Gettysburg: The Crossroads Town

by Tim Black

  Elizabeth Thorn’s eyes drifted to the smoke on Seminary Ridge more than a mile away. “Well, Fraulein,” she replied, using the German word for miss. Elizabeth Thorn often interspersed her native German in with English. “You may be right about needing fresh graves. Follow me into the cemetery if you like and I will show you how it is done.”

  How it is done? Victor wondered. What was there to digging a grave? All one needed was a shovel, although Victor had once watched a grave dug with a backhoe at a cemetery in Cassadaga. There were no backhoes in 1863. So what could be the big deal? He watched curiously as Elizabeth Thorn waddled to an uninhabited area of the graveyard and took a ball of yarn from her pocket and measured off a rectangular plot, placing a small stone at the corners of the rectangle. Then she handed Victor a pick and Bette a shovel. Elizabeth Thorn examined the palms of Victor’s and Bette’s hands.

  “You two have pretty soft hands. Have you ever done any hard work in your lives?” she inquired.

  Neither Victor nor Bette responded except to blush, for indeed, neither of the students had done much manual labor in their lives, although Victor at least, had joined junior rodeo at Cassadaga Area High School, after he read the Florida classic A Land Remembered, and could ride a horse and rope a steer, but Victor doubted steer roping was going to be useful in the present circumstances.

  Elizabeth Thorn shrugged and said to Victor, “Start with the pick ax, boy. Break the ground. Some of the dirt is a bit rocky. Once you break ground a few inches, Billy there can start with the shovel. You have to go down six feet. Some folks think four feet deep is enough, but over time the coffin will collapse and at four feet you can have sink spots and you might wind up putting a boot into the dearly departed,” Elizabeth chuckled. “Happened to me once, let me tell you, and I could feel the bones crunching underneath my boot. Ha!” Mrs. Thorn went on, adding, “Ouch, you little rascal,” to the fetus, which was kicking up a storm in her uterus. “Has to be a girl,” she said. “None of my boys ever kicked like that. Girls like to kick their mothers,” Elizabeth opined. “A daughter fights with her mother all the time and it starts in the womb. Get to work!”

  The pick ax was heavier than Victor anticipated and he thought it was extremely odd that here, during the Battle of Gettysburg, he was busy opening a fresh grave. When Bette dug down two feet and removed the dirt, she turned to Victor with a pleading look. Lord, Victor thought, she was already tired and needed a rest. Victor took over and continued to dig, shoveling the dirt to a pile beside the hole.

  “There is a short ladder by the Gatehouse, girl,” Elizabeth advised. “Go fetch it.”

  Victor continued to dig, fully expecting his hands to blister. But to his surprise, his hands held out and he finished the grave. The top of the grave was about an inch over his head, he estimated. Since he was nearly six feet tall, Victor calculated that he had completed the grave.

  “Not bad, boy,” Elizabeth evaluated.

  As Elizabeth paid Victor the back-handed compliment, two Union army caissons, tugging artillery pieces, pulled up to the cemetery. Soldiers quickly set up an artillery battery on Cemetery Hill, pointing the barrels of their cannons in the direction of Seminary Ridge. Two more caissons arrived in short order, adding a pair of artillery pieces to the hill. Victor turned his head toward the town of Gettysburg and was alarmed to see men in blue suits running through the town and heading for the high ground on which he now stood. It was exactly what Mr. Greene predicted would occur.

  “Let’s get back to the Gatehouse,” Elizabeth suggested, and Victor and Bette followed the pregnant gravedigger to her residence. By this time, Elizabeth’s mother had the boys inside the northern apartment, although they were at the upstairs window watching the action of the battle. After a moment, a Union lieutenant appeared at the back door.

  “Excuse me, ma’am,” he said, saluting. “Is your husband home?”

  “No, lieutenant, my husband is in the army elsewhere,” Mrs. Thorn replied.

  “Is there a man around?”

  “Just this boy and his little brother,” Elizabeth said, smiling at Bette who nodded an appreciative thank you to Mrs. Thorn for not giving her away.

  Victor was surprised but pleased that Elizabeth Thorn went along with Bette’s masquerade.

  “What is your name, boy?”

