Karl Bacon (3 page)

And the L
ORD
God said,
It is not good that the man should be alone;
I will make him an help meet for him.
GENESIS 2:18

N
O, M
ICHAEL, YOU WILL NOT GO!
” J
ESSIE
A
NNE’S DARK EYES
burned brighter than flames consuming seasoned hickory. “You
will not
leave me and Sarah and little Ed. How could you think such a thing? What will become of us?” Her words remained frozen in the summer air as she stormed up the stairs.

The steps creaked softly as I followed slowly and deliberately. I paused at the door of the candlelit room. Jessie Anne lay on the bed, her face buried in the down pillow. “Are we not enough for you?” she said.

I inched my way toward my beloved. Slowly and quietly I began to plead my case. “Three hundred thousand, Jessie Anne. President Lincoln needs three hundred thousand more men.”

No weeping, just heavy breathing and silence.

I fought to maintain a steady, gentle tone. “I listened to Reverend Preston. I know he’s right and so do you, Jessie Anne. You’ve told me yourself that America must be done with slavery. Do you want our children living under that dark cloud?”

More silence, but at least her breathing had slowed some.

“This is something I must do, Jessie Anne. When I heard Colonel Morris speak tonight, I thought he was speaking only to me. John said the same.”

“I should have told you not to go to the rally.” Finally, a response, sharp as a finely honed knife edge, but a response nonetheless.

“But I knew what I had to do before the rally. Because, my dear, and I hope you will understand this, I believe God has laid it upon my heart to enlist.”

Jessie Anne raised her head slowly and looked at me with red, weepy eyes.

“No, I didn’t hear a voice from heaven or anything like that, Jessie Anne, but I do believe in the rightness of the cause, and I believe I must be willing to do my part. Why should I remain at home while someone else bears the burden? John feels the same.”

“John,
always
John. Must you
always
do what he does?” The weight of bitterness in her words surprised me.

“How can you say that, Jessie Anne? We’ve been like brothers since we were children. I could not love him more if he really was my brother.”

“But have you two
brothers
thought about what will become of us?” She buried her face in the pillow again.

“Yes, we have.” I sat down on the bed next to Jessie Anne and laid my hand lightly upon her back. “The Robinsons should be all right. Mr. Tuttle told John he will continue to pay Abby one-half of John’s wages for as long as John is in the army if John agreed to return to his position as master wheelwright after the war. With the bounty payments and John’s army salary, the Robinson family should not be in want.

“As for us, it was only two years ago that my father signed the store over to me. He has agreed to manage the store as he
is able, but of course, I think you should help out too, and my mother can help around the house—if you let her. I know how well you run this house and you take such joy and pride in it, but Mama can help with the kids, and cook meals and tidy up.”

Jessie Anne raised herself once again. She turned over, rested her head upon my knee, and looked into my eyes. “And what if you are killed?”

“Only God knows if I will live or die. But I do believe this is His will for me and that I must obey Him—
we
must obey Him—and He will watch over us.”

Jessie Anne closed her eyes while I ran my fingers lightly through her hair. “Go away, Michael,” my beloved whispered after several minutes. “I’m going to have a long, long cry and you should not see me like that.”

My mother told me that the first time I saw Jessie Anne Morton was shortly after her birth, when her father and mother presented her for baptism, although I have no memory of it. The earliest recollections I have are of a skinny girl with long dark hair, at times sitting in the pew next to her parents, at others running squealing about the churchyard chasing other children or being chased by them. But the first real notice I took of her was on a Sunday morning in 1849, when I was twenty-one years old. The railroad was nearing completion and my own eyes were being opened to the many new prospects the world had to offer a young man. As Jessie Anne and I happened to pass each other at the door of the church, my head turned. Who was that? Oh yes, wasn’t that the Morton girl?

