“This is what they call the Mall. There’s the Patent Office over there, and the Post Office. What we’re looking for is the War Department.” Mr. Carter drove his team up to an imposing building and handed the lines to Leah. “You hold the horses. I’ll see if we can find out about your pa, Jeff.”
He clambered down from the wagon and moved slowly toward the building.
When he’d gone, Jeff said in a worried tone, “Your pa seems to be ailing. He’s not well, is he?”
“No, he’s not. Ma worries about him a lot. She didn’t want him to come back on this trip.”
Jeff turned and looked at her. “I think he came back just to help me. That’s the idea I got.” He bit his lip. “I hate to have him do that. I hate to ask favors.”
Leah was wearing a light green dress that matched her eyes. She looked very pretty, he thought, even in such a plain outfit.
Now she put out her hand and touched his arm. “We’re friends, aren’t we? Friends do things for each other. Don’t forget, we’ve asked God to get your father out, and we’re going to trust Him to do what’s best.”
“I—I guess so. I’ll try anyway.”
They watched the traffic go by and the soldiers and the many civilians who bustled around to the different buildings. Finally Leah’s father came back and climbed into the wagon.
“I couldn’t get a permit for you to visit the prison, Jeff. The officer was gone who gives them out, but we’ll try anyway.”
He turned the wagon around, and they made their way through the city. Men in uniform were everywhere.
Leah had learned to recognize some of the uniforms from her work with her father. “Look! That’s the Seventh New York. Aren’t they smart?” She pointed out a group of soldiers in spick-and-span gray uniforms with pipe-clay cross belts on their breasts.
“Don’t hardly see how they could fight in such fancy uniforms as that,” Jeff mumbled. He took in the other troops that Leah and her father pointed out to him, men from Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Illinois, from all over the North.
At last they arrived at the camp itself, which seemed to Jeff to be an ocean of tents stretched out almost as far as he could see.
“We’ll find our regiment and park the wagon. Maybe we’ll have time to go in today, but I doubt it.”
Mr. Carter threaded the wagon through the myriad tents and finally arrived at a section where he was greeted by an officer.
“Well, it’s you, Dan! Glad to see you back again.”
Pulling up the horses, Mr. Carter said, “Hello, Major Bates, good to see you. We’ve come back with a wagonload of supplies.”
Major Bates was a tall man with a powerful voice. He commanded the Washington Blues. “The boys just got paid, so I expect they’ll be coming to see you. I suppose you got lots of those tracts and Bibles to give away again?”
“Sure have, Major. Oh, this is a young friend of ours who’s come with me and Leah to help with the work—Jeff Majors.”
Major Bates nodded to Jeff. “Glad to have you.” Then he turned and walked away.
“He’s a pretty good officer but a little brash, they say,” Mr. Carter remarked. “Well, let’s get the wagon set up and the tent.”
Thirty minutes later, Jeff, Leah, and her father had put up the large tent that would serve as sleeping quarters for the Carters. Jeff’s own bunk was either under the wagon when the weather was nice or inside when it rained.
The sky was growing dark now, and Leah asked him to build a fire. When he had a good one going, she brought out the pots and pans, and soon the smell of cooking meat was in the air.
They sat down after a while and ate steak and beans. It all tasted wonderful to Jeff. Mr. Carter ate hardly anything, merely picking at his food.
They were almost finished when a voice called out, “Hey!” and Jeff looked up to see a short corporal in a blue uniform approaching them rapidly.
“Why, Ira, it’s you!” Leah said.
She got up, putting her hand out, and the short soldier took it, grinning broadly. He had brown eyes and hair and seemed to Jeff to be more friendly than he should.
“Well, maybe I can get some letters written around here now—to that girlfriend of mine.”
Leah laughed. “You forgot you told me you made up that girlfriend—Rosie—just to get me to write letters for you. What did you do with all those letters anyway?”
“Still got ’em.” Ira grinned. He glanced over at Jeff and when he was introduced said, “Glad to have you, Jeff. Where you from?”
