Two Girls of Gettysburg

by Lisa Klein

  “Albert! Oh, Albert!” she cried over and over again. The anguish in her voice made my stomach clench. “I can’t do it without you. Oh, I miss you so much!” she wailed, more softly.

  I felt my own tears coming, thinking of how powerfully Mama must love Papa. A sudden fear seized me that she would get sick from worry and too much work. So I started taking piles of her relief work to the shop, and between customers I scraped lint off of old rags. In the butcher shop, my books gathered dust. I worked on the accounts until they balanced so Mama would not have to stay up so late. I knitted a muffler with a red fringe for Papa, hoping he wouldn’t mind the uneven edges and dropped stitches. Then I began a scarf for Luke, while Mama knitted up four pairs of socks. We packed these with two wool blankets, a ham, some pickles, and my birthday photograph, hoping that the package would reach their camp in time for Christmas.

  It promised to be a lonely holiday, despite the caroling and the cheerful greetings exchanged in the streets. Mama and Ben and I decorated a small evergreen tree with strands of dried berries, candles, pinecones, and foil stars and stood it on the parlor table, where it gave off a piney scent. On Christmas Eve, Rosanna and Margaret and the children came over for dinner, so the house wouldn’t seem so empty without Papa and Luke. Ben raced around the house with Jack and Clara taking turns riding on his back and shrieking with excitement. The aromas of savory ham, mince pie, and peppermint filled the house. After dinner we lit the candles on the tree and watched it with great care, for one year a neighbor’s house had burned to the ground when a Christmas candle ignited the decorations.

  Another letter came from Papa and Luke, thanking us for the warm clothes and food. They were snug in their new winter barracks and expecting extra rations for the holiday. Included was a photograph of Papa sitting before a white tent, holding his hat in his lap, and Luke standing with his hand on Papa’s shoulder, his cap askew. Papa’s mustache had grown long and curved like a ram’s horn, and his face looked gaunt. Luke’s face was somewhat blurred. We put the picture in a frame, set it beside the tree, and sat around Christmas morning gazing at it until it was time for church.

  While Papa’s letter cheered us, the end bothered me like a splinter in a finger. He had written: Your good news about the business heartens me. You can consult Matthias Schupp the York butcher this winter; he owes me a favor. Make a good deal with A. Trostle to keep his fat steers coming. If Schmidt opens a 2nd tavern persuade him to double his order. Next time include with your summary exact figures re: expenses & income.

  “What are we going to do?” I finally said to Mama. “We can’t hide from Papa any longer that we’re losing money.”

  “Put aside your worries for one day at least,” she said, taking a steaming pie from the oven.

  The door slammed and Ben came in, along with a blast of cold air and the smell of stables. My brother had found a small job brushing horses and hauling hay for a New York regiment stationed at the public school.

  “How much did you earn this week?” I asked.

  “I got two dollars, on account of Christmas.” He held out the coins to Mama, who took them, leaving him four nickels. Ben tried to give her two of those nickels, but she wouldn’t take them, even though we needed every penny of that extra money. Mama had sold the silver candlesticks to cover household expenses until we figured out how to increase our income from the shop.

  Still humming, she tucked away the coins and began to fix up a hamper with a fresh meat pie, homemade preserves, and hot bread. I hoped her good mood would last through Christmas dinner. Every time we sat down to eat, the two empty chairs at the kitchen table filled me with longing. Mama would gaze at them and squeeze our hands tightly while saying grace.

  “Why are you packing a basket of food?” I asked.

  “It’s for Amos. He deserves a good Christmas meal. In fact, I want you both to take it to him now.”

  “But I just got in! It’s freezing outside, and the food will be cold before we get there,” protested Ben, but he put his coat back on anyway

  Mama wrapped everything in a blanket to keep the heat in. “Be home by dark. And bring back the blanket and basket.”

  I was ashamed that I hadn’t thought of doing something special for Amos. I put on my cloak and Mama’s cape for extra warmth. Mama wrapped Ben’s muffler around his head until only his eyes were visible.

  “That will stifle your complaining,” she said, giving him a hug.