  What had Bette said? What name had she given? Then he remembered. How embarrassing he thought. “Victor Kar…Kardashian, sir.”

  “I’m with General Howard’s Corps, Victor, and we desperately need a man to give us directions in the area, to show us the terrain.”

  “I’m a refugee from Mercersburg. I don’t know the area that well.”

  “Drat!” the lieutenant said.

  “My father is here, but he is sick, lieutenant,” Mrs. Thorn said. “However, I can help you.”

  The lieutenant looked at Elizabeth Thorn skeptically. “Ma’am, you are in no condition to walk around through the fields.”

  Elizabeth laughed heartily. “Lieutenant, who do you think digs the graves in this cemetery? I assure you I am quite capable of walking a bit. Pregnant women are not invalids, lieutenant. We are made of stronger stuff than most men realize.”

  The lieutenant blushed. “I meant no disrespect, ma’am,” he said. “Please come on, then.”

  “Mama, please watch the boys while I go off with the soldiers,” Elizabeth said to Mrs. Musser, and then said to Victor and Bette, “You two come along as well.”

  Victor, Bette, Mrs. Thorn and a small detachment of soldiers walked through flax and a field of oats where Elizabeth pointed out the York Pike to the lieutenant, as well as identifying the roads to Harrisburg and Hunterstown. “Gettysburg is a crossroads town, lieutenant, roads go every which way.”

  “We are the right flank of the Union army,” the lieutenant explained. He took out a piece of paper, whittled the end of a pencil and began drawing a rudimentary map of the position. Victor realized the lieutenant was a cartographer and he watched appreciatively as the young lieutenant sketched an accurate map of the terrain. When he completed the map, the group returned to the Gatehouse.

  “Ma’am.” the lieutenant said, “we will commence heavy fire soon. Please take heed and either evacuate or take your family to the cellar.”

  “I will,” Elizabeth said. After the lieutenant left, she ignored the young man’s warning and welcomed Victor and Bette to join her upstairs to watch the battle. The little group was halfway up the stairs when, “Blam!”

  A Confederate artillery shell cut through the upstairs window frame and oddly jumped up and went through the ceiling of the room.

  “That was close!” Mrs. Thorn observed. “Everyone! Go downstairs to the cellar!” she ordered.

  She gathered up her family, her parents and her three children, as well as Bette and Victor. and were about to descend to the cellar when a Union major appeared.

  “Ma’am, General Howard requests you prepare supper for him later today,” the major said, removing his hat and bowing politely.

  Seeming flabbergasted by the request, Elizabeth Thorn replied, “I have no bread left, major, for we have given all our bread to passing soldiers. I suppose I could make some cakes, I guess,” she added.

  “I am sure the general would be pleased with the cakes ma’am. This is wartime after all.”

  Victor was amazed. A Union major comes to a civilian’s door and orders her to prepare a meal for a general.

  Bette whispered to Victor. “I think we should go,” she said.

  Victor nodded agreement. After the major left, Victor said to Elizabeth Thorn, “I think we should be going now, Mrs. Thorn.”

  “As you wish… I am curious though, your family name…Kardashian, is it Polish?”

  “Ah yes, I think so,” Victor lied. He had no idea of the origin of the reality show family’s name.

  As they walked away, Victor said to Bette, “Why did you use the name Kardashian, Bette?”

  Bette blushed. “It was the only nam
e that popped into my mind, Victor, I’m sorry.”

  “Do you actually watch that crazy family?” Victor asked.

  Bette didn’t say a word, but her red face gave Victor the answer. Finally, she said, “I certainly hope Kardashian does not appear in Elizabeth Thorn’s diary. That would be embarrassing…the poor woman, Victor, she is going to sacrifice the last smoked ham she was saving for her husband’s return to feed General Howard and General Sickles.”

  “Sickles?” Victor mumbled. “I think he lost his leg in the battle and dedicated the limb to the Smithsonian. After the war, he would often visit his leg at the museum. That was in the Ken Burns series I think.”

  “That is really strange,” Bette agreed.

  “Yeah,” Victor replied.

  Victor and Bette trudged along the side of the road as both cavalry and infantry were marching along the road, headed for the high ground of Cemetery Ridge. They paused at the junction of Taneytown Road and leaned against a fence to rest.