Jeff hesitated. He almost said that he came from Richmond, but he was saved when Mr. Carter said, “Why, he grew up just a whoop and a holler past our house. His family and ours have been close ever since these two were born.”
“That so?” Ira Pickens nodded. “Well, that’s good. Good to grow up knowing people. You two went to school together, I guess.”
“Yes, and hunted wild birds’ eggs, and went trot lining, and just about everything else.”
“I guess we’ll have plenty of time to get acquainted,” Ira said. “After that licking we took back at Bull Run, looks like we ain’t never going nowhere again.”
Jeff filed that away for future reference and said nothing.
But Leah said, “Is the army pretty down and out, Ira?”
“Oh, I don’t reckon so. We got us a new general—General McClellan. They call him ‘Little Mac’ behind his back. He’s a whizzer though—knows how to make a fellow feel like a real winner! I guess we’ll be ready to meet the Rebs pretty soon.”
“Sit down and have some of this steak,” Mr. Carter said.
The young soldier sat down and chatted amiably. After he had gone and Jeff was leaving to go to the wagon, he said, “He a pretty good friend of yours?”
“Yes, he is,” Leah said. “He was wounded at Bull Run, and I helped take care of him. He’s a nice young man. I hope nothing happens to him.”
“Good night,” Jeff said. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
He went to bed. The weather was hot, so he simply lay down on his blanket, listening to the sounds of the camp. Finally, he went to sleep, thinking, I’ve got to see Pa—I’ve just got to!
* * *
“I tell you, you can’t see him. Not without a pass.”
The speaker was a short, cocky lieutenant named Simpkins. He had scarcely been civil when Mr. Carter asked for permission to visit the Old Capitol Prison, and now he shook his head vehemently. “I’m telling you, nobody’s going into the prison without a pass from the War Department.” He glared at the three who stood before him.
They had driven up to the Old Capitol Prison, which actually had been the Capitol building of the country for a few days at one time. Then it had become a jail, a makeshift one. Little effort had been spent on it, Jeff saw, and it was in a dilapidated condition.
Simpkins shook his head. “No, sir, you’ll have to go get a pass.”
Jeff felt like arguing, but Mr. Carter said quickly, “All right, we’ll do what we can, Lieutenant. Thank
you.”
When they were outside, Jeff burst out, “It wouldn’t hurt him to let us in to see my pa.”
“Jeff,” Leah said quickly, looking around, “don’t tell people that he’s your pa. Just say it’s a friend.”
“That’s right,” her father said. “It would be harder to get a pass for a relative.”
* * *
They didn’t know that Lieutenant Simpkins had become totally suspicious of any visitors. His brother had been killed at Bull Run, and he hated all Southerners. Being in charge of the guard detail that ringed the Old Prison, he took it upon himself to turn away as many visitors as possible.
Turning now to the corporal who was standing at attention next to him, he said, “You see those three?”
“Yes, sir.”
“If you see them again, tell me about it.”
The corporal was a tall, thin, young man of eighteen, who had seen no action at all since being in the army. Th
e thought of spies excited him. He said, “You think they could be spies?”
“Call me sir, Corporal! Sir!” Simpkins gave the soldier a withering glance. “I’m not taking any chances. If they come around here again, you come and tell me about it at once.”
“Yes, sir, I’ll do that.” When the lieutenant was gone, the tall, thin soldier stared at the three visitors as they departed. “Spies … well, I’ll be … sure would like to catch me a couple or three spies!”
4
A Good Yankee
Leah found Jeff sitting under the shade of a towering oak staring moodily across the small meandering stream. For two days she had watched him grow more and more disappointed as no way was found to pay a visit to his father. Sitting down beside him on the log, she said, “Jeff, come along with Pa and me.”
“Where you going?” he asked morosely.
“They’re having a preaching service, and they say the preacher is really fine. He’s one of the chaplains of the regiment.”
