Swept into Destiny

by Catherine Ulrich Brakefield

  “Maybe she and the children could go to Spirit Wind. I could write and see if Maggie could take them in. Or else, you’ll have to stay here.”

  “I can’t. Did you hear her? Lincoln’s going to free us… but what she don’t understand is only if’n Lincoln and this Union wins the war.”

  “Here, give me a hand with my dad.” Together they wrapped an old tarp around Ben’s dad. Ben held his nose. “Dad, you sure got an odor about you that not even the rain can wash away.”

  “Best we bury him tomorrow, rain, snow, or whatever.”

  “So, you staying here?”

  “No. I can’ts. We haven’t won one battle. I don’t think the northern heart is in this war like the southern heart is. That’s why those Rebs fights to win like they do. It’s just a paycheck for you Irish.” Jacob scrunched up his face, turning it heavenwards. “I’m not sure the North has what it takes to whip that kind of spirit.”

  “Spirit, ya say. Well, you’re forgetting one thing. Many of those southern families came over on the Mayflower . Do they want to go against what their ancestors fought for, independence from Britain and making the likes of us a great nation?”

  Ben knew he could be joining his dad soon. Yet, it was all worth the rough boat ride, going to sleep with your stomach crying, worth it all to be at these shores feeling that breath of hope, that spirit of liberty welcoming him. ’Twas not what he’d first expected. No, it was hard work, to be sure. More aches in his belly and groans in his muscles, yet, he’d not trade a moment of it. He’d found the love of his life here and had his land to boot.

  “I’m not fighting for the money. I’m fighting for a dream of these United States to remain as grand to all the immigrants who want come here to be a part of America, for a better life.” He lifted his arm pointing to the moon peeking through an obstinate cloud. “To the rainbow just over the rise …”

  “So, you’re looking to join your dad, are you?”

  Chapter 26

  M iss Maggie, what are we goin’ to do?”

  Maggie looked up from her letter to Aunt Louise. Before she could ask Cook what she was referring to—the empty flour barrel or the depleted sugar supply—her father interrupted Cook and slapped his newspaper.

  “Well, look here, the Union suffered a defeat in the Battle of Chancellorsville in Virginia. But Stonewall Jackson was mortally wounded.” Father looked down at his paper. Home from the war with an injured leg and shrapnel cuts, his right hand was in a sling and his head bandaged tightly around his forehead. His left hand shook the pages as if trying to read more about the battle.

  Maggie jumped up in alarm. The paper was over a month old, it was nearly July… his shaking was not due to his excitement, but due to his nerves; he’d forgotten he fought in that battle.

  “What year is this, daughter?”

  “Father, it’s 1863, you remember. You’ve been home now for nearly two months—from the battle at Chancellorsville.”

  “Well, I know that,” he said, slightly embarrassed. “Look at this. Union losses are 11,000 killed, wounded, and missing. Confederate losses 10,000. We’ll show Lincoln freeing our slaves with his highfalutin Emancipation Proclamation. We’ll show Lincoln thinking this Grant fellow could capture Vicksburg. I don’t understand why people have such long faces—”

  “Maybe ’cause their starvin’,” Cook interrupted. “Miss Maggie, I only got a little bacon and some cornbread and hominy to feed these folks with. What with our brave Confederacy leavin’ us what theys didn’t want. We all sick of hominy and done picked everything we could. Now there’s nothin’ in the garden ready for pickin’. Whats you want me to do?”

  The cardinals and blue jays flew to the little birdhouse Mother had always supplied with ample seed. Only no seed was there. They flew away into the crystal blue sky. Maggie wished she could fly away… away from all these troubles biting at her heels like hounds on a hunt. The hay was ripe in the field, ready to be cut… only, there was no one left to cut it but her and Eli.

  She wanted to fly away from the question that haunted her and kept her sleepless though her body ached for rest. Ben, will I ever see your swarthy face and jesting eyes again? Listen to your practical commonality making sense of this senseless killing?

  The noise of a wagon winding its way up the drive caused her and Father pause.