To be truthful, several other young ladies had caught my eye in the preceding months, and I had even expressed mild interest in one or two of them, but Jessie Anne was different. As an unseen caterpillar changes into an exquisite butterfly
that captures our gaze on a summer afternoon, so the scrawny, awkward child had been transformed overnight into a graceful young woman. If one looked at her closely, as so often I found myself doing, one saw a pleasantly attractive and faintly exotic face, fair but not pale skin, a nose that was just a bit shorter and wider than most of direct European ancestry, and dark brown eyes that were ever so slightly almond shaped, and one might conclude that there was, quite possibly, an Indian or two hidden among her progenitors. As I later learned, a great-grandmother on her father’s side had been Mohegan.

I set out to win the heart of this young lass. Jessie Anne was certainly much too young for marriage, and I had no idea if she had taken any notice of me, so I contrived ways to cause our paths to cross. I greeted her by name at church nearly every Sunday and tried to sit close to her at social events. Whenever the Mortons appeared at the store with Jessie Anne in tow, it was I who waited on them. If the Mortons needed goods delivered to their farm, it was I who drove the wagon the two miles out and back, and whether in blustery cold or blazing heat, the smile never left my face.

In the spring of 1853, shortly after Jessie Anne’s seventeenth birthday, I determined to make my intentions known. On a cool and cloudy Saturday afternoon, I donned my best woolen jacket and a new felt hat. With a quick “I’ll return for dinner” to my mother, I was out the door to the stable to saddle our mare, Becky. This time a tight frown replaced my usual smile as I steeled my nerve and rehearsed again and again what I should say.

“Hello, Michael,” Mrs. Morton said warmly as she opened the door. “What brings you all the way out here today?”

“I was wondering if I might speak with Jessie Anne for just a moment.”

“Of course,” Mrs. Morton said with a faint smile. “Come in. She’s upstairs. I’ll call her.”

Mrs. Morton showed me into the parlor and called up the stairs for her daughter, “Jessie Anne, Michael Palmer is here to see you.” With a final glance back at me, Mrs. Morton disappeared in the direction of the kitchen.

I sat down on the settee, hat in one hand and the fingers of the other drumming nervously on the armrest. I closed my eyes and listened for footsteps upon the stairs, which were several long minutes in coming. I was on my feet before Jessie Anne rounded the corner, a whirl of rustling petticoats and dark flowing tresses. She took a few steps into the parlor and stopped to look at me, her hands clasped demurely in front of her.

“Mr. Palmer, how nice it is to see you.” Her voice was light and playful.

“Miss Morton….” My throat was like that of a cat choking on a ball of fur; my lips seemed stuck together with horsehide glue. I half turned and placed my hat on the settee. Then I swallowed once, hard.

“Yes, Mr. Palmer?”

“I … I would like to call on you.”

“Call on me, Mr. Palmer? Whatever for?” She was not making this easy for me. I shuffled forward a few feet, thinking that what I wished to say to her need not be trumpeted throughout the house.

“Well, I was hoping that I might come to see you from time to time, Miss Morton, to court you.”

Jessie Anne looked at me in doe-eyed wonder for several long seconds. My heart turned over with fear that her answer might not be the one I desired.

“Why, Mr. Palmer,” she said, looking down at her hands. “How is it that you, a gentleman so well established and with such fine prospects, should pay any attention to a simple country girl like me?” She raised her head and looked me squarely in the eye. “I should think there are a dozen girls more suitable.”

Her words seemed innocent, delivered without any hint of malevolence or scorn. Still, events were not transpiring the way I had rehearsed them. I took a long, deep breath and lifted up a silent prayer,
Let my words be true and Your will be done.

“No, Jessie Anne,” I said gently, “there is no one more suitable.” I stepped slowly forward, allowing her brightly shining eyes to draw me, and when I took her hands in mine, Jessie Anne made no effort to withdraw them. “I have waited four long years to be here today. I dared not declare myself sooner because of your tender age. I hoped and prayed all the while that you would not pledge yourself to another. I ask only that you allow me to prove myself worthy of your affections and that I might win your heart as you did mine long ago.”

There. It was said. It was done. I had stated my position clearly. There could be no mistaking my intentions. We stood motionless for a time, her soft, feminine hands in my hard, sweaty ones. I searched for a twinkle in her eyes or the slightest trace of a smile, but Jessie Anne was not revealing what her response might be.

