He looked from Nathan to Kitty. “You know, you’re heading into a dangerous part of the state. The enemy is making raids in the countryside, foraging, doing God knows what to the womenfolk when they can. You’d be smart to turn and head back to Richmond.”
“I have family in Goldsboro,” Kitty said quietly. “I have nothing in Richmond.”
“Ever hear of the ‘Buffaloes’?” he asked. Nathan shook his head, and he went on, “They travel in gangs of a dozen or so men—Union bushwhackers who infest the swamps. They used to live around here, they say, and went to join the Yankees, then deserted. Their hometown folks are itching to lynch ‘em, so they’ve got no place to go but to the swamps to hide out and run their raids at night. They like to visit their old neighbors and take revenge for being unable to go home.”
“Perhaps,” Nathan said, turning to Kitty with a sneer on his face, “you will find your father among them.”
“I doubt that,” she snapped. “He’d never desert the Union army. He’d sooner die.”
“A loyal traitor.” Nathan snickered. “How noble.”
She bit down on her lip until she tasted blood, not wanting to unleash her fury in front of strangers.
The man was watching with interest. He leaned forward and said, “That true, lady? You from North Carolina and your daddy is fighting with the Yankees? It’s a wonder folks in your hometown don’t run you out! And you hooked up with a fine Confederate officer here.” He nodded to the single star on the tunic of Nathan’s uniform. “I see you’re a Major, sir.”
She turned her head slowly and stared at him with such vehemence that he sank in his seat. “I’ll thank you to mind your own business,” she said icily.
“Katherine!” Nathan admonished.
“And I’ve had about all I’m going to take from you, Nathan!” She stood up and with a swish of her skirt, moved past him, fighting to maintain her balance against the lurching of the train as she walked up the aisle to take a seat beside another woman.
When the train arrived at the Goldsboro depot a short while later, Kitty hurried to be the first to descend onto the platform. She stood there, gazing about at the familiar buildings, searching for the face of anyone she might know.
“Katherine, where do you think you’re going?” Nathan rushed up to her side and grabbed her arm tightly.
“Take your hands off of me, Nathan.”
“I asked you where you are going!”
“It’s none of your damned business!”
Shocked by hearing such profanity from the lips of a Southern woman right out in public and seeing that others heard and turned to stare, Nathan dropped his hand and stepped back.
Kitty walked over to a black man standing beside a wagon. “I have no money to pay you,” she said curtly, “but I would appreciate your giving me a ride out in the county to my home. Perhaps you know where I live. My name is Kitty Wright. My father’s name is John Wright. My mother is Lena Wright.”
The man’s eyes widened with each word she uttered and now he was actually stepping back away from her, as though frightened.
Kitty asked him what was wrong and he started to shake his head. “I don’t wanna ride you out there, Missie. You don’t wanna go out there.”
“What is wrong with you?” she demanded.
Nathan had followed her. He nodded to the man. “I’m Major Nathan Collins. I believe you know my people?”
“Yassuh.” He bowed respectfully.
“Would you give both of us a ride into the county? I live just beyond Miss Wright’s home. You can drop her off there.”
“Suh, this ain’t my wagon, no how. It belong to Mistah Carter. He inside the hotel. He tol’ me to wait heah.”
Nathan sighed, turned on his heel, and walked across the street to the hotel. He returned in a few moments and told the man Mr. Carter had been paid for the use of his wagon and it was quite all right for them to be given a ride home. Turning to Kitty, he said, “You can either ride with me or walk—whichever you prefer. You’re trying my patience, Katherine, and I really don’t care what you do.”
She let him help her onto the wagon. The thing to do at the moment, she realized, was to get home, not stand around in the middle of Goldsboro without a cent to her name.
Down the familiar road they went and when they got to the front of Andy Shaw’s house, Kitty cried out, “They burned it. It’s burned to the ground!” She stared in disbelief at the charred remains. “What happened? Have the Yankees been through here?”
