“Mother, please…” Kitty was forced to stop her pursuit of her father and turn back to the house. She hoped Nathan would keep on going, but he went along with her. Stepping onto the porch, she put her hands on Lena’s shoulders and pushed her toward the door, hissing softly, “You should be ashamed of yourself, out here drunk in front of Nathan this way.”
“Who’s drunk?” Lena roared indignantly, swaying once again. Kitty caught her and held her, or she would have fallen. “So I drink a little now and then? Is that a crime?
“The way I’m forced to live? Out here in the dirt…in poverty…hungry most of the time…living with an ungrateful daughter who’s doomed to be an old maid ‘cause her father raised her like she was a boy…living with a crazy old coot that sits and stares out of one eye all day. Gotta right to drink, I tell you. Don’t tell me I can’t drink.”
Kitty looked at Nathan beseechingly. “Help me get her inside, please. I don’t know where Poppa’s going, but whatever is wrong, she’ll only make it worse if he hears her screaming.”
Nathan stepped forward, seizing Lena by the arms and shoving her into the house. She seemed to melt against him once she realized it was him ordering her about. She let him push her along all the way to the bedroom, and once there, she fell across the bed in a drunken stupor.
“I’m sorry you had to see that,” Kitty said quietly as they looked down at the snoring woman. An empty jug lay on the pillow beside her.
“How long has this been going on?” he asked.
She shrugged. “I don’t know, really. Maybe for years, and I never noticed till she started getting worse. Poppa being like he is just brought it all out, I guess. Both of them seemed to have just stopped caring what goes on.”
“Let’s go check on your father,” Nathan said, taking her hand and leading her outside.
They were almost to the barn when the large door swung open and out rode John Wright. They stared in surprise as he rode right by them, one good eye staring straight ahead, shoulders no longer slumped as he sat straight up in the saddle. He wasn’t ducking his chin to his chest, either. It was jutted up, that same way Kitty’s did when she was determined to be stubborn about something, her mind made up.
His knapsack was tied to the saddle, as well as a water pouch, the musket tucked into a strap. Kitty stared in amazement at the old hound, Killer, trotting along beside the horse with more energy than she’d ever seen him display in his whole life, practically—and surely since he’d been hit over the head with the club. Why, at times, as he lay at her father’s feet, she’d had to touch him to make sure he was still breathing—he had grown so still and lazy, never moving from John’s feet.
“Poppa, where are you going? Poppa, come back here! You have no business out riding. You’re still sick. Poppa!”
Panic was washing over her in giant waves. Ignoring Jacob, who was standing in the doorway of the barn calling to her, she lifted her skirts and ran along behind the horse, which was still walking. “Poppa, for God’s sake, you come back here. Where do you think you’re going?”
“Kitty!” It was Nathan, running to catch up with her, grabbing her arm, and she tried to snatch away but could not escape his grasp. “Kitty, I’ll get my horse and go after him, but it won’t do any good. Not now.”
“Poppa, please…” She was crying in fright. He couldn’t take care of himself, not now.
“I’ll go after him. Let me ride your horse. He’ll listen to me. I know he will.” She was babbling, near hysterics, and she turned to run sack to where the horse was tied, but Jacob stood, blocking her path.
“It won’t do no good, Miss Kitty. You can’t stop him now. I ‘spected this would happen, and they just ain’t no stoppin’ him now.”
“He’s right, Kitty.”
She looked from Jacob to Nathan, then back to Jacob. “What are you talking about?” she screamed. “Where has he gone? What are the two of you trying to tell me?”
They had turned their heads, and she did likewise. John had reached the main road. The horse was starting to trot along briskly. Killer was keeping up. The dust was swirling about them as they became smaller and smaller. The road seemed to open to swallow them.
Kitty moaned, shaking her head from side to side as Nathan held her. What was happening? What did Nathan and Jacob know that she did not?
