Jarrettsville

by Cornelia Nixon

  When their grandmother turned in the lane, the children stopped crying, and the ones who could ran out to her as if they didn’t see her every day. The old freedman who drove pulled up at the gate, and the children swarmed in the buggy. Isie tried to put her hair back into pins as she and I walked toward it.

  Our aunt gazed at Isie with a sad, excited look. She was still in deep mourning for Henderson, even in the heat, with a black shoulder cape and bonnet, and her eyes shone out from its shade, accusing one moment and softening the next. Her lips writhed as she reached a hand in its black lace glove to Isie.

  “Oh, my dear, I just got the mail, and it’s in the paper, the list of prisoners released. Your brother will come home, Wednesday, I think, on the train.”

  Isie forgot her teeth for once and gaped. “Sam’s all right?”

  Tears welled in our aunt’s eyes, and Isie’s face went haggard as her eyes filled, too, for reasons neither one of them could change.

  I TOLD MY MOTHER I would go to meet the train, and she threatened to faint away.

  “How dare you, with your brother’s life in danger?” she cried. “You can’t have anything to do with Samuel. They’ll think we’re Rebs! Do you want to lose the farm?”

  My mother kept a photo of Stonewall Jackson in her bedroom, draped with a Rebel flag, and she and her closest friends had knit gray socks to send the Southern troops, not very secretly.

  “That didn’t bother you when we had Mr. Bailey in the attic all that time.”

  She gave me a beady-eyed look as though she hated me. “He was a badly wounded boy, no threat to anyone, and your brother was not under arrest. Now we can’t be too careful. Samuel will be a man by now, a real Southern warrior. A war hero.”

  I ignored her—of course I would go. I loved Sam—everyone loved Sam. He had been only eighteen when he left, smooth cheeked, fair, and tall, and he had always been the one to win the family footraces, the fastest corn-husker, the best arm-wrestler, the daredevil who rode the meanest horse and swam the Susquehanna in a flood. Sam was like me, a doer, impulsive, efficient, as cheerful as a puppy, and impatient with the slow-moving, cautious members of the family. He was also a joker and a tease.

  “Dinner!” he would call and trundle down the lane with a load of manure and such a grin that everyone grinned back, even while we groaned. When we skated on the millponds by Deer Creek, he would fling himself across the ice until he fell a dozen ways—“icefalling,” he said the sport should be called. But when he landed, he would spring back up and start a game of crack the whip, or race at us, crouched like a Russian dancer, blade-first, until we scattered shrieking across the ice.

  When he rode south, he had sent pictures of himself in a tri-cornered hat with fingers tucked into his vest Napoleonically. We had heard that in the bankrupt South, Union prisoners were lucky to receive a handful of dry corn of a grade meant to feed horses. Everyone said that prisons in the North had better food, but we would all be relieved when we saw Sam leap off the train. I would drive the buggy to the station, and Sam would drive it back.

  Wednesday dawned fair, and before seven o’clock the heat seared like a flatiron pulled out of hot coals. Cicadas whined like overheated saws. After I finished milking, I walked straight through the woods, parting thick vines encroaching on the path. Isie was already in the buggy. The children waved from our aunt’s yard as we turned north toward the Susquehanna and the Mason-Dixon Line. Rolling through miles of newly manured fields and blooming woods, we skirted the river past a large camp of peaked white tents, where soldiers in blue cleaned guns or carved pipes, looking bored. I knew Nick lived at home, but still my heart sped up for no reason.

  Soon we could smell the sharp tang of salt air and a hint of tainted fish. The train had come from the far north, upstate New York, and it would travel all the way to Florida, but it had to be loaded on a ferryboat to cross the Susquehanna where it met Chesapeake Bay. When we drove into Havre de Grace, on the Maryland side, soldiers stopped the buggy to examine it. We had brought nothing but a basket of biscuits and lemonade, but a young, red-faced soldier lifted the cloth with the muzzle of his rifle and peered inside before he waved us on.

