Encounter at Cold Harbor

by Gilbert L. Morris

  Nelson Majors’s cheeks were sunken, and so were his eyes. His skin was pale and sallow. “Well, to tell the truth, I have felt better,” he murmured. Then he looked over at Eileen and tried to grin. “But if it wasn’t for this lady here and Leah, I’d be feeling a lot worse—or not feeling at all.”

  “You’ll be all right, Nelson,” Eileen said. “Now you have a good talk with Jeff while I go fix you something special to eat.”

  The women left, and Jeff sat beside his father. The colonel seemed tired and would drop off to sleep for short periods of time, sometimes only for a few seconds.

  “Can’t seem to stay awake.” He half laughed. Then he said, “Tell me about the battle. How’d you get shot?”

  Jeff told him about the Battle of the Crater, describing it as well as he could.

  By the time he had finished, Leah and Eileen were back. They had brought a soup of some sort of meat that had been boiled until it fell apart.

  “Let me help you up, Nelson.” With surprising strength for one so small, Eileen set the big man upright. She fluffed the pillow behind him and said, “Now, you’re going to eat every bite of this if I have to shove it down your throat!”

  Nelson winked at his son. “That’s the way they treat a fellow, Jeff. I got no rights at all around here.”

  “I think you better mind her. From what I heard, she’s a bad woman to cross.”

  Eileen had a forkful of meat poised before the colonel’s lips, but at Jeff’s words she turned toward him.

  Jeff smiled. It was the first time that he had ever smiled at her, as far as he could remember.

  She smiled back. “I guess I behaved pretty badly at the hospital.”

  “Tom thought she was gonna cut that doctor’s gizzard out,” Jeff said. “He said he had to hold her back to keep her from pullin’ him baldheaded.”

  “He didn’t say any such thing!” Eileen protested, blushing.

  Now everybody was laughing at Mrs. Fremont, and she grew flustered. “A person does what they have to do!” she said firmly. Then she shoved the meat into Nelson’s mouth, saying, “Now, you chew on that and chew it up good.”

  Late that afternoon, Jeff, sitting in a rocking chair on the front porch, saw a horseman coming. Soon he recognized the rider and hollered, “Tom! It’s me!”

  Tom Majors swung off the horse, tied it to the hitching post, and came onto the porch. His limp was noticeable, but it was not bad. He grinned and clapped Jeff on his good shoulder. “Well, you managed to get yourself a free pass to Richmond, I see.”

  “Pretty sorry way to get a pass, I’d say,” Jeff said. “What’s up with you, Tom?”

  “I’ll be a messenger from now on. Don’t need two legs to ride a horse.” He took the chair beside Jeff, and once again Jeff told the story of the Battle of the Crater.

  When he had finished, Tom said, “I’m glad you’re all right, Jeff. How’s the arm?”

  “Oh, it’s a little stiff and hurts some, but the doctor said it’d be all right.”

  “You’ve got a good nurse. I don’t know a better one than Eileen, and Leah’s a good helper.”

  When Tom went inside to wash up, Leah came out onto the porch and sat on the steps close to Jeff. She looked up at him. “How does your arm feel?”

  “Feels great!” Jeff said cheerfully. “As long as I don’t bang it or do anything with it.”

  “I hope the war’s over by the time it gets well.”

  “I doubt that it will be.”

  Leah looked in the direction of Petersburg, where the boys had been, as if she could hear the guns. “It’s pretty bad in the trenches, isn’t it?”

  Jeff did not answer for a moment, but then he nodded. “Pretty bad.”

  “Do you think there’s any way we can win?”

  Jeff looked down at his feet. “I don’t think so,” he said at last. “But we got to go on.”

  “I wish the South would quit. I’d hate to see another man lost from the North or the South.”

  Suddenly Jeff knew that was what he wished too, but he could not say so. That would appear disloyal. “Well,” he said, “it’ll be over one way or another pretty soon.”

  Talking quietly, they watched the sun slowly descend.

  Jeff said, “Sounds like if it hadn’t been for Mrs. Fremont, Pa wouldn’t have made it.”