“Oh, Miss Kitty, can’t you see?” There was awe in the old negro’s voice and respect shining in watery, red-veined eyes. “He got his spirit back. Can’t you see the way he holds his head? Like the old days—when he’s got his mind made up about sumthin’…he’s got it back, Miss Kitty. I knowed all along it was gonna happen this way.”
“Jacob, please.” She was losing her patience. “What are you talking about?”
His eyes widened, as though he couldn’t believe she hadn’t finally seen it all for herself, just as he did. “Why, Miss Kitty, your daddy clone gone off to war. He gone off to join up with the Yankees…just like I always knowed he would!”
She stared at her father, almost out of sight. The spirit had returned. It had never really been destroyed…merely waiting for the time when it would be needed.
John Wright had answered the calling of his conscience. “God speed,” Kitty whispered through her tears. There was no stopping him now.
The man, his horse, and his dog disappeared from sight.
Chapter Twelve
The day the Wayne Volunteers boarded the train for Virginia, the whole countryside turned out to see them off with celebration and pageantry. With colors flying, and the women waving handkerchiefs, the band played “Dixie” as the men marched proudly down Center Street on their way to the railroad cars that would take them to war.
Earlier, in a ceremony in front of the courthouse, Kitty had thrilled at the sight of Nathan in his Captain’s uniform. He wore a cadet gray tunic and black facings and stand-up collar, dark blue trousers with black velvet stripes down the sides, trimmed in gold cording…a black cravat and highly polished ankle boots…white gloves and a sash of red silk net, his sword and scabbard strapped at his side.
She had presented the flag she had lovingly made for the Wayne Volunteers—a square of white silk on which she had embroidered a proud-looking eagle. Nathan had kissed her deeply, in front of everyone, and he made a speech about how he and his men would protect that flag, and defend it, or they would not return, choosing death in battle instead.
And then he, and his men, were gone. And Kitty was left behind with the others.
It was unbearable around the house with John gone and Lena in a continuous drunken stupor. Kitty instructed Jacob to plant what he could to feed his family, asking him to look after Lena, and then she busied herself following Doc on his daily rounds and preparing to open the hospital in Goldsboro.
Word spread that while the men of North Carolina had turned out in great number to answer the Governor’s call for troops, equipment was desperately in demand. The shortage was somewhat lessened when the state took over the Federal Arsenal at Fayetteville and 37,000 pieces of armament were seized. But many of these were muskets of the old flintlock type, dating back to the Revolutionary War, and were not of much use to the troops. The alarming news came back from the Virginia front that some companies were without any arms at all, while others could only arm themselves with pikes—wooden poles capped at one end with iron.
The picture for artillery was even darker. Doc told Kitty that in all of the state there were only four old smoothbore cannons, and these had been purchased from the military schools at Charlotte and Hillsboro—so many artillery companies, like the infantry units, had left for battle without proper equipment.
Word came that President Lincoln had proclaimed a blockade of the south, but Doc assured Kitty that there were already blockade-runners slipping through with ease to unload valuable cargoes at Wilmington.
Summer settled upon the South, hot and steaming. News arrived that in June, at a place called Big Bethel, near Yorktown, Virginia, a small Con
federate force commanded by Colonel John B. Magruder soundly defeated a much larger Federal Army under General Benjamin F. Butler. Over half of Magruder’s men belonged to D. H. Hill’s First North Carolina Regiment, to which Nathan’s Wayne Volunteers had been assigned. The battle was so well fought that the Confederate Congress and the North Carolina Convention publicly thanked their troops.
“I know we’re going to win,” Kitty exulted early one morning in mid-August as she worked with Doc in the building also occupied by the Goldsboro Female College that was being converted into a hospital. “The last letter I had from Nathan was just filled with optimism for an early ending. We may never have to use these bandages.” She laid a fresh pile of cotton wrapping on a table.
“I wish I could share his enthusiasm.” Doc carefully measured opium into tiny containers.
“Nathan says if we’d seen that battle, we’d know that one Confederate soldier is equal to a half-dozen Yankees. He was so proud of his men.”
“Has he heard anything of John?”