  Around the dock more men in blue stood guard while others stoked the coal engines that would pull the cars off of the boat. Women and old men crowded the landing platform, most of them in black, and Isie and I worked our way through, faces to the wide river rolling in smooth, gray folds. On the far side, nearly a mile away, we could see the ferry called The Maryland being loaded down with railroad cars. Already heavy, iron sheets bolted to its sides to repel cannonballs, it soon floated quite low in the water, wallowing, and Isie clutched my arm.

  “What if it sinks?” she breathed.

  “Sam could swim across and back. He’ll save the rest of them.”

  A crowd of small boys leaned over the rail along the dock, some of them in gray or butternut knickers that might have been constructed out of Rebel uniforms. Two soldiers watched them, looking young and raw, sunburned from guarding railroad lines, and when one of the boys in gray swung under the rail and dashed closer to the water, they shouted “Halt!” and one ducked through the rail and yanked him back. The boy’s black-clad mother rushed to him.

  “Get back!” one of the soldiers shouted and raised his rifle to his shoulder, aiming at her.

  I stood close by, and on impulse I strode to him, stretched out my hand, and nudged the barrel of the gun toward the river.

  “Get back! Go on, get back!” the soldier shouted in my face, spraying spit, and I stepped back. But he looked helpless, the whole crowd now facing him.

  “For shame! For shame!” several voices called, and more small boys broke free and climbed the rail as high as they could reach.

  Across the broad river the ferry huffed a cloud of thick black smoke and began to move. The small boys saw it first and let out a yell that rose up high and stayed high, ululating on the highest note—the outlawed Rebel yell. A hush fell on the crowd—then the sound seemed to swell from all around, so strong and eerie, it made me shiver in the heat.

  The Maryland loomed larger, train cars packed together on its broad deck, blue soldiers facing outward, long rifles in their hands. The crowd pressed forward, women’s hoops compressed. The soldiers, for the moment, gave up shouting. The crowd cheered as it docked, and when it was secure we all craned to see inside the covered ramp.

  An officer in blue strode up first, hand on his holster, ten soldiers after him with rifles cocked. The officer barked something at the soldiers by the rail—they raised their rifles and fired at the sky, a crack that hurt the ears. Gunpowder filled the air, and people surged back, soldiers following, elbowing as if with personal grievance. More of them marched up fast and joined in shouting till the crowd had moved against the wall of the station. Black bonnets and hats crowded close together. Isie was smashed into my back, our view blocked.

  A long, intolerable moment followed, all of us pressed together in the heat.

  “Get them off!” an old man shouted, and several voices shushed him. It was clear by now we would not see our men until the soldiers had been satisfied.

  At last a few men started up the ramp, bone-thin in shabby clothes but striding eagerly. The crowd let out a cheer, somewhat more cautious than before with only a few high notes, and here and there a woman broke free to embrace a man. Now others came more slowly, some on crutches, wincing. One man tottered and nearly fell.

  “Help him!” someone shouted, and several old men rushed to him.

  Now no one was getting off.

  “What the devil?” several voices shouted. “Get them off!”

  The whole crowd seemed to realize at the same time that men were creeping up the ramp—so thin and bent that a general groan went up. Isie and I began to struggle through the crowd. We pushed by a stern soldier who stepped out of our way as we took hold of the first man’s arm. His eyes looked huge and dark in gaunt hollows, his face made up of bones, his arm slack under o
ur hands. His eyes scanned the crowd. A woman who looked far too plump and healthy to be his swooped in with ribbons flying.

  “Tommy!” she cried and tried to wrap him in her arms.

  The man recoiled and might have fallen if I had not steadied him. Soldiers began to carry others up the ramp, setting litters down along the platform like baggage waiting to be claimed. The men on the litters had tightly drawn skin with yellow sores that flies crawled over, their clothes greasy and feet bare, giving off a stench like rotting potatoes or eggs stored for too long in root cellars. Where had they been kept? What had been done to them?

  I threw my bonnet back onto its strings to see better as Isie passed by, murmuring.

  “He isn’t here. He can’t be here. None of these men are him.”

  We searched the platform. I felt ashamed of my clean muslin skirt, my white gloves trimmed with lace, my bonnet with a new silk ruche. The men carrying the litters had flesh on their bones and no holes in their uniforms, blue ones like Nick’s. Did he know the army he was helping did things like this?

