by Julianne Lee
The two nodded and turned their horses toward the stable, taking Amos and Gar’s mounts with them, and Amos called to her, “Mary Beth, we’ve brought some provisions. Quirk...” the larger of the two men still mounted turned, having been addressed, “Sergeant Quirk, you and Ellsworth bring those bags from my horse and my brother’s. Directly, if you please. The kitchen is that building over there.”
“Yes sir, Captain.” Quirk tossed off a casual salute, and he and the Ellsworth fellow went on to drop bulky saddle bags at the kitchen before proceeding to the stable.
Shelby followed the reunited couples into the house. They spoke too softly for anyone else to hear, and it was plain they weren’t going to be much company except to each other for a while. She set her hoe against the outside of the house and went to wash up before going to the kitchen to prepare a cold lunch. Matthew was napping in the dining room with Dad Brosnahan, but would be awakened by his uncles. She hoped he wouldn’t be too wound up by the new people to sleep tonight.
Over food, with Matthew perched on Gar’s knee, Amos, Gar, and their two friends told of how they came to be in the vicinity without running scared from the Yankees. “We took Gallatin.” Amos’s grin shone as if he were twenty years younger. “Just walked in, grabbed that Colonel Boone by the scruff of the neck, and told him to surrender his garrison of Lincolnites. Not a shot fired. Two hundred prisoners, about eighty horses, and a trainload of supplies of various sorts. We’ve cut off Nashville from Kentucky.”
Shelby’s mind turned, struggling to remember whether this had happened in the original timeline. She’d never heard of Morgan’s Raiders actually capturing Gallatin and cutting communication between Nashville and Louisville. On the other hand, there was no reason for her to have known if they had. It was a big, long war, and many small battles and sieges would be poorly documented. She was well read, but no scholar.
As soon as everyone was finished eating, Amos and Ruth, and Gar and Martha, left the table and retreated to the bedrooms upstairs. Shelby cleared dishes and tidied up in the kitchen, then returned to the house to find Dad Brosnahan in the sitting room with Ellsworth and Quirk, and Matthew on the floor with a wooden spoon in his mouth for teething. It had recently become his relief spoon, and already was well-chewed and marked by tiny new teeth.
All three of the men were puffing on cigars. The smell of it brought a wave of memory, evoking Lucas, and she could close her eyes and imagine him there, talking and gossiping and encircling himself with a wreath of fragrant smoke. Her heart wrenched until she had to force herself to breathe. It took several deep breaths before she could go into the sitting room.
Ellsworth looked up at her entrance and stood. Quirk struggled to his feet as well, and they both remained standing until Shelby took a seat in the rocking chair. “Thank you, Mrs. Brosnahan, for that fine supper.” His accent was southern, but with a clipped precision that was almost Northern. He seemed like a bird, watching everything at once and tensed to take flight at any moment. He didn’t look her quite in the eye when he spoke to her.
“You’re welcome, gentlemen.” She picked up her sewing as the men went on with their tales to Dad Brosnahan. The old man perched on the sofa, leaning hard on his cane which he’d planted between his feet.
“It was Ellsworth here done the trick.”
Shelby took a glance at the smaller man, who didn’t demur at all. He was in agreement he’d won the day in some recent adventure. Though he still didn’t look anyone in the eye, he did smile at the compliment and nod with great energy.
“What did he do?” She threaded a needle.
“Ellsworth here is our telegraph expert. Put him on the wire, and he can make himself out to be whoever he likes and the Yankees can’t tell no different. He does this...thing...” Quirk looked to the man with the glasses and frowned.
Ellsworth helped him out. “With a gun to the telegrapher’s head,” said the birdlike fellow who didn’t look like someone who would know which end of a gun to aim. “I coax him to send a few innocuous messages along the wire for the purpose of learning his rhythm. You see, every man who works a telegraph for any length of time develops a...a signature, if you will. A way of tapping out the code that is a certain style. I copy that style—”
“It takes him but a second or two. As God is my witness, this man can pick up a telegraph signature like Michelangelo forging a man’s name.”