  At that moment, the ghost of Shelby Foote appeared. “I see y’all are hightailing it to the Yankee side. Don’t you remember that Florida was part of the Confederate States of America, Victor?” Foote said, his eyes twinkling like an elf.

  “Mr. Foote, you and Mr. Catton put us in quite a predicament,” Victor said. “Where is Mr. Catton anyway?”

  “He floated out to Little Round Top to watch the Yankee Signal Corps set up,” Foote replied.

  “You two really messed things up,” Victor persisted. “You really should be ashamed of yourselves.”

  “Now, Victor let’s not be a hypocrite. Aren’t you the spunky lad that chased John Wilkes Booth across the stage at Ford’s Theater?”

  Victor blushed. “Yes,” Victor sheepishly admitted. “But I…”

  “What would have happened if you had tackled old Sic Semper Tyrannis?” asked Foote, referring to the president’s assassin by the Latin phrase that Booth reportedly shouted when he limped across the stage after shooting Abraham Lincoln. “Thus be to tyrants!” Booth had cried.

  “Imagine what you would have done to history,” Foote continued. “And I wasn’t the reason for the rip in the timeline in Philadelphia when you, Victor, inadvertently gave Peggy Shippen Thomas Jefferson’s address at the Graff House. Peggy Shippen was destined to marry Benedict Arnold and turn him into a traitor, but you messed that all up, young man, and the class had to return to Philadelphia and reverse what you did, and you preaching to Mr. Greene about the butterfly effect and you turning out to be such a lepidopterist. So, I do not think you should be lecturing me on hypocrisy. And try not to mess things up this time, Victor. Even though I am a Southerner, let’s not have Robert E. Lee win the Battle of Gettysburg, shall we? You know, Victor, that before the Civil War, people said ‘the United States are a great country.’ Sounds funny today, doesn’t it? Today we say the United States IS a great country. You see, the Civil War changed the country from an are to an is, from a collection of states to a strong union. It put the unum into Pluribus. If Lee wins this battle, there will be two countries. So don’t mess things up again, hear?”

  Shelby Foote was right, Victor admitted to himself. Victor’s carelessness in giving Peggy Shippen an address in Philadelphia had led the pro-British girl to the Graff House where Jefferson was composing the Declaration of Independence and, consequently, turned the Tory teen into a Patriot. With that tear in the timeline, Peggy Shippen married Thomas Jefferson after Jefferson’s wife died. Without Peggy Shippen to turn his head, Benedict Arnold remained loyal to the fledgling nation and wound up the second president of the United States with his mug on the ten-dollar bill. And now Victor felt hypocritical that he chided Bette for using “Kardashian”—that was less harmful than mentioning the Graff House.

  “I will try not to mess things up again, Mr. Foote, but we are stuck here until November,” Victor complained.

  “That’s true, but when you do return home it will be to the day you left,” Foote replied. “No harm done. Now, children, I take my leave for now.”

  “Where are you going Mr. Foote?” Bette asked.

  “I’m floating over to Lee’s headquarters. He is setting up near the Lutheran Theological Seminary. I want to see if Major General James Longstreet tries to convince Robert E. Lee to flank the Union army. The stubborn old Lee won’t, of course, but one wonders what would have happened here if Lee had listened to Longstreet and moved his army south of Gettysburg and threatened Washington. That would have forced the Army of the Potomac to attack Lee and Lee would have been in a defensive position, a position of which he was a master. But he didn’t listen. Longstreet mentioned all of this in his autobiography and I am curious to see if Longstreet was telling the truth. You two should find safety at the Weikert farm just down Taneytown Road. Bette, you will find Tillie Pierce there by now. Just a short stretch of the legs.” And with that, the dead historian drifted off in the wind toward Lee’s nascent headquarters.

  Mr. Foote’s “short stretch of the legs” turned out to be more than two miles. As Victor and Bette walked toward the farm on Taneytown Road, Union soldiers marched in the opposite direction headed for the Union lines forming on Cemetery Ridge.

  “The soldiers don’t look happy,” Bette observed.

  “Why should they be? I would be scared to death,” Victor admitted. “Death waits ahead, Bette.”

