Homeland (3 page)

Another letter from Julia.
Still
no letter from you. Payne is to be furloughed home. I want to weep, thinking about Payne without his arm. I remember holding his hand, a thousand nights when we were little, when he’d come creeping into our bedroom to listen in the dark to my stories about the fairies in the woods and the barn. Now that hand doesn’t exist anymore. I try to do my Latin verbs, or read my history books, and all I can hear is the soldiers marching to and from the depot.

Yesterday all I could do was sit in a corner of my room, reading
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
again. Being with those people, those
old friends, Quasimodo and Gringoire and the Beggar King that I also used to tell Payne and Julia stories about. Being anyplace but here. I cried for Quasimodo’s hopeless love, and Esmeralda’s undeserved death, cried until I was almost sick. Then I slept, and when I woke up I felt better.

I think the Rebels must have seized and burned your letter. I pray, pray it isn’t because you’ve changed your mind about what happened at the depot in April.

Shopped all over town for good linen, to make a shirt for dear Payne when he comes home. I
hate
sewing (buttonholes were invented by the Devil), but all the officers we see on our Sunday calls say that new, whole clothing is prized among the men. Mrs. Elliott went with me, and Mr. Cameron. Because of all the soldiers in town and the teamsters and sutlers and
females of a certain sort
who follow armies it isn’t thought safe even for groups of women to be about on the streets without male protection. I couldn’t find anything I could afford, on account of the blockade (I’ve been trading Nora Vandyke for drawing-paper for weeks), and finally settled for calico, at a price Julia used to make Pa pay for silk!

And of course, it’s all the perfidious Yankees’ fault.

Julia writes that our Payne is coming home next week.

Dearest,

This is so hard to write. Emory promises he will see to it that this goes into hands that will carry it safe to you. My darling husband leaves tomorrow, to join the Army. By Thursday, I, too, will be gone.

I have seen this coming, from the moment we stepped off the train in Greeneville last March, and Emory re-encountered the friends of his boyhood: Tennessee men who were ready to fight to preserve the Union. This evening when Emory came home he said to me, “I cannot stand this another day. I must go, Cora.”

Yesterday I would have put my hand on the Bible and said, “The Union must be preserved at
any
cost.” I still believe this with the whole of my heart, Susanna, even if the price be my husband’s life.

I cannot believe I just wrote those words. Please forgive me for them—you whose brothers fight for the Confederate cause. Please do not think me your enemy, because Emory has taken up arms. I write to you because you are from his world, and know better than anyone of my acquaintance what his choices are.

Tonight I try to imagine Emory and myself, white-haired and smiling, sitting together years and years from now at the dawn of another century, saying things like, “Remember how scared you were, you goose, when I went off to fight in the War?” But there’s only darkness. I try to see God’s hand guiding Emory to wherever he needs to go, guiding me … and there’s only darkness. Emory sleeps now, his back to me. Tomorrow night the pillow will be empty, the sheets cold.

On Thursday I will return the key of my precious little home to its landlord, and take the train north to New Haven to meet my father. My Uncle Mordacai will meet us in Belfast, Maine, in his sloop the
Gull
, to carry us across to Deer Isle. I will stay with Mother, Ollie, and his bride Peggie until the fighting ends, or until Emory comes home. I have chosen not to tell him what I have only begun to suspect: that I might be with child. His mind is in torment enough. We have had one “false alarm” already, and I would not put him through the pain of decision a second time, for what might only be another. If there
is
a child, she will be here when my darling returns.

Please, my dear friend, write to me on Deer Isle, care of the Post Office in Southeast Harbor. Snow will be flying, by the time I arrive.

Dear Cora,

This morning as we girls were coming out of prayers Mrs. Elliott touched my shoulder, said, “Would you come into my office for a moment, Susanna?” and I knew by her voice that Payne was dead.

He’d been home at Bayberry for three days. I was going to take the train Sunday to see him. He got there Monday; Julia wrote me that he seemed well, only quite weak. She said he was growing whiskers, and couldn’t wait to start practicing shooting with his left hand.

I keep thinking he can’t really be dead, because I didn’t get to see him. This has to be a mistake.

The last time I saw him was Christmas, my first grown-up ball. Payne was in his VMA uniform and danced with me, the first time we’d danced together except in classes as children. He said, “Good Lord, Susie, you’re getting all grown up.” I wanted to say the same about him. When he left for the Academy he and I were the same height—I was fourteen, he sixteen. At Christmas he was taller than me.

Regal (my middle brother) met me at the depot this afternoon. He said Payne died oh so quickly. “Damn it, he was on the mend. God damn f—n’ doctors.” Regal always has to blame somebody for things that just happen. It’s the closest I’ve ever seen, to seeing him cry.

The fences haven’t been fixed at Bayberry, nor the woodpile re-stocked. There are hardly any cows or pigs left, and the hen-runs are mostly empty. Payne’s coffin is in our parlor, the windows all curtained. Before I could step through the door from the hall Pa came out of his office, seized me in his arms: “This place is not the same, Babygirl, since you’ve been gone!” Henriette came running down the stairs saying how I must go up and take care of poor Julia, who had wept herself sick.

That’s where I am now. I’ve been here all evening, altering mourning clothes for us both and trying to make sense of Henriette’s bookkeeping. All Julia can say, over and over, is, “What will I do if Tom should be killed, too? How could God let this happen?” It was hard not to cry, being here in this room again, where Payne would lie at the foot of the bed listening to me tell stories.

Oh, Cora. I don’t even know how to write this. I am so sorry.