  “That’s right,” Leah agreed. “I think she saved his life. So many men have died in that hospital just from being overcrowded and not getting enough care.”

  “Seems like he’s getting good enough care here.”

  “Have you changed your mind about Eileen?” Leah asked. She studied his face.

  Jeff lowered his head for a moment, then lifted his eyes to meet hers. “A fella can’t be mad at somebody who takes good care of his pa, maybe saves his life.”

  Leah smiled. “I’m glad you feel that way. She’s really a fine woman.”

  While Jeff and Leah talked on the front porch, Eileen was giving her patient a haircut. She had come in with a pair of scissors and without preamble said, “You’re getting your hair cut.”

  Nelson struggled to a sitting position, and she helped him to a chair. When he was seated comfortably, she put a towel around his neck. Then, taking comb and scissors, she said, “Now, you be still, or I might cut your ears off!”

  “Don’t see why I need a haircut. I’m not going to see anybody,” he protested.

  “You’re going to see me, and I’m going to see you. I don’t want you looking like some kind of wild hillbilly!”

  The colonel sat quietly as Eileen began to work on his hair. Surprisingly, his fever was down, and he felt better than he had in some time. As she moved around in front of him, her eyes on his hair, he was able to study her face. She had smooth skin and an attractiveness about her features that he had rarely seen. Without planning to, he said, “You’re a very attractive woman, Eileen.”

  “What?” She stopped abruptly. Her face was only a few inches from his, and she flushed. “Well, thank you,” she said.

  He thought for a moment that he’d gone too far. “I didn’t mean to offend you.”

  Eileen smiled, reached out and cut a lock, then said, “I don’t suppose you can offend a woman by telling her she looks nice.” She continued to work, and her hands were light as she brushed the clipped hair away. “I’m going to trim your mustache too. It’s getting too woolly. Be still!”

  She worked swiftly and carefully. “Now, a shave. I’m not sure about that. I’m not really a barber.”

  “I’d appreciate it. Never did like to let a shave go. It makes my face itch.”

  For the next ten minutes he sat quietly as she lathered his face and soaked it, then began to shave him with a straight razor.

  “Don’t move!” she warned. “One wound’s enough!”

  He could not help grinning. “More than enough, I’d say!” He sat still until she had finished and had wiped his face. She was leaning over him when all of a sudden he reached out, pulled her close, and kissed her soundly.

  When he let her go, she stood up gasping. “Why, Nelson Majors!” she exclaimed. “What made you do such a thing?”

  “I always kiss pretty nurses every chance I get. It’s the only way I can repay them for what they’ve done.”

  “You certainly seem better! Well, you just behave yourself.” She put the shaving gear away. Then she sat in the chair beside him, picked up a book, and began reading to him. But a thought seemed to come to her, and she laid down the book. “You know, if I’d been able to nurse my husband as I have you, Nelson, he might not have died.”

  “I truly wish he hadn’t, Eileen.”

  She looked up quickly, as though to determine if he was serious. “I’m glad I was here to help you.”

  “I’m glad too.” He lowered his head and said, “I thought I’d never find another woman as kind as my first wife, but I have.”

  He reached out a hand, and she took it. For a long time they just sat holding hands, saying nothin
g. Eileen may not have known what this meant, but she seemed content.

  He wondered what would happen to the two of them.

  Outside, Jeff stirred. “I guess she’s done a lot for him, hasn’t she, Leah?”

  “I think she loves him, Jeff,” Leah said quietly, “and love isn’t ever selfish.”

  14

  A Woman of Strength

  Gen. Robert E. Lee was not a man to demand high honors for himself. As the siege of Petersburg went on, he refused to make his headquarters inside a house. Instead, he chose to have his tent pitched in a yard, refusing all the many offers made to him. It was from there that Lee wrote to his wife early in June, reminding her that their thirty-third anniversary was approaching and speaking wistfully of that happy day.

  Inside Petersburg, men and women went about their daily business, although shells fell frequently. Sometimes they blew houses to bits and tore up the streets. Around the city, twenty-six miles of fortifications kept the Federals out, and work on them never stopped.

