by Diaz, Debra
Ephraim sighed, looking with mild reproach at the sharp incline they had yet to climb. “I’ll go and speak to her first, Miss Catherine, if you like.”
“Oh, please do. Just leave your bag here.”
Catherine watched as he walked forward, limping slightly. The woman on the porch glanced at him, saw that he was approaching her house, and put down whatever was in her lap.
I hope she doesn’t shoot him, Catherine thought, with a fleeting pang of apprehension; but apparently, the woman did not consider him a threat. She continued to watch as he came up the steps and stopped before ascending to the front porch. They talked, then the woman stood up, shaded her eyes, and peered down the street at Catherine.
Ephraim started back toward her. Catherine waved him back, picked up both bags and trudged forward, gritting her teeth at the pain in her feet and lower back. She knew she was a mess. Her hair had come unpinned and straggled down her back; her one good dress was dirty and stained from days of travel.
Meeting her halfway, Ephraim relieved her of the bags and Catherine somehow managed to climb to the porch. She stood uncertainly, her hands clasped before her.
“Mrs. Pierce, I do apologize for appearing so unexpectedly and in such a state of—”
The woman embraced her before she could finish, her glowing eyes dark against a frame of rosy cheeks and silver hair tucked neatly into a braid pinned on top of her head. “Clayton is alive!” she exclaimed. “Child, you don’t know how happy you’ve made me. And you’re his wife! My dear, you mustn’t apologize for looking as though there’s been a war going on. Come inside, both of you.”
She took them at once into the kitchen. Catherine couldn’t help but notice that the house had been looted, for several windows had makeshift curtains, there was no bric-a-brac to be seen, and blank spaces on the upper and lower walls gave silent testimony to the disappearance of pictures and large pieces of furniture.
Only two chairs stood at the plain wooden table in the kitchen. Ephraim, however, refused to sit in one of them until Mrs. Pierce ordered him to do so with the magisterial air of a general commanding his troops. It said much for her powers of persuasion when the old man complied, or possibly he was just too tired to resist. Mrs. Pierce began
to remove things from the pantry…a crust of bread, a jar of preserves, a block of cheese.
“Clayton gave me some money,” Catherine said uncomfortably. “I hope we won’t be too much of a burden to you.”
“Piffadiddle,” said Mrs. Pierce. “You’re my family now. I’ve been here alone for months. I’m happy you’ve come, both of you, very happy indeed. After all, this is your house! Tell me, my dear, do you sew?”
“Why, yes, a little.”
“Then you’ll be a great help to me. You see, I take in sewing for the Yankees. It’s been almost more than I can handle.”
Too tired to reply, Catherine simply smiled at the older woman.
“Oh, what was I thinking? Of course you need something to drink.” Mrs. Pierce poured tall glasses of cool water. “Forgive me. My mind’s been in a dreadful state since I heard the news.”
“News?” Catherine said, her attention sharpening.
Mrs. Pierce stared at her. “You haven’t heard? Oh, my dear child. One of the soldiers I work for told me this morning…they had it by telegraph. General Lee surrendered yesterday. The war is over.”
***
Less than a week later an obsessed Southerner with the misguided notion of avenging his homeland assassinated President Lincoln. The beleaguered South lost whatever hopes it had for a sensible guiding hand, as the broken nation began to piece itself together again.
The days passed; April turned to May and May into June. There was no word from Clayton. Catherine told herself that was because the mail service had been interrupted, the only couriers were with the Yankee army, everything was topsy-turvy, and nothing would ever be the same again. The officers, she thought, would be the last ones to go home, for surely they had duties, final responsibilities.
She spent hours on the front porch, straining her eyes, praying, listening for the clip-clop of a horse’s hooves. Mrs. Pierce often joined her, and they did their sewing there, mending Yankee uniforms, darning Yankee socks.
Catherine had never enjoyed that particular womanly art, but she didn’t complain; it did put food on the table. Privately she decided that in the fall she would look into the possibility of teaching school, since most of the schoolmasters had gone to war and many would never come back.
Ephraim did his share of the cleaning and cooking, maintained the yard, planted a garden and took care of whatever business needed to be done in town. He lived on the third floor where the servants’ rooms had been located. The Pierces had not owned slaves but had employed a number of servants, all of whom had gone elsewhere shortly after Clayton left Atlanta.
Catherine found the old butler in the barn one day, putting it in order, for it too had been ransacked; along with the horses, the saddles and bridles and all the accoutrements had disappeared.
“Ephraim, I’m more afraid now than I was when the war was going on. He should be here by now.”
“Maybe. Or…maybe he’s sick, Miss Catherine, and can’t travel right now.”
“He should have written me.”
“No way to get a letter to you these days. Do you want me to go look for him, Miss Catherine?”