  We didn’t know exactly where Amos lived, though Mama guessed it was on the southwestern edge of town, where all the Negroes lived. So Ben and I set out, walking briskly to stay warm. It was late afternoon and the sky was growing dim. The windows of the houses glowed with lamplight. Passing Mrs. Pierpont’s school on the corner of High and Washington Streets, we heard someone playing a piano. Along Washington Street, we kept close to the houses to avoid the biting wind. At Long Lane we stopped, gazing down a long row of tiny clapboard houses.

  “How’re we supposed to find Amos?” asked Ben, sounding worried.

  “We ask someone,” I said, though there was nobody in sight. We passed a garden, where frozen stems and stalks poked up through the snow-covered furrows. I chose one of the larger cottages, a likely place for a respectable butcher’s assistant to live, and knocked on the door.

  A woman with skin like milky coffee opened the door. The faces of three small children poked from behind her skirts. Unfamiliar cooking smells wafted in the air.

  “Lawd, miss, come in from the cold. And you too, young mastuh,” she said with a look of surprise.

  I held up the basket. “I’ve brought this for Mr. Amos Whitman.”

  “Why, he don’ live here, miss,” she replied, shaking her head. “Go to the end o’ the lane and turn left. An’ you’uns have a Merry Christmas now,” she added, and gently closed the door.

  We stumbled over the frozen ruts until we reached the end of the lane. There stood a mere shack made of bits and pieces of old planks nailed together. Rags were stuffed into the window openings, and a dilapidated door hung on rusty hinges.

  “Amos can’t possibly live here,” Ben whispered. “Let’s just go home.”

  “Someone lives here,” I said, pointing to the smoke that rose from a tin pipe that served as a chimney. Just then the door opened and we jumped back, startled at the sight of a figure thickly bundled in old coats, with rags wrapped around his head, hands, and feet.

  “Why if it ain’t Miz Lizzie an’ Mastuh Ben!”

  “It is you, Amos,” Ben said, sighing with relief.

  “We came to wish you a Merry Christmas,” I said politely, hiding my dismay at the sight of his poor shack.

  Holding the door open, Amos motioned for us to enter, like a butler welcoming guests to a mansion. Ben and I went in together. The shack was lit by a small fire on the hearth. I could make out an old chest, a rough table and a stool, some pans and plates, and a straw mattress piled high with blankets and rags. The floor was packed dirt, covered with old rugs. Amos set another log on the fire and prodded it with a stick until it started to crackle.

  A feeling I didn’t quite understand, something like shame, was growing in me.

  “Let me—I’ll put these on the hearth. To—to keep them warm,” I stammered.

  “That looks mighty good,” Amos said, sounding hearty. He pulled the old chest up to the fire and motioned for us to sit. Ben’s toes barely reached the ground.

  Then the words came out, before I could stop them.

  “Oh, Amos, why are you living in such a miserable place?”

  “Ah,” breathed Amos, looking down at his feet. They were wrapped in rags.

  “Where are your shoes?” Ben asked, noticing Amos’s feet as well.

  “I’m keepin’ them from gettin’ worn out,” he replied.

  I knew Amos was paid a decent wage, eight dollars a week. Mother gave him an extra dollar for heavy chores and repairs. Surely he could afford to live in a regular house. He was not a drunkard. Where did his
money go?

  “Why, Amos?” This time, my voice was a gentle plea.

  “Let me tell you’uns a story,” he said by way of reply. Sitting on the stool, he rested his elbows on his knees and gazed into the fire.

  “I was born on a plantation in South Carolina ‘bout 1836. My folk were field hands. They worked from sunup to sundown. When I was half your size, Mastuh Ben, I carried food an’ water to the fields an’ picked up the cotton what fell outta the bags.”

  He reached for the meat pie on the hearth, took a spoon, and began to eat.

  “God bless your mama, this here’s a mighty tasty pie. I grew up eatin’ mostly corn bread, mush, an’ greens. We’d go huntin’ for rabbit an’ possum so’s my mama could make stew. I could pick off a critter with jus’ one stone. Like this.” He cocked his arm and pitched an imaginary rock into the corner, moving so fast his arm was a blur.

  “Will you teach me how to do that?” asked Ben, bouncing with eagerness. Amos smiled and nodded, then went on with his story.