“No’m,” the black man answered, staring straight ahead. “Folks ‘round here burned lots of folks’ houses what they thought was Yankee lovers. They heared ‘bout Mistah Shaw ridin’ with Luke Tate and his bunch, and they burnt his house down.”
“But what about his wife and his children?”
The man did not speak. Nathan reached for her hand, but she snatched it away. Sighing, he told her that his mother had written to him about the night the townspeople burned the houses of those they felt were Union sympathizers. “Mother also wrote that the Shaws moved somewhere to the central part of the state where Mrs. Shaw had relatives. They were unharmed.”
“Thank God for that,” she said. “That woman couldn’t help what her husband did.”
And then, as they rounded the curve in the road, flanked on both sides by plums ripening in the bushes, Kitty cried out before the farm even came into view, “Our home! If they burned the Shaws’…”
And there it was, all that remained of the farmhouse and the barn—black, charred ruins in a pile of rubble. “Didn’t want to bring you out heah,” the old man mumbled. “This’n was the first they burned.”
Kitty put her hand on his shoulder, made him pull the reins of the mule until the wagon stopped. Nathan did not try to stop her. Climbing down, she walked as though in a daze, stumbling now and then, but moving forward to the blackened heap that was once her home. Nothing remained. Even the fields had been burned and the woods all the way back to the swampland. There was nothing left. Nothing.
Unaware that Nathan had followed her, Kitty jumped when he placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry, Katherine, truly sorry. It was bound to happen. The war news is not good. People are becoming discouraged. They’re taking drastic steps to fight back. Your father’s home represented everything that they hate. When Mother wrote me that it was burned to the ground, I was not surprised.”
“Why…why didn’t you tell me?” Her eyes were starting to burn with tears. Desolation and loneliness such as she had never known was moving across her body in a giant, consuming wave.
“Nathan, why did you bring me home—to this?”
“To make you see for yourself that everything in the past is dead, Katherine.” She allowed him to place both his hands on her shoulders and turn her around to face him. His touch, like his voice, was gentle. “You had to see for yourself what the war had done to all our lives. I’m truly sorry for the way I behaved, the things I said. But you had to come here, had to see what your father’s behavior has done to what life you thought you had left. It’s over. All of it. There’s nothing left for you now but to regain control of yourself, your morals, your values. When the war is over, when we finally win, if you have changed, then we’ll be married.
“Now I’ll have to return to Richmond soon to receive new orders for where I’ll report to duty,” he continued. “Right now, we’re going on to my home, where you will stay for the remainder of the war. You’ll be taken care of there.”
“My mother,” she moaned, remembering, “where is my mother?”
“That is another shame you must live down,” he said crisply. “She’s beyond help, Katherine. She’s back there in town, a prostitute, a drunk. Now listen to me. I’m willing to try and forget your past, forgive it, overlook your background. I’m giving you a chance at decency if you will only listen to me and cooperate. Now let’s go back to the wagon. Hold your head up and don’t look back. It’s the only way.”
She
stared at the black, empty fields. This was her father’s land. This was where he’d had his hopes and dreams. It had been his life, however unhappy due to a nagging, dissatisfied wife. It had been his. And now it was gone. And why? Because he had dared to help slaves escape? Because he refused to believe one man had the right to hold another man in bondage? Those men had beaten him almost to the point of death, cost him the loss of vision in one eye, driven him to fight for the North, and now he, like herself, had no reason to come home. They had stripped them of everything.
“Come along now.” Nathan spoke to her once again as though speaking to a child. “Here, take my hand. You’re tired from the trip. Mother will put you right to bed. We’ll talk tomorrow. Come along now. It’s over, Katherine. There’s no need to look back or think about unpleasant things.”
She took a deep breath and turned on him with all the fury of a cornered animal. “Yes, there is a need to look back, Nathan. It’s looking back and seeing what you, and those who think like you do, have done to me and to my father! Go to your home? Live with your people? Wait for you to come home? Be your wife? No, thank you, I’ll have no part of it.”