“Well, not just yet. But if he’s not here by the end of June, I’ll go looking for him myself.”
“I can’t let you do that, ma’am. I promised Mr. Clayton I’d look after you, and I’m not going to let you go traipsing around the country when it’s full of…well, there’s things you don’t know about, Miss Catherine. Things are bad.”
Catherine wrapped her hands around a post, sighed, and leaned her head against it. “Ephraim, what does that verse mean in the Bible, where it says that perfect love casts out fear?”
“Well, now,” he said, looking out the door and over the quiet street, “I don’t think it means that if you love God enough you won’t be afraid…if that’s what you’re asking, Miss Catherine.”
“But that’s what it says.”
“You read the whole chapter next time. It’s about loving our brothers, like Christ loved us. If we’d done that in the first place, this war wouldn’t ever have got started. And then there wouldn’t be any cause to be afraid, would there?”
She looked at him thoughtfully. “Do you miss your church, Ephraim? I…I don’t know what I’d do without you, but…you know you’re a free man now.”
He smiled. “Why, I’ve always been free, Miss Catherine. Free to choose how I was going to feel about things, to make the best of things or just whine and complain about them. Why, that church might not even exist anymore. I think this is where I belong. They might say I’m free, but nothing’s really changed, ma’am. Things aren’t going to change for a long time to come.”
“I’m afraid you’re right, Ephraim. But I can’t worry about that now. All I can think about is Clayton.”
Ephraim’s perceptive gaze lingered on her for a moment, but he said nothing.
“What if Mrs. Shirley died for nothing?” Catherine’s hard-won struggle for self-control began to slip. “What if Clayton’s been dead since the night we saw him? Or what if he’s wounded and suffering? Oh, it would have been better for him to die from that bullet John Kelly meant for him than to have to endure some of the things I’ve seen!”
Ephraim shook his head. “I haven’t got a word of comfort for you this time, Miss Catherine, ’cause I just don’t know. I don’t know what could have happened to him. But I do know that, if he’s not with God, then God is with him.”
***
As word of Catherine’s arrival spread throughout the neighborhood, people began coming to call, welcoming her to Atlanta. They spoke so kindly in such quiet voices that Catherine felt worse than ever; they treated her as though she were a widow. At her request Ephraim walked to town every few
days to inquire at Yankee headquarters about Clayton, but though they were polite, they never went out of their way to obtain any news.
Around the second week in June Catherine sat up late, reading. There were no candles for the bedrooms and only one lamp was ever lit downstairs in order to conserve fuel. The only books that had not been stolen from Clayton’s study were law and history books, but she would have read almost anything to occupy her mind.
The lamp gave a meager light to the large front parlor, leaving most of it in shadows and darkness. Both Mrs. Pierce and Ephraim had already retired to their rooms. It was utterly still; there were no sounds but that of the occasional turning of a page. Once she glanced up at the window to see her face palely reflected back, her hair netted smoothly, her bodice clean but faded.
A sound on the porch made her heart leap into her throat. Someone knocked softly on the door.
For some reason her first thought was of John Kelly.
She rose hurriedly and waited a moment for Ephraim, but apparently
he had not heard. Her voice shaking, she called, “Who is it?”
“Don’t be alarmed, Mrs. Pierce. I’m a federal officer.”
She was certainly more alarmed than reassured, but she opened the door. Two men stood on the darkened porch. As soon as she saw the uniform of one and the ragged clothes of the other, her body literally began to quake with dread.
The soldier said, “Forgive me, Mrs. Pierce, for calling on you at this hour. I am Captain Stephen Marshall with the United States Army, stationed here in Atlanta. I spoke with your servant some time ago. He told me you were anxious for news about your husband.”
She struggled to answer. “Yes. Won’t you come in?”
She led the way into the parlor and stood behind a chair, holding on to the back of it with both hands. The man in the immaculate blue uniform removed his hat, eyeing her respectfully. He had vigorous red-gold hair and a close-clipped moustache, high cheekbones and large brown eyes that bore in them a look of frank concern and kindness.
“This man is Colonel Holcomb, formerly of the Confederate Army and now a prisoner of war. He’s just been transferred here from Richmond. When I discovered where he was from, I asked him if he knew anything of the fate of your husband. I shall let him tell you in his own words.”
Catherine’s gaze moved apprehensively to the other man, who must have been four or five inches over six feet tall. He was thin to the point of emaciation. His dark hair, combed to the side, revealed a wide forehead and deep-set, solemn eyes. A bushy beard completely covered his lower face.
The man, whose accent revealed his mountain origins, inclined his head toward her. With a quiet intelligence and dignity in spite of his faulty grammar, he said, “Miz Pierce, my name’s Eli Holcomb. I served with your husband under General Lee. I ain’t able to say just where he is or even if he’s still alive, but I can tell you what happened to him just afore the surrender.”