Ellsworth chuckled at that. “It’s only a matter of identifying a pattern. Anyone could do it.”
“I sure couldn’t.”
The conversation was beginning to sound like many Shelby had heard in her own time. Telegraphs or computers, it was all high tech for its time, and the little man with the glasses was a techno-nerd of the nineteenth century. It made her smile, and gave her a pang of nostalgia for the future.
With a shrug, Ellsworth continued. “In any case, once I’ve identified the man’s signature, I then take the wire and send messages as if I were him.”
“He’s a genius,” effused Quirk.
Ellsworth actually nodded at that as if to say, “Why, yes, I am,” then hurried on with his story. He obviously enjoyed discussing the one subject on which he was an undisputed authority. “Yes. I trick the Yankees into thinking I’m their man in the station. I send dispatches telling of nonexistent Confederate forces, and I ask for information regarding Yankee strength in the areas along the wire.”
“Disinformation.”
Ellsworth blinked. “Why, yes. Disinformation. An excellent word.” He said it again, as if tasting it. “Disinformation.”
“One time he had an entire Brigade of Federals convinced they were going to be overrun by us. Perryville, I think.” He looked to Ellsworth, who nodded. “Perryville, and they just vacated as if we’d asked pretty please won’t you move your troops out of our way.”
Shelby had to chuckle over that.
“Anyone could do it.”
“No, they couldn’t, George. No more than you could have captured Captain King single-handedly.” Whatever that meant, it brought a deep blush to Ellsworth’s face. Quirk continued to Shelby, “We’re still hiding him from Colonel Greenfell, since in the attempt on King he lost the Colonel’s horse, coat and gold.”
Shelby flinched. “Ow.”
Quirk sat back with a big smile. “Good thing this here boy is so handy with a telegraph, or he’d be dead and buried after that mishap.”
Ellsworth now had nothing to say, and Shelby felt a little sorry for him. Had he been born a hundred and fifty years later than he had been, he would have lived in a world where brawn and derring-do were less important than a fine mind for detail and progressive technology. In the twenty-first century, Ellsworth might have been a hero for his intelligence, without the need to prove himself otherwise.
The four of Morgan’s men stayed the night, then went on their way in the morning. Even with them gone, for a while the Brosnahan women breathed a little easier, knowing they were once again living in Confederate-held territory and there would be no visits from Yankee patrols. But that lasted only until about a month later, when Federal patrols resumed their demands for food, and brought word that Morgan had retreated back across the river. Sumner County was once again wholly Union occupied.
Ruth became extraordinarily quiet then. The pleasant, talkative woman Shelby had come to know and love grew silent. No comment from Ruth meant something was up, and Shelby watched carefully to see what it might be. It wasn’t the Yankees, that she felt was certain, for she hadn’t reacted this way even when the Federals had torn up the house. The silence was actually an odd calmness. Ruth moved more slowly now. When rising, she seemed careful. She never hurried anywhere any more. Shelby couldn’t tell whether she’d resigned herself to the occupation, or was simply missing her husband. God knew Shelby struggled to keep herself from snapping under the pressure of Lucas’s absence. But the weariness around Ruth’s eyes was alarming. For a couple of weeks this went on, then one night, sitting before the fire
in the evening during early October, Ruth gasped.
“Ruth? You okay?” Shelby set her own sewing to the side and readied to help if needed. Martha watched from her seat, waiting to hear what the answer would be.
Ruth didn’t reply, but sat and stared into the middle distance.
“Ruth?”
The older woman whispered, “Dear God.”
“What’s the matter, Ruth?” Shelby began to rise, and at that moment Ruth gasped again. She held her middle and bent double in her chair.
“Not again,” said Martha as she also rose to help.
Shelby went to Ruth and knelt by her to put an arm around her. “What’s the matter?”
“She’s losing another one.”
Ruth said in a hoarse whisper, “Help me to bed, please.”