Jeff picked up a stone, examined it for a moment, then threw it almost viciously in front of a squirrel that was scavenging along the ground. The squirrel jumped straight up and turned a back flip, which caused both of them to laugh. “Well, I guess that’ll be all right,” he said grudgingly, “but I don’t put much stock in what any Yankee preacher would say.”
He rose to his feet, and they wandered back to the wagon, where they found Leah’s father putting on a clean white shirt.
“Always like to wear a clean shirt to go to meet-in’.” He smiled at them. “Come along now. We don’t want to be late.”
They made their way through the city of tents and came at last to an open space already filled with blue uniforms.
“My, that’s a big congregation,” Leah said, staring over the crowd of soldiers. She looked up to where a small platform had been built. “That’s him—Chaplain Marcus Patterson. They say he’s bringing revival to the Union army.”
Jeff saw a slight young man of perhaps thirty, wearing an officer’s uniform. He had red hair and a small, trim mustache and beard.
“He’s not as fat as some of the preachers we had back home, is he?”
“I don’t guess he has the chance to sit down and eat fried chicken as much. They say he’s on the go all the time,” she replied. “I think the meeting’s going to start.”
A tall sergeant stood up then and, without saying a word, began to sing. He had a clear tenor voice, and soon the clearing was filled with the sound of more than a thousand male voices. They sang “The Old Rugged Cross,” and Jeff thought of the hundreds of times he had sung that song in the little church back home.
Leah whispered to him when the song was over, “Someday we’ll be back home singing this song again.”
The song service went on for some time, for the men seemed to love to sing. Then the tall song leader stepped back, and the red-haired chaplain came forward. He had a clear, ringing baritone voice and could be heard distinctly back at the edge of the clearing where Jeff and Leah and Dan Carter stood.
“I’m not going to preach a long-winded sermon,” he began, then smiled as some applause broke out. “You don’t pay me enough for that, but I am glad to bring the gospel to you tonight.” He looked over his congregation for a moment. Then he opened his Bible and read slowly, “ ‘It is appointed unto man once to die, but after this the judgment.’ That’s half of my text. The second half is, ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life.’”
He began to preach, and Jeff found himself caught up in the sermon. The chaplain had the ability to weave stories in with Scripture—going to the Old Testament, then to the New, then illustrating from the lives of famous Christians. All men and women and young people must someday die, he said. If they die unprepared, they perish forever, cut off from God.
Then he came to the end of his sermon by stressing that Jesus paid it all. “You’ve heard a thousand times that Jesus died for our sins. But now that’s more important for you men than ever before because the day of battle lies ahead.” He looked out over the faces that peered up at him intently. “Some of you will not be here when I preach another sermon. Perhaps I’ll not be here. I may be in the presence of God.” He paused. “I’m going to give you the opportunity to know God. If you feel that you’re a sinner and not right with Him, won’t you come and let me pray with you?”
Jeff felt a stirring in his heart and knew that the sermon was for him. Stubbornly he planted his feet and stared at the ground. He was aware that many soldiers were walking forward. Men were falling on their knees at the platform, and when he glanced up he saw the chaplain praying with them.
But Jeff did nothing, and finally it was time to go.
Leah knew that Jeff was moved by the sermon, but she said nothing to him, knowing how he hated to be pushed. Later that night, just before she and her father retired, she said, “Pa, I think Jeff needs to find God. He’s real bitter about his father.”
“We’ll pray for him, Pet. God will hear our prayers.”
* * *
The next day, after selling supplies all morning long, Leah’s father said, “Let’s close up and go to the hospital. I want to talk to a few of the boys there.”
Jeff accompanied them, having nothing else to do, and while they passed up and down the beds, he stood back, saying little. He was thinking, These men are the enemy. They are the ones that shot my pa.
But he watched Leah and her father move from bed to bed. They had already become acquainted with several of the wounded men. They stopped beside one bed where a boy of no more than eighteen lay. He had only one arm and had a bandage about his head. He listened as Leah talked to him. “Why, you’ll be fine. You’ll be going home now, Jesse,” she said, “and your folks will be glad to see you.”