  “Our mastuh was a mean ‘un. He whipped my pa for being too high an’ mighty, he said, then sold him. I was ‘bout your age, Lizzie. After that, my ma weren’t ever the same. Then mastuh’s fortunes declined, an’ he sold all five of my brothuhs an’ sistuhs. Each time she lost one of us, my mama got smaller an’ sadder. One day she jus’ died. I couldn’t keep her alive no more.”

  I blinked back tears. Ben sat perfectly still next to me.

  “All I had left was Grace.” Amos bowed his head.

  I hardly thought that losing your whole family was a blessing, but I had said enough rude things for one day. Then I realized that Amos was not talking about religion.

  “My Grace, a woman as beautiful as kind. We was married by a preacher, after he baptized us in the river. She was a house slave, had a fine hand with pastries, an’ a gentle touch with childern.”

  I was stunned. Amos had a wife! Did my parents know this?

  “Then one day she was gone. Mastuh sold her, too.”

  Amos sighed. The log on the fire flared up, glowing a bright orange.

  “Soon, Mastuh died from an apoplexy, an’ my mistress, fearin’ the Lord, freed the rest of her forty slaves. I won’t ever forget the day I got my papers sayin’ I was a free man.”

  Amos finished the pie and wiped his mouth with his hand. I handed him some bread and he used it to sop up the last bits of meat and gravy.

  “What happened to Grace?” I asked in a hesitant voice.

  Amos bit off and chewed another chunk of bread. “The day I was freed I set out to find her. She was not twenty miles down the river, owned by crazy ol’ Mastuh Johnston. He laughed like the devil an’ said I could buy her for a thousan’ dollars. I ‘bout fell over dead to hear that sum but vowed to come back an’ set her free.”

  “You shoulda punched him in the face and run off with her!” said Ben, clenching his fists.

  “If I’d’ve done that, I’d be dead, young man,” Amos replied, shaking his head.

  Then he reached over and tapped the chest we were sitting on. “It’s all in there,” he said in a low voice. “Every cent your papa paid me since the day I came to work fo’ him, ‘cept what I took out to buy food an’ work clothes an’ scraps to build this place.”

  “We’re sitting on a treasure!” cried Ben.

  “Hush, Ben,” I said, finally understanding.

  “In a few more months I can meet Johnston’s price an’ buy a horse an’ cart to bring my Grace home in style,” he said, then looked around with a wry smile. “Such as it is.”

  My head was whirling, it was so much to take in.

  “Papa doesn’t know this, does he? Or Mama? Why didn’t you tell us before?”

  Amos shrugged and spread his hands. “Ain’t nobody ever asked.”

  I looked at Amos’s deep-set black eyes, his glossy skin and big hands, as if I were seeing him for the first time: a man who had once been a boy who suffered as a slave and even watched his mother die. And how could my father have employed him for almost two years without learning that he lived in a hut worse than a barn to save money to buy his wife out of slavery? I felt ashamed for thinking of Amos only as someone to help us run the butcher shop.

  But all I said was, “We must go home now. Mother will be getting worried.”

  Ben stood up but he didn’t take his eyes off that chest. I picked up the empty basket and the blanket. Then I laid the blanket back down where I had been sitting.

  “Good-bye, Amos,” I said, then hugged him. It was awkward because of his thick layers of clothing. But his arms were strong as he hugged me back. He smelled of wood smoke and dust.

  “Please stay warm,” I pleaded. “Pennsylvania is not South Carolina.”

  “No, it sho’ ain’t. Merry Christmas, now.”

  Amos shook Ben’s hand and we left. The icy air hit my face, and I realized how warm Amos’s little cabin had been.

  As soon as we got home, I told Mama Amos’s whole story and described his tiny, cold shack, while Ben kept interrupting to mention the trunk full of money. All the while, Mama shook her head slowly from side to side.

  “If you don’t believe me, I’ll take you there.”

  “I believe you, Lizzie. But what would you have me do?” She spread her hands in a gesture of helplessness.

  “Have him live with us. He can sleep in the garret, and Ben can move into my room. Also, he would be closer to the shop.”

  “I can’t split wood all by myself, Ma,” chimed in Ben. “I need Amos’s help on the big logs. And he could teach me how to hunt with a slingshot.”

  “But Amos is a free man. We cannot tell him what to do,” Mama objected.