  The Union Army also built fortifications, and the weary weeks passed slowly for both sides.

  Bad news continued to come from outside Petersburg, for the Confederacy was losing ground daily. Word came that Farragut’s fleet had entered Mobile Bay and closed that Southern seaport. Word also came that General Sherman’s army had taken Atlanta and would soon be marching to the sea.

  Inside Richmond, too, things continued to worsen. Prices skyrocketed. Confederate money was worth practically nothing. One inhabitant said, “I saw selling at auction today secondhand shirts at forty dollars each, and blankets at seventy-five dollars each. A bedstead such as I bought for ten dollars brought seven hundred dollars.”

  One issue that came up was the question of using slaves as soldiers. Lee himself was in favor of it. He said in a letter, “My own opinion is that we should employ them without delay. I believe with proper regulations they can be made efficient soldiers.” He also felt that any slave who fought in the army should be given his freedom, which did not set well with many people.

  Jeff found use for himself in Richmond. His arm was still in a sling, but he had grown healthy under the persistent care of Eileen Fremont and Leah. He found that he could work in the garden, which supplied most of the food for their small household.

  One late afternoon he was out picking butter beans when he looked up to see Tom riding in. Tom had come and gone with regularity, having adapted himself well to serving in the cavalry.

  Leah was in the garden with Jeff, wearing an old green-and-white dress and a bonnet to shade her face.

  “I’m right proud of Tom, Leah,” he said quietly as his brother rode up. “I think he’s going to be all right.”

  Leah straightened up and watched Jeff’s brother swing from the saddle almost as gracefully as he had once done with two good legs. “He looks fine, doesn’t he?”

  “Does he ever write to Sarah?”

  “I don’t know, of course,” she said. “Remember we haven’t gotten any mail, and we won’t as long we’re pinned inside Richmond.”

  Jeff felt foolish, for he well knew that there was no such thing as mail coming into the Southern capital.

  Tom caught a glimpse of the pair and walked toward them. “Hello,” he said. “Getting something good for supper?”

  “Sure are, Tom,” Jeff replied. “You gonna be able to stay?”

  “I don’t think so this time, but if you’ve got a few beans to put in a sack, I could take some back to the squad.”

  “Sure,” Jeff said. “We’ll be glad to. I know how good fresh vegetables taste when you’re stuck out there in those trenches.”

  “I’ll pick ’em up before I leave,” Tom said. “Now, I better get inside and see Pa.”

  Tom knocked on the screen door, and almost at once Eileen was there. As she opened the door, Esther came catapulting out and grabbed Tom around the knees.

  “Tom, come and play.”

  Laughing, he scooped up the child. As she prattled on, he compared her face with those memories he had of his mother. Turning to Eileen, he said, “She sure looks like Ma.”

  “That’s good.” Eileen smiled. “You’ll always have something to remember her by. And every time she looks in the mirror, she’ll know what her mother looked like.”

  Tom’s eyes warmed. “That’s a nice thought, Eileen.” He had learned to admire Eileen Fremont. “I don’t know what we would have done without you. I really don’t.”

  “I’m glad I could be here.”

  “How’s Pa today?”

  “He’s sitting up in the parlor.”

  “He is? Well, let me at him.”

  Tom followed her down the hall and turned off into the roomy sitting room. The two big windows at one end threw light down upon the form of Nelson Majors seated in an upholstered chair and holding a book in his lap. “Hey, Tom. I saw you ride in.”

  “Pa, good to see you up again.” Still holding Esther, Tom walked over and shook his father’s hand. Then he sat across from him, and the two began to chat.

  Esther, however, would have none of that. “Play, Tom!” she said. “Play horsey!”

  “All right.” Tom laughed and knelt down. She got on his back, and he went around the room, tossing her with bends of his body.

  The colonel watched his son play with the golden-haired child, and when Tom came back, out of breath, Nelson said, “That leg does pretty well.”