She lowered her eyes, a flash of hurt surging through her body. “No one’s heard from Poppa since he left. For all we know, he may be dead. I pray not.”
“We all do, girl.” He touched her shoulder and was about to offer more words of consolation when thundering steps outside made them whip their heads around to stare anxiously at the door.
It was Ben Jamison from the telegraph office, face bright with excitement as he waved a slip of paper in the air. “You got a telegram from the Surgeon General in Raleigh, Doc. He wants you to move out!”
“Give me that!” Doc snatched the telegram from his hand irritably, knowing the loud-mouthed old busybody had probably stopped along Center and William Streets to tell everyone he saw what was in the message from Dr. Johnson.
Kitty waited anxiously as she saw the grim expression take over Doc’s face as he read the hastily scrawled words. Finally, he lifted his eyes to meet hers, and his voice, when he spoke, was filled with dread. “The Yankees have attacked the fort at Hatteras Inlet. We’ve got a lot of wounded men, and Dr. Johnson has asked that I take some assistants and supplies and get there as soon as possible to help out.
“Trouble is…” he went on dully, “I don’t have any assistants. I don’t have much of anything at this point but a lot of promises to help out when the going gets rough.”
“Well, the going is rough,” Kitty cried. “Let’s round up some help and load a wagon with supplies and start for the coast. It will take us over a day’s ride, or better, to get there.”
He raised an eyebrow. “You sure you want to go, Kitty? We’re heading into the battle, you know. Nathan might not take too kindly to me letting you go along.”
“It’s not what Nathan thinks that rules my life, Doc.” Already she was starting to gather things that they would need. “I told you that you could always count on me, and you can. So stop thinking that I’m a woman and look on me as one of your assistants. Now let’s get busy so we can be on our way.”
“Kitty…” He gestured helplessly.
She turned and looked at him with her chin tilting upward in a stubborn set. “Doc, you asked me to help you, remember? Now you, above all other people, should know that I have no intentions of hiding inside this building throughout the war and spending my time cutting bandages or spooning out tonics to the sick townspeople.”
“Kitty, you don’t understand. Dr. Johnson has set up a field hospital as close to the Pamlico Sound as we can get, and the wounded are being brought out there. It’s swampland and wilderness down there, unlike anything you’ve ever seen around here. It’s going to be dangerous. We don’t know how long the forts can hold up, because we have no way of knowing the number of ships the Yankees have sent down here. We might all be overrun and captured. I can’t have your life endangered this way. Your father and Nathan would never forgive me.”
“It’s my life, Doc. Not Nathan’s…not my father’s. They didn’t ask my permission to go off to war, did they? I can shoot as well as any man, and I don’t scream or faint at the sight of blood. I’m able to help you as well, if not better, than any man you can find in this county.”
Doc swore under his breath in exasperation, then wadded the sheet of paper into a tight ball and flung it across the room. “All right, damnit, let’s get busy. This is what I get for taking on a bull-headed snip of a woman to start with.”
Kitty gathered up the necessary supplies while Doc went in search of more assistants to accompany them. She packed instruments, ligatures, chloroform, morphine, tourniquets, bandages, lint, splints—and whiskey. She was just finishing when Doc returned with two men named Silas Canby and Paul Gray.
They were big, husky men, and Kitty knew them only as dirt farmers. “They were good enough to say they’d come,” Doc explained. “They don’t know much about medicine, but then we can’t be choosy. We never figured on being called on to do anything like this so soon.”
The two men shifted their weight uneasily, and Kitty, sensing that they didn’t particularly care for Doc’s apologies, quickly said, “They’ll do fine, Doc. When a man is hurt, you get help from God, not past experience.”
They smiled at her gratefully.
Once the wagon was loaded they started out, down the road east toward Kinston. Giant black thunderclouds were gathering on the horizon, warning of a dreaded summer storm, Lightning flashed across the sky now and then, followed by deep rumbles of thunder that shook the ground beneath them. The two horses pulling the wagon snorted and pawed the ground nervously, and Silas held the reins tightly, trying to keep the excited animals under control.