When it came time to wash and dress and ride with Payne’s casket into town, all Julia could do was cling to me and cry, “I can’t, I can’t! And I won’t let you leave me.” Henriette said, “She’ll make herself ill, poor darling!” (Julia is expecting in the spring.) “Besides, someone must stay here to make sure the food is laid out ready for company afterwards.” And Pa said, “That’s my good girl! I knew we could depend on you, Susie!” It’s what he always says.

So I stayed. I tell myself it doesn’t really matter. Payne and I said our farewells last Christmas, when he got on the train to go back to Virginia. Anyway, that isn’t really Payne in that coffin, any more than Payne was the arm they cut off. The least I can do for him is make sure everyone has a clean house to come to after his funeral.

I asked Colfax our butler and Mammy Iris, could I maybe ride into town and at least see the procession to the grave? But they said no, there’s bush-whackers in the woods, even this close to town. Two of Regal’s men—he’s a captain in the Secesh militia—rode behind the buggy back from town yesterday. Then Mammy Iris said, “If it’s Mr. Emory you’re hopin’ to see, Miss Susie, he’ll be here after the funeral’s done.” And for just one second I felt so happy, that your Emory would bring me a letter from you. Then it came to me what it means that he’s
here
, in Tennessee, instead of in Kentucky where all the Unionists are escaping to. I felt exactly like someone had slammed me up against the wall, and I guess I just stared at them both like an idiot.

Your husband’s been staying in town with Mrs. Johnson. He stopped here Monday, to ask Julia if he could take any messages from her to Tom, whose regiment he’ll be joining, and stayed in town because of our poor Payne. Emory was one of the first to arrive, riding Charley Johnson’s horse. He wore one of Charley’s coats, too, since he didn’t bring a black one of his own. For a minute we just
looked at each other on the front step. Then I said, “I can’t say it’s good to see you here—but it’s good to see you.” Emory put on a little grin and put up his hand, as if he would have pinched my cheek except he remembered now I’m sixteen and a young lady. “That’s my Susie,” he said. I had to go greet other guests then, though it was nearly an hour before Pa and Henriette returned and almost another hour after that, before Henriette came down from her room. Julia didn’t come down at all. I found Emory out in Henriette’s garden. It’s bare and cold now, and all the leaves gone, so we were alone.

“It made my blood boil, to hear Yankee recruiters talk about ‘killing Rebels’ as if it was foxes and rats they spoke of, not men with wives and farms and homes,” he told me. He looked like he hadn’t slept in a week. “I believe in the Union, Susie. I truly believe, with all my heart, that it is the only way our country is to survive. Yet when it came down to it, it didn’t make one bit of difference. I can’t fight against my homeland. Can’t step back and watch other men invade it. Not even if I know the cause is good.”

It’s only now, with fall of dark, and everyone leaving, that I’ve been able to read your letter he gave me.

Cora, what can I do? How can I make what’s happened easier for you to bear?

You’ll be on Deer Isle by now, with your family. Emory
has
to have told you that he didn’t go down to the nearest Union camp and sign up. I
pray
this isn’t the first news that you get about where he is! I pray so hard that your vision is true, about you and Emory with white hair, holding hands as the Twentieth Century dawns, surrounded by your grand-children, saying, “It was a horrible time but we got through it.”

I pray for your little child, who’ll be there when Emory returns. What are you going to name her? Or him, but it’s really got to be a Her.

I’m glad you described your parents’ house on Deer Isle for me—do they
really
pile pine-boughs all around the walls to trap the snow like you described, so the house will stay warmer? Enclosed is a sketch of you in your snug little bedroom behind the stairs, listening
to your family’s voices from the kitchen, like you said you did as a little girl.

I’m going to try to have our stableman escort me up to the Holler tomorrow, to see if I can find Justin Poole, to give him this letter. Please, please write of how you are. My oldest brother Gaius is coming home on furlough a few weeks before Christmas, and I’m afraid they’re going to find some reason to keep me here until then. Then they’ll find a reason to keep me until Christmas, and then …

I’ll find a way. And wherever I am, I’ll be with you in my heart.

My most beloved—

Forgive me. That first, and above all else.

Parting I quoted that trite, true Lovelace chestnut that every man trots out for his beloved, when he deserts her to hazard his life for the life of his homeland: “I could not love thee, Dear, so much, loved I not Honor more.” Its meaning is as true now as it was then: that the man you love is the whole man, good and bad together. That the man who loves you so desperately is also the man who with equal desperation loves the land of his birth. One man, not separable into husband and patriot.

That much I told you.

What I did not and could not tell you, my darling, was that it wasn’t a Massachusetts regiment that I was going to join. That I wasn’t going to be fighting shoulder to shoulder with your brother Brock. When I parted from you on the threshold of our home, it was not to walk to the recruiting office, but to the depot, to begin my journey back to Tennessee to join the Army of the Confederacy.

I believe in the Union of the States. I believe that our nation is unique and holy, molded by God’s inspiring hand as no nation has been in the history of nations. Were any outside tyrant to assail it I would unhesitatingly pour out my blood in the Union’s defense.

But it is not the Union which is being attacked. It is my home. And my home is Tennessee. I cannot stand by and let my home be invaded, not even by the government of the Union that I hold so dear.

My beloved, I wish I could have told you all this last night. But God forgive me, Cora, I could not. I so feared you might guess my intent. I wanted my last sight of you—if it is to be my last sight—to be of your smiling courage, not of pleas that would lacerate my heart without altering it.

I will write to you when I can, and I beg you to understand why I must do as I do. My only regret is the cowardice that shut my lips on this final lie; that, and the anguish I know you will feel.

I love you to the last drop of blood in my heart.