Mr. Carter had moved on down to another bed, but Jeff stood watching Leah and the wounded soldier.
“Well,” the boy said, “I don’t know.” He lifted his stub of an arm and said, “Don’t reckon I’ll be able to do much with this.”
“Course you will,” Leah said emphatically. “You’ll just have to make that other arm stronger.” She talked to him for a while and finally, when they moved on and were out of hearing, Jeff said, “That’s pretty rough, having only one arm.”
Leah sighed and looked back at the young man. “Yes, I feel so sorry for them all.”
Jeff might have felt sorry himself, but he could not forget how hopeless it seemed to get in to see his father. He worried about his father a great deal, for he feared that his wound had not healed well.
They were almost ready to leave when all of a sudden Leah looked up and said, “Why, look, Jeff! There’s the chaplain.”
Chaplain Patterson was sitting beside the bed of a young man who had a bandage over his eyes.
Jeff said, “I guess he’s a pretty hard-working fellow—for a preacher.”
As they passed by, the chaplain rose, and Jeff heard him saying, “I’ll be back to see you, Bobby. God’s going to do a work in you, you’ll see.” He turned and almost bumped into Leah. He reached out to steady her and said, “Well, pardon me, miss, I didn’t expect to see a young lady here.”
Leah smiled at him. “My father’s a sutler. My name is Leah Carter, and this is Jeff Majors. We enjoyed your sermon last night especially, chaplain.”
“Did you now? Well, I’m glad to hear that.” He stood there smiling, chatting, and soon he had found out all about the work that Leah and her father were doing. “Oh, yes, I’ve talked to several of the men who’ve gotten your Bibles and tracts—a wonderful work you and your father are doing. I’d like to meet him.”
“He’s right down there, Chaplain. Come along.”
Leah led the chaplain to where her father was talking to a wounded soldier. After he had finished, she said, “Father, I want you to meet Chaplain Patterson.”
The two men shook hands and chatted amiably. Patters
on commended the sutler on the work he was doing. “Anything I can do to help you, you just let me know.”
Dan Carter blinked in surprise as a sudden thought seemed to come to him. He glanced at Jeff. “Well, there is one thing. There’s a friend of mine, an old neighbor from Kentucky. He joined the Southern army and was taken prisoner at Bull Run. He’s in the Old Capitol Prison now.”
Patterson shook his head, “Sad, isn’t it, that things have to be like this?” Then he asked, “What can I do for you, Mr. Carter?”
“If you would help us get into the prison so that we could visit him, I’d appreciate it. He was wounded, and I don’t think he’s doing too well. I’d like to help him if I can.”
“Why, of course. As a matter of fact, I visit there myself some. I’ll pick up a pass for you and leave it with the officer in charge.”
“Well—Lieutenant Simpkins, he’s turned us down several times.”
“Don’t worry.” The chaplain grinned. “I outrank him. You’ll get in to see your friend. What’s his name?”
“Lieutenant Nelson Majors. I appreciate this, Chaplain.”
“Don’t mention it. We must get together soon, and I’ll be seeing you often because you’ll be following the troops, I suppose?” When he received a nod from Carter, he said, “Well, we’ll stay with these boys right up to the very cannon’s mouth.”
He turned and walked busily away.
Jeff said, “You think he’ll do it?”
“Son,” Dan said kindly, “I’m an old man, but I’ve learned to tell a truth teller from the other kind. Don’t you worry. Chaplain Patterson will do exactly what he said.”
Jeff was nervous all day. He had been impressed by the friendly chaplain but still couldn’t quite believe it would happen.
Early the next morning he arose at dawn and walked over to the woods where he escaped the pressure of the crowds. For a long time he walked among the trees, following the little creek. Once a small bass broke the water, and he thought of Old Napoleon waiting in the pond back in Kentucky.
“I sure hope nobody catches you, Nap,” he whispered. “That’s one thing I want to do for myself.”
Yankee Belles in Dixie Page 3
