughts and dreams I had entrusted to your pages, I would only write in the evening when I was locked securely behind my bedroom door.

  Mama always used to tell me that huddling near the candlelight and using it as the only means of seeing as I wrote would hurt my eyes. I only wish that she would come into the room now so that she could warn me again as the light filtering through the window fades.