Catherine’s hands relaxed ever so slightly. “I would be grateful for any information you can give me, Colonel Holcomb.”
He nodded gravely. “Last I heard, General Pierce—”
“General?” she repeated in surprise. “Do you mean Clayton Pierce?”
“Yes’m…brigadier general. Reckon he didn’t include that in his letters. He was so good in the field, Miz Pierce, he had a right smart number of promotions. General Lee thought of him like one of his sons, tole me so hisself. General Pierce was coolheaded, ma’am, even under the fiercest attack. I had the honor of bein’ part of his escort.”
“I see. I’m sorry, sir, please continue.”
He seemed to search in his cheek for tobacco that wasn’t there. “Well, ma’am, on April the eighth, I think it was, we was under orders, retreatin’ to Appomattox, when we come against a whole division of Yankees. We repulsed ’em for a long time, near on to midnight, but they kept gettin’ reinforcements and we didn’t have nary a new man to replace one what got kilt. With all due respect to the captain here, I reckon that’s the onliest reason we lost the war.”
Captain Marshall bowed his head and said nothing, though one eyebrow went up in wry acceptance of the remark.
“The general seen it weren’t no use, and us and the other officers talked it over and had about decided to surrender. We was pretty sure our army had time to get away and we’d done held that road as long as we could. All of a sudden they charged and swarmed over us like mad hornets and it was flee or fight. It’s a credit to the general that not a man of his ran off. Weren’t nobody comin’ to help us, ’cause weren’t nobody left…we was the last, coverin’ the retreat.
“General Pierce’s horse was shot…the fourth horse to be shot out from under him since I knowed him, and that was after Gettysburg. He was engaged with the saber just then and couldn’t get off the horse in time, and it fell on his right leg. I think he got knocked unconscious.
“The Yankee he was fightin’ with turned out to be a general, too…Custer was his name. When he saw our general had fallen and weren’t nearly any of us left, he stopped the fight and took us all prisoner. We pulled the horse off General Pierce but he didn’t wake up. He was alive, though. I heard later that General Custer put him in his own tent and set a doctor to tendin’ him.”
The colonel paused, as though waiting for her to speak. When she didn’t, he said, in the same grave voice, “I just want to say, ma’am, that I held General Pierce in great respect. He was always calm and quiet…’cept when he was leadin’ a charge…and I never heard him swear. I know he was a prayin’ man, though he didn’t make no big show out of it. I seen him kneelin’ in his tent a lots of times by hisself. He knew how to lead men and he knew how to outthink the enemy. He weren’t as flamboyant as Jeb Stuart, but there was a lot about ’em that was alike, when it come to fightin’.”
“Thank you, sir,” Catherine said warmly, moved by his words but wishing he had not spoken in the past tense. “Then you’ve heard nothing of him since his injury?”
“No, ma’am.”
Captain Marshall made a slight movement, drawing her attention. “If I may speak, madam. I’ve been able to ascertain by telegraph that General Pierce was formally arrested after the surrender but was released a few days later on the request of General Lee. His leg was badly broken; in fact, there was some talk of his losing it. I’m afraid there’s no written record of which hospital he was sent to, nor have I been able to communicate with General Custer or General Lee, either of whom might know something of his whereabouts. I shall, however, continue to try.”
“Please, Captain, I would be so very grateful.” Catherine was unable to hold back her tears. Colonel Holcomb lowered his eyes, but the Yankee met her gaze sympathetically. The look he gave her held more than a kindly interest, lending a double meaning to his next words.
“I shall take pleasure in calling on you again, Mrs. Pierce. Good evening.”
“Thank you again, Captain. Thank you, Colonel Holcomb. Is there…is there anything I can do for you, sir?”
The mountain man said, with his mournful expression, “You needn’t feel obliged to me, ma’am. I’d have follered the general anywhere and laid down my life for him without thinkin’ twicet. I wish I could set your mind at rest, but I just don’t know nothin’ more to tell.”
“You’ve relieved my mind a great deal, Colonel. Captain Marshall, would you permit me to send Colonel Holcomb something special to eat on occasion?”
The captain smiled. “That would be a service to us as well as to him, madam, though he probably will be released in a few days.”
“I shall bring something for him tomorrow.”
“Very well. I look forward to seeing you.”
The prisoner raised his head. “There is one more thing, ma’am, I reckon I ort to say. The general set quite a store by you. He didn’t say much, but many’s the night I seen him in his tent, settin’ at his foldin’ desk with papers all around him, and after a while he’d stop and bow his head and rub his hand over
his face like he was sad and weary, and then he’d pull a little miniature out of his pocket and look at it for a long time. Seemed like it perked him up right smart. I seen it once. He said…‘That’s my wife.’ He didn’t have to say no more for me to see how he felt.”