  “Humpf, most likely someone looking to be fed.” Cook pulled at Maggie’s worn apron sleeve. “We ain’t got any to gives them, Miss Maggie.” Her large lower lip protruded and she crossed her arms on her ample bosom.

  A large black man striding a horse and a light-skinned woman driving a mule pulling a rickety wagon approached the manor. Two small children sat in the back of the wagon.

  Cook narrowed her eyes at the strangers. “I don’t like it. I don’t likes it. These people are trouble. I can sniff it on their heels.”

  “Mr. Gatlan and Miss Maggie?”

  Maggie shielded her eyes from the sun. “Yes.”

  The man jumped down as sprightly as Little Irene,whose four-year-old little legs could out run and out jump them all. “May I introduce, Mrs. Prudence… Walker of… Kentucky, here for a visit.”

  “Humpf! Ain’t no time to be calling… what with a war goin’ on,” Cook grumbled.

  “Now, where’s your southern hospitality?” Maggie motioned Cook into the house, then turned back to the visitors. She chopped down on her lips like she was dicing up onions.

  Onions always made Maggie laugh and cry at the same time; that’s what she felt like doing now. The old South had floated away on the heels of want and need. Her father walked around the wagon, sniffing it like a bloodhound. So unlike Father, the war had changed him. “This wagon smells like death. In fact there are blood stains on the wood.”

  Of course, there are blood stains, Father. She closed her eyes, blocking out the sights and sounds of their hospital in Maryville. The men’s lice, maggots in open wounds, and the groans of the soldiers who had come to them from the battles of Ft. Henry and Ft. Donelson. She would never forget the sickish sweet smell of gangrene that clung to her garments as the flies and gnats hovered above the groaning men with their severed limbs and wounds. She had nursed Father back to health. Blake McCullen was not so fortunate. He’d gotten gangrene in his leg, so Doctor Jordon had to amputate. He died anyway.

  The man handed her a letter. How coincidental, she’d been writing Aunt Louise about Blake. What did this letter hold? She looked up. His face was drawn, his eyes sad, but he carried a smile on his lips.

  Flipping the seal with her thumb, she read. “Maggie, ’tis I your Ben praying daily for your safety in your war-torn Tennessee.”

  Ben’s alive! Maggie caressed the letter written on the back of a piece of wallpaper. She blinked away her tears, not wanting them to fall onto the parchment.

  “Please take in Prudence and her children. She is very resourceful and well able to be a proper helpmate to you. I shall write you more when time permits. Taps and lights out will soon follow and I must get this letter finished. Send Jacob back with the necessary papers to get him safely to Virginia. He’s made a good soldier and a good friend to yours truly. Your humble servant, Ben McConnell.

  Maggie slipped the letter into her apron pocket. Jacob’s face swam through her tears of thanksgiving.

  Jacob, embarrassed, shoved a pebble aside with his toe.

  “Ida, ready the guest rooms.”

  “How long will you be staying?” her father asked.

  “She’s come to help us in the hospital, Father, and comes highly recommended by… Aunt Louise.” Prudence alighted from the wagon. Maggie hugged her as if she was a long-lost friend.

  Jacob lifted the children out of the back, patting them on the head and silencing their questions with a look.

  “Hattie, bring me my writing tablet, please.”

  Hattie rushed upstairs and came down with the tablet. There was no paper left. Maggie looked around; the newspaper lay at the far end of the table. She gr
abbed for it, skimming down the page. Then seeing the list of deaths, she tore the piece out of the paper and wrote a note asking for Jacob’s safe passage to Mrs. Louise McCullen’s estate. She handed it to Jacob. “Here, this is all I can do. It’ll be up to you to get yourself to Virginia, but… if I were you, I’d stay to the woods. No telling if the Confederates or Yankees won’t want to confiscate you and your horse for the Cause.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.” He tilted the brim of his worn hat, staring down at her from his horse. She handed him a cloth bag of corn pone, bacon, and an apple, then his canteen freshly filled with spring water. “I wish there was more I could give you.”

  His eyes filled with tears. “Just take care of my family.”

  “Our good Lord willing, we shall all come out of this war better than worse.”

  “Amen.” He turned to leave.