  “We’re giving him a choice, Mama,” I said patiently.

  “But to live with us?” said Mama doubtfully. “People might misunderstand.”

  “Why? He would be our lodger, not a servant. Even our neighbors have lodgers,” I said.

  Mama was silent and pensive. I suspected her concern had more to do with Amos being a Negro. As much as she hated how Negroes were treated, she couldn’t quite bring herself to let one live with us. I thought that was wrong of her, and I wouldn’t give in.

  “We should treat Amos like we would any friend or relative in need,” I said, looking her square in the eye. I could see that she knew I was right.

  “He is your father’s assistant, and an honest, respectable man,” she admitted. “But we must not offend his dignity. I will speak with him.”

  A few days later, I overheard Mama conferring with Amos at the shop. She said that because of Papa’s longer-than-expected absence, she needed a regular hired man. If Amos would agree to patch the roof, rebuild the shed, and chop firewood, she would provide room and board. His wages and duties at the butcher shop would be the same. Amos said he would consider it. In my excitement I ran to tell Rosanna, but she wasn’t home, so I told Margaret all about Amos—and Grace, too. She even cried a bit, but her eyes grew wide when I said that Amos might come and live with us.

  Within a week, Amos brought his trunk and moved into the attic room. Ben was as gleeful as if a long-lost uncle had come to stay.

  “Mr. Amos, can I see your treasure? How much money do you have in there? Is it in gold?” he asked.

  Finally I warned him, “If you don’t shut up about that chest, someone will hear you and creep into this house at night and steal everything and cut our throats from ear to ear.”

  That quieted him for a while, until he began pestering Mama for a rifle.

  “Someone has to stand guard and shoot thieves,” he said. “And I’ll protect us when the rebels come.”

  “Don’t talk such nonsense,” she told him.

  In the end, Mama persuaded Amos to deposit his money in the Farmers and Merchants Savings Bank. She also decided to increase his salary by fifty cents a week. When I started to protest that we could hardly afford that, she cut me off.

  “You know it’s the right thing to do, Lizzie. We will manage
to get by. Somehow.”

  Lizzie

  Chapter 9

  1862

  Winter was always the busiest time for a butcher. Meat stayed fresh longer and people ate a lot of it, believing that it kept up their strength against the cold. So there was slaughtering, packing, and preserving to be done, but without Papa, Amos couldn’t do the work alone. Mama and I agreed that we had to hire someone, and though we could scarcely afford the wages, she started spreading the word around town. That’s how I ended up face to face with Martin Weigel, the boy Rosanna had laughed at the day Papa enlisted.

  When he first came into the shop, I regarded him doubtfully. All gangly limbed, he didn’t look strong enough to heft a side of beef. His wrists stuck out beneath his jacket sleeves, but I noticed his hands were big.

  “I’m here for the job,” he said.

  I assumed he had already talked to Mama and been hired.

  “When can you start?” I asked.

  “Today,” he said, looking right at me. His eyes were gray blue, wide set, and honest looking.

  So I introduced him to Amos, who put him to work. Mama was pleased to have Martin working for us, thinking the Weigels and their many kinfolk would be good customers. He worked for eighty cents a day. Three days a week he helped Amos strip hides and hew carcasses into hams and ribs and loins. When Rock Creek froze, they drove out in the cart and returned with huge blocks of ice that they covered with sawdust and hay. The ice would keep fresh meat from spoiling in warm weather. What meat we didn’t sell fresh, I rubbed with salt and placed in barrels of brine and powdered nitrate, which gave the meat a healthy color. I negotiated prices on the hides and had Martin deliver them to the tanner. I tracked orders and deliveries, invoices and payments. But as hard as we worked, business never rose to the level of the year before, when Papa was in charge.

  At home, Mama imposed strict measures to conserve butter, sugar, coffee, and candles. She talked about taking in laundry. I didn’t know where we’d find the time to do other people’s washing as well as our own. But fortunately it didn’t come to that, for Ben kept finding odd jobs that brought in fifty cents here and there. One day I saw Amos give Ben a dollar, and I realized that he was turning over some of his own earnings to help buy food. I didn’t say anything, because we badly needed the money. But I don’t believe Mama ever found out.