As light turned to darkness they reached Kinston and moved on toward the northeast and the little town of Washington, which they hoped to make before morning, but Doc surmised it would be closer to midday, as the rain had started to fall, and the road was soon muddy. The horses were having difficulty moving through the muck, and several times they were forced to get down out of the wagon and push it when a wheel was mired in.
The blackness turned to dull gray as morning came with no evidence of a rising sun in the overcast sky. They were soaked to the skin, but still they pushed onward. At Washington they stopped at a depot for dry clothing, and the men stretched a tarpaulin across the top of the wagon. The supplies were already covered by canvas, but the new covering would afford them some protection from the relentlessly driving rain.
Having eaten, they plodded onward, into the marshy swamplands of Pamlico Sound. Kitty looked around her at the majestic trees with hanging moss that towered above the gloomy waters. Before them on the road a rank growth of juniper, nightshade, and all manner of climbing and creeping shrubs and vines seemed to choke their path and render it all but impenetrable. The land on either side was low and marshy, a bed of quicksand and morass with broken and tangled weeds and vines that twined about gnarled roots. The forest looked dreary and ominous.
Doc was right. It was unlike anything she had ever seen back in Wayne County. That country she knew. She had grown up in it. This was new and dangerous, and she shivered with the dampness and gloom of her surroundings.
Paul Gray was driving, and Kitty and Doc and Silas huddled together beneath the sagging tarpaulin. “Doc, how much farther before we reach the camp?” Silas asked wearily.
“I have to admit that I don’t know,” Doc answered quietly. “All I know is that we’ll run into it somewhere along this road. That man back at the way station said they’d had a report early this morning that some wounded soldiers were being brought across the sound from Fort Hatteras.”
Kitty had noticed that Doc had been strangely quiet since leaving the way-station. Reaching to touch his huddled shoulders lightly, she asked, “Doc, what’s wrong? Did you hear something back there that you haven’t told us about?”
Sighing, he closed his eyes for a moment, then said, “No one likes to talk about defeat, Kitty. I heard at the station that Fort Clark ran out of ammunition yesterday and had to spike their guns an
d abandon the fort. They’ve withdrawn to Hatteras. The rough weather and high seas are all that’s kept the Yankees from moving onto the beach at Hatteras.”
A chill rippled up her spine. The Yankees might take Fort Hatteras and move into North Carolina inland from the sea. Doc’s grim fear might become a reality—they might be captured…or killed.
He was watching her thoughtfully as he said, “I could send you back on one of the horses, Kitty…”
“No!” She all but screamed the word. “I’m not running, Doc. I intend to go where I’m needed, and I wish you’d just stop thinking of me as a woman.”
“I delivered you, young lady, remember? I knew you were a girl before you did!”
She almost laughed, and she probably would have, because the peppery old doctor’s eyes were twinkling with humor in spite of the tense mission—but just then Silas, who had been watching her quietly ever since they had left Goldsboro, blurted out, “You heard anything from your pappy since he high-tailed it to join them goddamn Yankees?”
Kitty caught her breath. “No, I haven’t,” she said evenly, meeting his defiant gaze. “I pray that he’s well.”
“Even if he’s fightin’ for the Yankees and shootin’ at our men? Maybe even firin’ balls at that soldier boyfriend of yours, Nathan Collins?”
“Silas…” Doc nudged him with his foot. “Let’s not talk about it. We’ve got other things on our mind right now.
“Oh, let him go on, Doc.” Kitty was unable to keep the biting anger silent. “Maybe he’s concerned because he knows who the cowards were that hid behind those masks the night the Vigilantes whipped my father and killed three people.”
A slow smile spread across his face as Silas nodded. “I might. I say they all got what they deserved. No telling how many slaves your pappy helped get away. What I can’t figure out is why you didn’t go with him when he ran away. I reckon that fancy-pants rich boy, Nathan, has you right where he wants you.”
Love and War: The Coltrane Saga, Book 1 Page 13