  “Oh, wait.” Maggie handed him her letter to Aunt Louise. “Drop this off where there’s a chance it could get to Kentucky.” She put a hand to her mouth. Dare she ask the question? “What part of Virginia are you heading for?”

  “Ben told me to head north, to Virginia, then to a place in Pennsylvania. For me to asks people where a place called Gettysburg is.” With that he spurred his horse into a canter, the dust swirling about his horse’s hooves. She coughed, her mouth puckered in a round O . She’d never heard of that place before.

  The sun beat on them like a scorching cannonball. Ben’s saber clanged against his saddle, and his spurs jingled to the sounds of the horses’ neighs. As the Irish Brigade galloped to their destination, they sang “Garryowen.” Ben smiled; the Irish sang that song on their way to fight because it matched their horses’ strides.

  Pausing for a walk, Big Jim pulled up next to him. “I don’t care what you say, Ben McConnell, this Union army ’tis taking advantage of our fighting spirit to be sure. Why else would they be putting us up front, but to be used as cannon fodder?”

  “Well, at least we’re not eating another man’s dust.”

  Big Jim wasn’t going to be put off that quickly. “They think we are too dumb to see through their shenanigans. ‘No Irish need apply,’ that is unless they want someone to get their head knocked off first, then it is ‘Right this way, Irishman.’”

  Big Jim wasn’t talking blarney today. But there wasn’t an Irishman alive that Ben knew could back down from a fight, even if it was an unfair one. And there was many an Irishman infuriated with that new act.

  “What is that act called?”

  “You means the National Conscription Act?” Jacob piped up.

  Ben didn’t have a clue to why they named it that.

  “They just want to make sure the unmarried men fight whether they wants to or not,” Big Jim said. “But if you got enough money jingling in your pants, you can pay someone to be takin’ your place.”

  “Us Irish are just a bunch of poor men fighting in a rich man’s war,” another man chimed. The man looked at Jacob. “What’s the likes of him doing riding with the likes of us in this brigade?”

  Ben smiled. “He’s a leprechaun here to bring us good luck.”

  “Humpf. Leprechauns are green, not black as the ace of spades.”

  “We’ll all be black with gunpowder before this day is through.” Big Jim pointed toward the fork in the road. “Is this the way to Gettysburg?”

  Fighting Dick pointed up the hill of a dust-strewn pathway that the wagons, heavy with cannons, had taken. To their left was another commander ornately dressed with gold buttons traveling the length of his cavalry coat and gold braiding intricately scrolled on his lapel and sleeves.

  “Who might he be? A French general?” Ben had heard that the Confederates hoped France and Britain would join their fight. He unfastened the clasp on his revolver.

  “Na, that’s General George Armstrong Custer and his Michigan Wolverines,” replied a man with bright red hair.

  As Custer and his regiment rode closer, a familiar tune tickled Ben’s ears and the words of Garryowen floated about the green hillside: “Our hearts so stout have got us fame, For soon ’tis known from whence we came, Where’er we go they dread the name, Of Garryowen in glory.”

  “That’s our song,” grumbled Big Jim. “They steal our songs and then—”

  “Come on, men,” Ben cried, leading off singing “I ’m lonesome since I crossed the hill, And over the moorland sedgy, Such heavy thoughts my heart do fill, Since parting from my Sally. I seek no more the fine and gay, For each just does remind me How sweet the hours I passed away, With the girl I left behind me.”

  Then looking to his right, another cavalry group appeared, the commander less ornately dressed. However, the enthusiasm of the men singing at the top of their lungs caused no one to worry about their determination and patriotism. Raising their voices, they sang. “I left my love, my love I left asleepin’ in her bed. I turned my back on my true love when fightin’ Johnny Reb.”

  Custer’s Wolverines were not to be out done. “Instead of spa we’ll drink brown ale And pay the reckoning on the nail …”

  Fighting Dick’s strong baritone led the Irish Brigade in the second stanza. “O ne’er shall I forget that night, The stars were bright above me, And gently lent their silvery light When first she vowed to love me. But now I’m bound to Brighton camp - Kind heaven then pray guide me, And send me safely back again, To the girl I left behind me.”