Shelby and Martha supported her, nearly carrying her, all the way upstairs and into the bedroom she and Amos had to themselves. They helped her off with her dress, and found the skirt soaked through with blood so dark as to be nearly black. Martha went to put water on to heat, leaving Shelby to help Ruth into the bed with several linen towels between her thighs. By now Ruth was weeping, and Shelby wasn’t far behind. Ruth pressed the knuckles of one hand against her mouth, sobbing.
Shelby went to the ewer and poured water into the bowl to wet a clean towel. She pressed the cooling cloth to Ruth’s forehead as a cramp brought more tears and more blood.
“This has happened before?”
Ruth nodded, taking deep breaths for the pain. “I’ve lost count.” She gasped some more, then continued, “Every year, it seems. Maybe more.”
The pain went on for a long time, then it let up and Ruth was able to lie still. Her eyes closed, she looked like she might be sleeping except for the tears dribbling from beneath her eyelids.
Shelby asked, “Have you ever thought about trying to prevent becoming pregnant?”
Ruth’s eyes flew open, and Shelby knew she’d said something horribly wrong. “I’m not like Martha. I would give anything for a child, and as long as God sees fit to give me a chance then I will take that chance. Martha can keep her ergot and cottonroot; I want no part...” Another cramp made her grimace, and a blood stain blossomed on the blanket, having soaked through the towels.
Shelby held her hand and cooled her face. Cottonroot and ergot? She looked toward the door where Martha had left the room. When Ruth could speak again, Shelby asked, “Martha uses...remedies?”
Ruth nodded, her eyes nearly closed with exhaustion. It appeared William Campbell had been right about Martha, at least. Poor Ruth must have been miserable to live all those years with Martha, watching her do away with the children Ruth wanted so much.
“I’m sorry, Ruth. I’m terribly sorry.”
Eyes still closed, Ruth whispered, “We have Matthew.”
Shelby leaned over to kiss Ruth on her forehead, then waited patiently for Martha to return with the pot of hot water so they could begin cleaning up and comforting Ruth as much as possible.
For a few days Ruth remained in bed, but was up and around within a week, returned nearly to her old self. Shelby was astonished by her recovery, but figured that after so many miscarriages she was accustomed to the process. Shelby was in awe of her strength.
The truck garden was now yielding a harvest, and they needed to hide most of the food from prying Yankee eyes. Sacks of turnips, beans and carrots, and barrels of apples went into the tunnel between the cellar and the kitchen, and Shelby got Clyde to wall it up with field stones.
“How will we get from the house to the kitchen in winter?”
“We’ll walk, Martha.” Shelby was handing stones to Clyde, who was mortaring them into the wall as best he could with no masonry skills and very little brain power.
“In the cold?”
Shelby kept her attention on Clyde and his work, unwilling to pay more attention to Martha’s whining than necessary. “You’d rather go hungry? ’Cause you know if the looting Yankees find this food they’ll take it.” There was no meat to salt this year, for they’d butchered all the pigs last year. But they still had a goat for milk and cheese, and there were chickens loose in the woods that weren’t quite so hard to catch as rabbits and squirrels, so they wouldn’t have to go completely vegetarian.
She finally turned to her sister-in-law. “Honestly, Martha, I think you need to figure out that things are not going to be as comfortable as they used to be. Ever. Even after this thing is finished, and a million people are dead, life is never going to be the way you wanted it. It’s not even going to be the way it was. So what you need to do is suck it up, and get on with things. And stop making me be the bad guy, ’cause I’m not. I’m doing my best to keep us from starving.”
Martha fell silent, wide-eyed, stunned at Shelby’s outburst. Then she returned to the house up the stairs. Shelby stayed to supervise Clyde with the wall, making certain he did it the way she wanted. The cellar end of the tunnel was to be walled off about three feet in, then a makeshift door placed over the entrance as if they’d simply fashioned a cabinet inside the cellar wall. They would set a sack of turnips into it for the Yankees to find, and hope they wouldn’t notice the rear wall of the “cabinet” didn’t match the rest of the walls. Then, on the other side at the bottom of the steps from the kitchen, they would wall the tunnel with boards they could remove at will. In front of those boards would be stacks of household junk, such as the bathtub and a couple of chairs broken during the first search. The sacks of food would stay cold and dry down there, just as if they were in the cellar proper.