  “Sam?” Isie cried and sank beside a long skeleton, curled on its side like a baby bird dropped from a nest and dead on the road. His shirt hung open on a cage of ribs exposed up to the neck. His breath was a tight whistle, his reddish hair dirty and lank. He seemed unaware of us, and when Isie touched him he gave a cough that seemed to start down in his feet, his whole body bent to the baying sound. People close to us stepped back, covering their mouths.

  “Hush, dear.” Isie fluttered her hands over him, like she did not know where to start.

  I looked for water and found a pump inside the station, where I wet my handkerchief. Nearby an old man in a starched white shirt and well-pressed suit cried out to a small crowd.

  “Rotted!” he shouted and waved his cane. His lips were flecked with foam. “They rotted them and sent them home to kill us like the Trojan horse!”

  “Hush, man, don’t speak nonsense,” said a liver-spotted man. “They can’t hurt anyone.”

  But the first man would not be quiet. “Don’t you know what you’re looking at? Consumption. Consumption, man! It’s going to kill us, the weakest first!”

  The second man cleared his throat and raised his voice higher. “Womanish nonsense. You know consumption is hereditary and confined to the Negro element. Indecent to say otherwise.”

  The first man grew incensed. “Of course that’s what I mean. We’ve never had consumption here, and now they’ve sent it home to us.”

  “Oh,” ladies near them murmured and pressed handkerchiefs to lips.

  A thin, ethereal young woman swayed and collapsed into her skirts.

  Others caught her arms and cried out, “Oh, help, please, she’s unwell. Water over here!”

  I made my way back with dripping handkerchief and knelt to wash Sam’s face and hands. His cough had calmed, and he seemed to come awake. Shuddering, he pointed violently at all the soldiers, his hand lashing like a snake striking. Guttural sounds broke from his throat.

  Isie cupped her palms around his cheeks. “Don’t try to speak, dear. There’ll be time to talk when you’re well.”

  She crouched by him, slid one arm under him, and clutched his frail body to her chest as I grasped his legs. He weighed no more than a small calf, and the crowd parted to let us pass. We maneuvered through the station and out to the buggy on the street.

  Isie sat in back with Sam’s head on her lap, while I drove hastily away—Sam must see a doctor and be put to bed. The horse caught our excitement, and near the edge of town it bolted and nearly plowed into a company of cavalry, led by the shovel-jawed captain who had ridden on the farm to look for Richard. I felt him stare as we drove on, and I heard a horse trot close behind us, as if he had followed to observe the scene in the buggy.

  I gave the horse its head, and it put its ears forward and trotted smartly back toward home.

  THE ATTIC ROOM at Isie’s smelled of fresh pine, and we put Sam to bed up there.

  I took the buggy into Jarrettsville to see if any Drs. Jarrett had come home. Old Dr. Jarrett had served the area for decades, and of his six sons, five had gone away to study medicine. When the Rebellion broke out, one of them had joined the Federals, while the others went to serve as surgeons for the CSA. I did not know what had become of any of them now.

  But when I got to the brick house in the crossroads, I found that Martin had come home. He was a wiry, handsome man with large, cool eyes, still young but exhausted, his face brown and cracked from years outside. He was our distant cousin, and when I told him about Sam, he got his bag without a word. At Isie’s house he asked for a bowl and towels and unwrapped his knife.

  Sam shuddered. “No,” he whispered, hoarse. His cough shook him.

  Dr. Jarrett waited until Sam subsided, pale and limp with his eyes closed. “The rage is natural, part of the disease. Emotions crest up, and some think they are the cause. Relieving excess blood will make him calm. Hold his shoulders please.”

  Isie’s eyes went red and wet, and I murmured, “Go on downstairs.”

  Isie shook her head and helped to hold him as the doctor sliced the underside of Sam’s forearm, the tender skin where veins were visible. The blood was slow to rise. At last it trickled into the white bowl, bright red. Dr. Jarrett wiped his knife.