  The third cavalry group now took up the chant. “I told her she would find me in the U. S. Cavalry. Hi-Yo! Down they go, there’s no such word as ‘can’t’. We’ll ride clean down to Hell and Back for Ulysses Simpson Grant.”

  General Custer threw up his hand and smiled back into the soldier’s faces. “Ok, men, now we need to be quiet; we’re coming to Gettysburg, and may God be with each and every one of you!” Distant thunder rumbled. Over the treetops, a blaze of fire erupted in the clear blue sky.

  Ben and Big Jim looked at each other realizing that it wasn’t thunder they were hearing, but cannon fire.

  Custer drew out his sword. “Remember, men, ride to the guns!” He pointed where he wanted each cavalry group to be. “Irish Brigade, you will join Winfield Hancock’s regiment, ride to Cemetery Ridge to the hill known as Little Round Top and wait for your orders.”

  Fighting Dick Richardson turned and led his regiment forward. Big Jim leaned over. “Cemetery Ridge, don’t believe I care for the name much.”

  After a meeting with the Union cavalry divisions, Fighting Dick Richardson galloped up and down the rows of the brigade. “Irish, are you ready for some brawling?”

  Five hundred voices rose like the roar of the sea in high tide. A pang of homesickness grabbed Ben’s chest. ’Twas like the roar outside his bedroom window just before a storm in Cork. Dad would have liked to have been here.

  “Charge!” Fighting Dick yelled. The bugle boy’s trumpet split through the air like a thunderbolt. The cavalry drew their sabers and yelled, “Charge!”

  The ground shook with 1,000 hooves hitting the ground at once. The wind whistled in Ben’s ears. The smell of horses, gunpowder, and sweat blanketed the air. The neck of Caedmon stretched taut like a bow with an arrow about to fly; his muscular legs boldly lapped up the dirt. Caedmon was living up to his name as a wise warrior. Ben drew his saber. Would he?

  The cannons hadn’t fired, but it was just a matter of time. Ben’s eyes narrowed, looking forward, always forward, anticipating the next move of the Confederates, a solid gray wall of resistance now in sight. The light of a cannon wick glimmered in the dust. He swerved Caedmon to the right, missing the cannon ball meant for him, and spurred his stallion forward. Caedmon jumped over the barricade and landed on a man.

  Ump. Deep went Ben’s saber as three more men tried to pull him down. Caedmon kicked out. Ben slashed his way through, turned, and fired his pistol. Big Jim joined him and side by side they fought.

  The flies buzzed around Ben’s head, his mouth so dry he couldn’t swallow. His eyes burned from the gun and cannon smoke.
Gray coats turned red as blood oozed over the lifeless forms of the men, their glassy eyes staring—seeing nothing.

  Ben was panting as hard as Caedmon. A commotion to his rear caught his attention. A rebel cry, a blood curdling scream that raised the hair on Ben’s neck. More Rebs joined in, as if rising from the blood-soaked ground.

  Darkness cloaked the battlefield. A hundred campfires lit the velvet blackness as the groans of the dying mingled with the popping wood of the fires. Ben, Big Jim, and Jacob made their way along the rutted and bloody battlefield, helping the medics find the half-alive bodies of their comrades. Reb or Yank, it didn’t matter the color of their coat now. They worked by the light of the stars and moon above.

  “Listen?” A Reb with hair so white it glistened in the moonlight held his hand up.

  “It’s coming from that clump of trees.” As they made their way to the trees, hauling an empty stretcher between them, a hand from out of the dark earth grabbed Ben’s trouser. He liked to jump out of his own skin.

  “Water.”

  Ben knelt, giving the man a sip from his canteen, then looked up at his Rebel counterpart. “You got him ?”

  The Rebel nodded, hoisting another man up on his shoulders and walked toward Ben. “How are we goin’ to carry them both?”

  Reb had a Union man and Ben had a Confederate. Ben bent down low. “If you’re not squeamish about sharing a bed with a Yank, we could be getting you to the surgeons right soon. But if you be—”

  “Hold on there, Irish. I figure, I’ve shared enough dirt today to call that Yank kin. Hoist me up and be quick about it.”