  “Better than I thought it would. I’ve got to thank Ezra a lot more than I have—and Leah too.” Tom returned to his chair. “I was pretty stubborn about it, Pa. I thought I was going to be a worthless cripple the rest of my life. Now I feel like I can do just about anything.”

  “And that’s good, Tom,” his father said. “A man wants to be able to do for his family.”

  At the mention of family, Tom’s eyes shot to his father. They had not talked about Sarah, but Tom knew that his father was thinking of her. Instead of mentioning Sarah, however, Tom said quickly, “I wish I had a million dollars. I’d give it to Eileen for taking over the way she has.”

  A warmth came to Nelson’s face. “So would I. I don’t know how to thank her.”

  “She’s a fine woman,” Tom remarked, playing with Esther’s curls as she pawed at the bright buttons on his vest.

  “Yes, she is.”

  “Good-lookin’ too, don’t you think?”

  “I suppose so.”

  Tom laughed out loud. “You suppose so! You mean to tell me you haven’t noticed?”

  A flush mounted the older man’s cheeks, and he grinned. “Well, I guess you’d have to say I have, Tom. After all, I may have been sick, but I haven’t been dead.”

  Tom knew that his father had been lonely since the death of his wife, and now he asked casually, “Do you ever think of her as a woman you might marry?”

  Silence fell over the room and continued so long that Tom was conscious of a fly buzzing around his head. He brushed it away and waited.

  At length his father said quietly, “If I ever did marry again, I think she’d be the woman I’d like to have, but I’m worried about Jeff.”

  “Jeff? What’s wrong with Jeff?”

  “I think he’s … well … jealous.”

  “Oh, he’ll get over that, Pa. I mean, after all, he’s grown almost. It’s not like he was a baby. I’ll talk to him.”

  “No, don’t do that,” the colonel said quickly. “Let me do it.”

  “All right, Pa.”

  That evening after supper, when Tom had gone back to camp and the colonel had moved back to his bed, Eileen was busy picking up a few things around the room.

  Taking a deep breath, the colonel said, “Eileen, come over and sit down, will you?”

  She shot him a quick glance and frowned at the look she saw on his face. “Why, what is it, Nelson?” She sat on the bedside chair. “Is something wrong?”

  Nelson Majors was not the best man in the world with words. He knew what he wanted to say but somehow had
become unable to put them in the right order. His eyes fell on the black Bible that lay on the table beside the bed, and he said, “Let me have that Bible, will you, Eileen? I want to read you something.”

  Opening the Book, he let his eyes run along the lines and began to read. His voice was low and pleasant as he read, “‘Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies. The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her …’”

  Eileen sat straight in her chair, her eyes fixed on his face. She listened as he read from the latter part of Proverbs 31: “‘She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness. Her children arise up, and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praiseth her.’”

  Nelson looked up at her suddenly and reached out and took her hand. “I’m not your husband— yet—but I’m afraid I’ll have to take the words of Scripture.”

  “Why, whatever do you mean, Nelson?” Her breath seemed to come rather shortly.

  His hand held hers tightly. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to praise you, Eileen Fremont. I’ve never seen a woman like you. If it hadn’t been for you, I think I’d be dead by now.” He looked down again and read another verse: “‘Many daughters have done virtuously, but thou excellest them all. Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain: but a woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised.’”

  After reading the last verse, he put his free hand on her cheek. “I will praise you, Eileen, for you have excelled above all women.”

  Eileen did not move for a moment. Then she leaned forward, and his lips met hers. Finally she drew back and said, “That was a lovely thing to say.”

  “I said no more than the truth. And I suppose you know what I want to say next, don’t you?”

  “What is it?”

  “Would you marry me, Eileen, and be a wife to me and a mother to my children?”

  Eileen lowered her eyes, her hand still in his as she said, “You know Jeff might be opposed. He doesn’t like me very much.”

  “I’m not asking you to marry Jeff. He’s almost a man now. He’ll just have to get used to it. But I think he likes you more than you think. Things have been so shaken up in his life, he’s just afraid of changes. I’ll ask you again. Will you marry me, Eileen?”