  “I’ll come back and do that every day until he’s well. He must have aconite and belladonna, hot cups on the skin, cod liver oil, and plenty of strong broth. Most of all, he needs fresh air. Open all the windows here and put him on the sleeping porch so long as it’s warm. He needs sunlight and a mild climate at all costs. If the summer remains fair, he may continue here. But if he isn’t well come wintertime, he must be off to Saranac or Florida.”

  Saranac or Florida meant consumption, a short life. Isie stared at him, afraid.

  I braced her shoulders with a steady arm. “Of course he’ll be all right. He’s always been a big, strong boy. We’re all just fine and strong, aren’t we? You’ll see.”

  NOW I HAD A NEW daily routine. After milking cows at dawn, I would look for rugs to beat, curtains to boil, chickens to behead, and beans to hoe, then walk to Isie’s and beat rugs, boil curtains, behead chickens, and make poultices for Sam. I spooned broth into his mouth and applied hot glass cups to his back to draw the poison out. On hot afternoons Isie and I would carry him into the yard where any breeze might first be felt, scrub his damp sheets on a washboard, and hang them outside to dry so that when we carried him upstairs again, his bed would be sweet and clean.

  When he could speak, he told us that he had been starved, left to eat rats and sleep outside in mud. The camp was in some cold place far up north and staffed by veterans of battles in the South. They wanted every Rebel dead, and many had obliged. He thought the place was called Elmira, but he was not sure.

  “Read to me,” he said hoarsely when I arrived with newspapers. I read to him of battles doggedly continuing but dwindling down south and of soldiers coming home. The government had lately declared that former Rebels could not vote unless they signed an oath that said they had not even desired the success of the Confederacy—while the military constitution still in effect in Maryland implied that blacks were now full citizens, which meant they ought to vote.

  “Bloody hell,” Sam rasped, pushing himself up. “Let them vote and not us?”

  “Apparently some other people think so, too,” I said and read an article that told of Night Riders setting fire to barns of Radicals and shooting into their homes. That made me think of Richard, and my voice shot higher, tight.

  Sam seemed to catch it right away. “Any news of Richard?”

  I shook my head and looked at him. He had never asked why Richard never visited, because Sam had also been a Harford Rifle, and he knew. He watched me awhile.

  “You know, everyone thought of doing it,” he whispered finally. “Not because we hated the man. Just what he did.”

  These were the most words he had strung together yet, and he had to
fall back on the pillows, gasping.

  I ASKED TIM TO HELP ME make a rolling chair, and he devised one from a wicker seatback and a wheelbarrow. When it was done he showed me how it worked, lifting the handles so it bumped along on its wood wheel. He stood back to admire it.

  “My, that’s fine as ’Lantic City.”

  I looked at him, startled. None of us had ever been to New Jersey, though I had seen pictures of the boardwalk and the chairs. “Why, have you been there?”

  He looked down and spoke slowly. “Yes, miss. I been there, spell back. That ocean fine.”

  I had seen the ocean only once, when my parents took me to the Eastern Shore, and resentment crept into my voice. “I didn’t know the Yankees sent their colored soldiers there.”

  He kept his eyes down. “Just passing through.”

  I picked up the chair’s handles. “Well, thank you. Guess I’ll roll it over to Kirkwoods’.”

  He held out his hands to take the handles back. “I’ll roll it there and put the man in, too, give him a fine ride.”

  Quickly I said, “You know he was a Reb.”

  Tim nodded. “Yes’m. It don’t make no nevermind. The war be over now. I’ll carry him.”

  He set off briskly on the hard dirt road, and I had to race to keep up with him. His sturdy army boots crunched grit, while one of my soles still flapped. I chewed my cheek in irritation. Why should his shoes be better than mine? But it was pleasant to be out, and soon I noticed sheep with lambs, black vultures circling, a white horse in a field.

  “Ten points!” I cried and pointed at the horse. It was a game we used to play, awarding points for certain sightings in the world.

  Tim laughed as if with sudden delight. “Well, I’ll be, you got me there. But I claim twins!” he said slyly and pointed at a doe with two tiny spotted fawns at the woods’ edge.