It worked. The next search resulted in the loss of only the one sack of turnips and a cheese. The Yankees passed up a supply of corn meal, salt and chicory, as well as a sack of blackeye peas the men sneered at as not fit for humans.
Not long after that visit, another group came to the house. It was a breezy, late October day; the sort that would have lifted Shelby’s heart with the bright, shiny beauty of the world, had it been any other year but 1862. As she sat in her bedroom on the edge of the bed, writing in her diary, Shelby heard voices downstairs and went to the top of the steps to listen. They were loud, angry voices. Southern, but that never really meant anything, what with Kentucky having put as many Union units into the field as it had Confederate. Not to mention all the Union troops mustered from East Tennessee. Shelby’s heart froze when Martha let out a short scream and asked someone not to shoot her.
“Crap.” Then she glanced at the diary and flashed on the date. October 20, 1862. The day Mary Beth had hidden her diary and never returned for it. Was this what had happened to Mary Beth that day? Was she shot? Killed? Terror made Shelby’s hands go slick. Matthew was downstairs, in the sitting room with Martha. She had to get down there, quickly.
Then she looked at the diary in her hand. There were no mentions of troop movements, nor visits from Brosnahans in the Confederate Army, but she’d be damned if she was going to let anyone outside the family get hold of her private writings. Quickly, she hurried to the closet, pulled the panel from the wall, and stuffed the diary down beside the tray with the cash. Then she restored the panel and hurried downstairs.
There she found a pack of four raggedy men. None were in uniform, and that pegged them as criminals no matter what side they might claim. This wasn’t a search and seizure, it was a robbery.
“What’s going on here?” She strode into the room, hurrying across to get to Matthew before one of these men could tell her to hold still.
“Stop. Stop right there, lady.”
She stopped, right by Matthew’s basket. Martha sat in the rocker beside him, and Ruth was standing by the sofa. Shelby checked on Matthew and found him sitting up, curious about the noise and strange voices. His little hands gripped the side of his basket, and Martha had a hand out to keep him still.
Three of the men were armed with revolvers, their long, heavy barrels strangely graceful in their hands. But the men weren’t terribly vigilant in keeping them aimed. They waved and gestured
with them so casually, Shelby was afraid one might go off by accident, and there was no telling what the ball would hit. The fourth man was paying little attention to the women and instead was browsing their belongings, picking up a ceramic candlestick here and putting it back, a doily there, and putting it back. He said, “Ellis, there ain’t nothing here worth hauling away.”
Martha said, “Ellis? Ellis Harper?”
The one who appeared to be the leader, shouting orders, shifted his eyes toward her. “I know you?”
“Your mother did some sewing for me once.”
He only grunted. The name Ellis Harper was familiar to Shelby, too, for his reputation would carry well into the future. He led a band of Confederate irregulars, who called themselves soldiers but had never been mustered into the Army. They rode around the county, tearing up railroad tracks and terrorizing the locals regardless of loyalty. In the end, they were using the war as an excuse to rob people.
“Ellis, please don’t shoot us. We’ll give you whatever you want, but we have so very little.” Martha was whining again, and though Shelby cheered her plea for mercy she wished the woman would get that reedy tone out of her voice.
Harper was looking around, too. “Where you got it hid?”
Shelby replied so Martha wouldn’t have to. “Ask the Yankees. They took it all. They’ve been here twice a week since February, sucking down our food.”
The wandering one had gone upstairs and back, and said, “She’s right, El. Ain’t nothing here. Besides, I figure if the Yankees don’t want it, it ain’t worth taking.”
The leader muttered a curse that made Martha and Ruth flinch. Then his eyes narrowed at Shelby. “Well, I ain’t had my ashes hauled in a long spell. I reckon there’s a way we can keep this from being a wasted ride.” He reached out quick as a striking snake and grabbed Shelby’s wrist. Off balance, she staggered a couple of steps. His gun waved aimlessly, mostly at the floor.