“Well, then,” she finally whispered, leaning in toward me to bring her lips up to my ear, “I suppose I must start calling you Michael.” It took a moment or two until the full import of her words made me the happiest man on the face of the earth. “Come,” Jessie Anne said taking my hand in hers, now all awhirl again and beaming with happiness, “let’s tell Mama and Papa.”

As Jessie Anne allowed later, the victory had actually been won before that Saturday afternoon. “I always thought you were an admirable man of fine reputation and tolerable appearance, if a bit older. But what would you have thought of me if I had accepted immediately? I wanted you to wriggle a little, to see how determined you were, and how true your devotion was.”

The day after Jessie Anne received her diploma from Union School we met with her father and I asked for her hand in marriage.
Jessie Anne and I never doubted that Mr. Morton would grant his permission and his blessing, for by that time, it was obvious to all that our two souls were being knit together. Still, we wished to show proper respect and follow the dictates of centuries-old tradition. The following spring, on Saturday, the twenty-eighth day of April 1855, with John Robinson standing by my side, Jessie Anne and I were married. She had just turned nineteen years of age in February and I would be twenty-seven in August.

Sunday night, the night before John and I were to travel to the enlistment office in Waterbury, I tossed and turned in my bed, drifting in and out of troubled sleep. I finally rose, paced about the room for a time, and paused at the front window, which overlooks the river. Another time, I could have envisioned two young boys playing in the cool, shallow water, but now sweat and tears poured down my face. Imaginary shells burst in my head and bullets tore at my flesh. I saw myself dying horribly a hundred different ways in battle, my wife a widow, my children fatherless. What if I ran? What if I turned tail and fled from the enemy in panicked fear for my life? Would that be even worse than death?

Jessie Anne came up quietly from behind and gently slipped her arms around me. “This morning at church a few of the ladies asked me, ‘How could Michael go off and leave his wife and children, let alone the store?’ Tell me again why this must be so.”

I turned to her and cupped her lovely face in my hands. Indeed, how could I leave her and Sarah and little Ed and go off to war? “I know there are many reasons why I should remain here. And I’m certainly no youth full of daring and vigor, eager for a glorious adventure. Jessie Anne, please do not think I’m in any way unhappy with you or our life together. I don’t think I
could be more comfortable or content. But for a long time I have sensed a deep restlessness—I think of it as an itch that I cannot scratch.”

Jessie Anne gazed intently into my eyes. “You’re saying you need to go off to war to scratch an itch?”

“No, my dear, I believe there is some other duty that God is calling me to do at this time in my life. For seven years you have been ‘bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh,’ and I could not love you any more than I do at this moment. You must never think that I’m enlisting because I want to leave you. In fact, I wish only to remain here, but I
must
go.”

We held each other in silence for several long minutes. “Do you still feel that God has called you to this?” Jessie Anne whispered.

I thought for a moment, wanting to be sure of my answer. “Yes, I do. I truly do, and even as I say it, my heart aches at the thought of being without you, my love. I sometimes think I am abandoning you and the children, and I may not return at all. You need to prepare for that.”

“How can I ever prepare for that? Since our wedding day we’ve been apart only a few times, and then just for a day or two when you’ve gone to Hartford or New York. My heart will break when you leave me, and it will mend again when I receive a letter from you. It will break again when I read of a dreadful battle in the newspaper. How can I prepare for any of that? I can only tell you that I love you with all my heart. When you are gone, more than half of me will be gone as well.”

I cradled her head against my chest. My nightshirt became damp, yet I could only hold her more closely.

Finally, Jessie Anne raised her head and looked at me. There was nothing but love and compassion in her gaze. Her words were clear and firm. “Then if it is His will for you to go, then it is also His will for us to remain and trust His providence and
protection. We must rest and hope in that. And if, in God’s providence, you are taken from us, then let His will be done and I pray only that I shall be able to bear it. Then I’ll have to take pleasure in seeing you in the faces of our children.”