“Katherine, you’re ill…”
She slapped his hand away. “No, I’m not ill. I think I’m stronger now than I’ve ever been in my whole life. I think I needed this to give me the strength to go on. I don’t need you, Nathan. I don’t need anybody!”
She turned and walked across the field, cutting along the ruts and gulleys to reach the road leading into Goldsboro. Nathan called to her, but she put one foot in front of the other. This time she wasn’t looking back because she didn’t want to see him, because the sight of him and all he stood for—that was what made her sick!
Chapter Thirty-Three
Kitty moved between the beds. A soldier, sitting up and rubbing at the bandaged stump below his thigh, called to her, “Think I’m going to be getting out of here soon? The war’s over for me.” Despite his handicap, there was a touch of joy to his voice.
“That’s up to Doctor Holt, soldier. I’m just a nurse.” She started on by, then turned slowly. “Aren’t you the soldier who stuck a foot out to try and stop a cannon ball?”
“Yep,” he answered proudly. “Damned thing was moving so slow I never knowed it would tear my leg off. Now the war’s over for me and I reckon I’ll be headin’ home soon’s I get a crutch and you folks let me outta here. Goin’ to Smithfield. Got a wife and three young’uns there.”
Kitty nodded, kept on moving, unable to have much sympathy for the grizzly-faced soldier. She heard the surgeons talk about those who stuck their foot out in front of a cannon ball. Usually, they did it hoping for a wound that would put them out of battle—even if it did mean amputation of a leg. Some of them would rather lose a limb than their life, and so terribly many were despondent over the war that they were willing to do anything short of dying to escape from all the suffering.
Once, when she had asked a surgeon about it, he had explained, saying, “They see a stray cannon ball come bouncing through camp, leisurely skipping along through wagons, mules, and infantry ranks. Then someone decides to stick his foot out and stop it. Some of them might be fooled by the way the ball is traveling and not realize what will happen. Others, I’m ashamed to say, deliberately do it. Even at the slowest speeds, a moving cannon ball can tear a leg off at the hip!” He had shuddered. “I’ve seen some gory messes that had to be amputated. The shock isn’t transmitted through the leg because of the rate of motion—the projectile is faster than the propagation of the stress through the limb—so the limb is torn off.”
Kitty stepped out of the hospital into the crisp fall air. The pace here at Way Hospital #3 was not as hectic as it had been at Chimborazo. These soldiers had received emergency treatment on the battlefield and had been sent here either to recuperate and return to battle, or to be sent home.
Looking down the street with its trees casting gold and red highlights as the sun filtered down through the autumn foliage, she thought of her mother. The scene in the hotel saloon had not been pleasant. In fact, it had been horribly embarrassing. She had walked part of the way back to Goldsboro before a wagon came along to offer her a ride and on arriving in town, she had gone in search of Lena.
She found her, drunk, leaning against a bar, surrounded by shabbily dressed men. For a few moments, Kitty had stood inside the door, staring, unable to absorb what she saw—her mother in a sleazy, low-cut red dress, leaning on the arm of the man closest to her. Her laughter was loud, shrill, filling the whole room, screaming about Kitty’s shocked ears.
“Lou, you give me five dollars last night and took an hour to get it off,” her mother was taunting someone. “Now Zeb, here, has offered me ten and he don’t take long. I can make more money with faster studs.”
“Hell, I’ll give you ten,” someone snarled—probably the man named Lou, Kitty reasoned. “And I won’t take so long, the way you been rubbin’ your tits all over me this afternoon. Besides, you passed out drunk, so how do you know how long it took?”
There was a round of laughter quieted by Lena’s curses. “Goddamn it, if you ain’t good enough to keep a woman awake, I’d damn sure not let everyone know about it, if I was you.”
More laughter.
And then someone spotted Kitty and there was a rippling wave of silence throughout the saloon as all eyes turned to stare. Lena was downing a drink and as she slammed the empty glass onto the bar, she realized everyone had grown silent. She followed their gaze and her face paled at the sight of Kitty standing there, watching.