  *

  The Weikert farmhouse closely resembled the photographs of the restored National Park Service site, which Victor had seen online. Viewing the original farmhouse, Victor was impressed by the marvelous job of restoration that the Park Service had performed. A two-story gray stone house was set back from the road and white columns supported a front porch roof. Beside the columned front porch that ran the length of the building with its view of Taneytown Road, were the spacious barn and the charming carriage house. There were apple and peach trees and rows of corn and wheat on a farm of thirteen acres. Union soldiers were passing by the farm, and a girl stood out front next to a rail fence by the side of Taneytown Road, holding a water bucket and offering the infantrymen a dipper of cool water.

  Bette immediately recognized her: Matilda Pierce, who went by the nickname “Tillie.”

  “I think that is Tillie Pierce,” Bette whispered to Victor. “I am almost certain of it. The braided hair, the part down the middle. Yes, she looks just like her photograph, Victor.”

  “Who is she?”

  “You mean you didn’t read her memoir of the battle…?”

  “I wasn’t interested in the women, Bette,” Victor replied. “Did you read Daniel Skelly’s account of the battle?”

  “Well, no,” Bette admitted.

  “So that makes us even. I read the accounts of the men and the boys, you read the recollections of the girls and women.” Noticing a wagon barreling down Taneytown Road, Victor grabbed Bette and pulled her out of the way of the charging horses.

  “That was close!” Bette shouted. “Thank you, Victor.”

  “My pleasure, Kromer,” Victor replied, feeling suddenly more masculine.

  “Watch yourself there,” Tillie Pierce belatedly yelled. “You best get out of the road and get on the other side of the fence. Just climb over it. It will be alright. The Weikerts are kind folks. I’m helping their daughter with her children. My name’s Tillie Pierce,” she chattered on like they were all old friends. She offered her hand and shook both of theirs. “There is a little spring over by that grove of trees,” she said, pointing in that direction. “You should find a bucket or two and a few cups. How about helping me out with these thirsty Union boys?”

  Victor and Bette walked over to a grove of elm trees and found the buckets and tin cups by the spring. First, they both took a long cool drink of refreshing spring water. Then they filled two buckets.

  “I wonder what Tillie would think of us putting spring water in plastic bottles,” Bette mused aloud.

  “First off, she wouldn’t even know what plastic was, Bette.”

  “
I guess not,” Bette said.

  They returned to the fence and stood beside Tillie Pierce, who was in the middle of dispensing water to parched troops. When she was finished and there was a lull in the troop movements, Tillie turned to Bette and asked, “I don’t believe I caught your name?”

  “Billy Kardashian, this is my big brother Victor,” Bette smiled.

  “Billy is a funny name for a girl,” Tillie replied. She gave Bette a knowing look.

  Bette blushed. She hadn’t fooled Tillie, either.

  “I told you wouldn’t fool anyone, Bette,” Victor said.

  “We are from Mercersburg, Miss Pierce. Brother and sister,” Victor explained.

  “Uh huh,” Tillie mumbled, but she eyed Bette suspiciously. “You sure you ain’t Rebel spies? I heard the Rebs dress up girls as boys and some of them fight beside the men.”

  Victor knew the stories: two women were found dead among the bodies from Pickett’s Charge. Sometimes, women masqueraded as boys during the Civil War. And some were in combat.

  “We are Unionists, Miss Pierce,” Victor said.

  “Well, if you are then join me in singing…” and Tillie Pierce began to sing The Battle Cry of Freedom. Victor smiled when he heard the first verse, for he knew the song, having heard a collection of Civil War songs performed by a baritone in a traveling revue, which sang at Lutheran churches throughout Florida. “Gettysburg: Music!” it was called. And ironically, the 21st century musical revue was sponsored by the Lutheran Theological Seminary, which at that moment was in Confederate hands.

  Tillie started off with the first verse:

  Yes we’ll rally round the flag boys, we’ll rally once again,

  Shouting the battle cry of freedom,

  We will rally from the hillside, we’ll gather from the plain,

  Shouting the battle cry of freedom!

  Victor joined in with Tillie on the chorus…

  The Union forever! Hurrah, boys, hurrah!

  Down with the traitors, up with the stars;

  While we rally round the flag, boys, we rally once again,