For a moment, Lena froze and then her face screwed into a mass of sobbing wrinkles as she stumbled forth, blubbering, “My baby…my little girl…thought you were dead…” She came forward and Kitty caught her as she threw her weight against her and struggled to hold her up. Someone stepped forward to help her lower the crying woman into a nearby chair.
“Thought you was dead…” Lena cried over and over, blubbering. Kitty could only stare down, dazed. It was true. Her mother was a drunk—and a prostitute.
“Nearly went out of my mind…gave you up for dead…never heard from your pa…didn’t have nothin’ left. The bastards burned me out of the house…all because of the war…everything gone…” Sobbing again, she bowed her head and then raised it to look at the man in the white apron who stood behind the bar staring. “Joe. Get me another drink. Damnit, I need one bad.”
“I think you’ve had enough, Momma.”
Lena lifted bloodshot, swollen eyes. “You don’t understand, child. I ain’t got nobody, not even you. I see it in your eyes, the way you’re lookin’ at me. You don’t understand.”
The bartender approached, but a look from Kitty halted him. He spun on his heel, the drink still in his hand.
“I want you to come with me to the hospital. You’re sick, Momma. You need help.”
She held out her hand, but Lena slapped it away as she lurched to her feet. “How dare you sound so high and mighty? I hear things! I hear how you lived with the Yankees. I hear how Nathan’s bitchy mother told the whole town about it—how you never was good enough for her son and now he wouldn’t have you.”
Kitty was surprised at her own calmness. “Then you knew I was alive. You knew I was back in town.”
“Somebody saw you get off the train. I didn’t believe it.” She lowered her head once again, then raised it to yell, “Damnit, Joe, where’s my drink?”
“And you got my letters, didn’t you? But you wouldn’t answer. You were ashamed for me to know what you’ve become and now you’re going to refuse my offer of help to get you out of all this.”
Lena was holding on to the back of the chair, trying to steady herself. Lips curling back, she snarled, “Yeah, I got your letter and Nathan’s mother got one from him telling how he’s ashamed of you, the way you lived. Where do you get off comin’ in here lookin’ down your nose at me? You’re just like your no-good daddy, always was…thinking you’re better’n everybody else.
Both of you walked out on me. Well, I can take care of myself…don’t need you or nobody else. Now get the hell outta here and leave me alone.”
Kitty felt herself swaying. Dear Lord, she thought in anguish, was it possible to experience such heartache without the heart actually breaking? Could she go on living in the face of all that had happened in the past two days? This was her mother, standing there drunk, screaming obscenities in front of all these men as they snickered approval.
And then Nathan had come through the door, seeming to fill the room with his stature, his uniform, his pride. “Katherine, come out of here!” he ordered.
Turning her head slightly, she hissed, “Will you stop following me? I don’t need you, Nathan. Now leave, please!”
“Go with him.” Lena hiccupped. “You ain’t needed here. You ain’t wanted. I got me a room upstairs, get all I want to eat and drink, and make money besides. Leave me alone.”
She waved her hand, turned and started toward the bar. She was halfway there when she stumbled and fell to her knees. Kitty started to move forward, but Nathan grabbed her, holding her back as two men lifted Lena in their arms and carried her up the stairs.
She let him lead her outside, shocked and dazed by what she had just witnessed.
Finally, she came alive again and whirling on Nathan, she hissed, “I told you to leave me alone. I never want to see you again.”
“I love you, Katherine,” he said quietly, his eyes misting. “I know right now you hate me, but I do love you. I’m going back to Richmond right away. I can’t bear to stand by and see what’s happening to you. But one day, we’ll meet again and perhaps by then you’ll realize you love me, too.”
And he had left her standing there in front of the hotel and she moved in the direction of the hospital where she would be needed, where they would accept her eagerly.
As Kitty’s mind came back to the present, she realized she was no longer alone. Turning, she saw that one of the other women who worked as a nurse, Judith Gibson, was standing beside her, concern etched in every line of her face.
Love and War: The Coltrane Saga, Book 1 Page 42
