Karl Bacon (30 page)

“Yes, Mrs. Ennis, I do.” She lifted her eyes to mine expectantly. I reached into my breast pocket and took out the Bible that had been in my keeping for almost six years. She gasped and snatched the Bible from my hands. Then she rose quickly from
the table and went over to the stove, where she stood, quiet and still, with her back to me and the Bible pressed to her lips.

A few minutes later, Constance took a kerchief from the pocket of her apron and dabbed her eyes several times. “‘Although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls: yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation.”

“Mrs. Ennis?”

Constance turned to face me. “Wyatt said them words whenever there was trouble, from Habakkuk, I think.” She sat down at the table again. “Thank you, Mr. Palmer,” she whispered. “I gave him that Bible last time I saw him, the day he left. Thank you.”

“And the portrait is inside,” I said.

Tears welled afresh as Constance gazed at the image that had become so familiar to me. She clasped it to her breast and seemed transported to another place.

“But how …?” I knew the question she couldn’t finish.

“Wyatt was shot before our line. He was still alive when I came upon him. He asked me to read a psalm to him as he died. My own Bible was lost so I kept his for the rest of the war, and then I was wounded and sent home. I made some inquiries and learned that Wyatt must have lived here in Ashe County.”

“I’m such a silly woman for grievin’ so much over a man long dead.” She held the kerchief to her eyes once again.

“No, ma’am, I still grieve over lost friends.”

“But I’m so, so happy you brung it to me. But to come all this way? With a bad leg? Mayhap you should’ve posted it.”

“Yes, but my wife insisted that I come.”

Constance drank some tea. Then she closed her eyes, apparently pondering what had transpired since I had come to her
door. When her eyes reopened she looked at me directly. “But the post would have brung it, if that’s the only reason you come such a far way.”

“Mrs. Ennis, I’ve never forgotten your husband, and I thought I should tell you the circumstances of his death in person.”

“Please do, Michael. I’m done with my cry.” She had used my Christian name.

I paused for a moment or two to make sure of my words. Then, to this woman of the backwoods I recounted every detail of how I had come to be at Wyatt’s side at the moment of his death. I spoke of the debacle at Chancellorsville and of being sent back to the front when I was so close to home. I told her of the long, torturous march northward to Pennsylvania and of our activities at the stone wall before Pickett’s tragic, final charge. I withheld nothing of how I had with fierce hatred gunned down perhaps a dozen men, taking special delight as each bullet struck home, and of how I had rushed forward to finish off several of the defeated Confederates as the last wave of their assault broke under our fire. And I told Constance how my hand had been suddenly stayed when I came to Wyatt.

“He held out this Bible with his own blood on it and asked me to read. He asked me to turn him so he could see the mountains as I read. I read the Twenty-fifth Psalm. He died as I read to him, still looking at the mountains.”

“That’s beautiful.” Her voice was the barest whisper.

“Beautiful, Mrs. Ennis?” I was not sure I had heard correctly.

“Yes. Wyatt wouldn’t have had it any other way — Holy Scripture in his ears and lookin’ up to heaven.” She looked across the table at me. “Are you the one?”

“The one, ma’am?”

“Was it you that killed him?” It was a question that I had prepared for weeks to answer.

“Yes, Mrs. Ennis, I killed him. I’m so very sorry, and I beg your forgiveness.”

“That’s what brung you to my door?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Now I see why you’re so gray.”

“Gray, ma’am?”

“Oh, yes, gray, you’re very gray. When first I saw you stum-blin’ up to my door, your head was down, lookin’ close at every step I guess, and I thought,
Here comes a gray man.
Not real dark, storm-cloudy gray, mind you, just sort of low and dreary gray, like when the mists come down the valley here.”

“I don’t understand, Mrs. Ennis.”

“Just a silly game I play. Some folk make me think of colors. Uncle Jube—he’s always so light and cheery, so he’s yellow. Not scaredy-cat yellow—sunshiny yellow. Now Wyatt was green — had a gift for growin’ things, he did, and he always said he was a-growin’ to be like Jesus. And Elmer’s blue, true blue’s what they call it, ‘cause there be nothin’ false in that man.”

“But gray, ma’am?”

“You asked me to forgive you. Your bullet put my Wyatt in the ground, sure enough, but his soul went home to glory. Wyatt never held this world close. He was always lookin’ forward to glory, like no man I ever did know. Sure my heart was broke, but the Lord Jesus healed it. Elmer’s a good Christian man too, and we been blessed with little Stevie. God gave Wyatt what he wanted, and now I count God’s blessin’s every day. Tell me what I need to forgive you for.”

I had no answer for this woman of the backwoods. I had come to her door expecting all of the anger, hostility, and bitterness that could possess a person after a great loss. Instead, I found in this woman a vibrant love for the Lord that so affected every part of her being that she, in spite of her coarse appearance, was the very expression of that most Godly of attributes—grace.

“How old are you, Michael?”

“Forty years old, ma’am.”

“You a Godly man?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Have you been saved by His grace?”

“I’ve always believed so, ma’am.”

“Have your sins been washed away by the blood of the Lamb?”

“I believe so.”

“You say you hated Wyatt and the others?”

“Yes, ma’am, I did. But not anymore.”

“And you killed men without regret?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Mayhap God sent you off to war just to show you some-thin’ about you and somethin’ about Him. Before the war, you didn’t know the hate and the killin’ was in you, did you?”

“No, Mrs. Ennis. I did not.”

“Mayhap God was just gettin’ it out of you.”

“But I think God’s turned His back on me because of it,” I said. “It’s been a long, long time—”

“Ain’t God that done the turnin’. You done it. Sounds like you’re sayin’, ‘Oh, woe is me, ‘cause I’m a sinner.’ But you also said your sin been washed away. Well, then, your guilt’s been washed away too. Best be rid of it, or you’ll carry it around till the day you die and be no good to anybody. So where’s the glory, Michael Palmer?”

“The glory, ma’am?”

“If you been saved, you best
look
like you been saved. When the Lord Jesus takes sin away, He don’t leave us empty. He puts His glory in—the Holy Ghost, that’s what it is. So where’s that glory, Mr. Palmer?”

I sat in silence and stared at the mug before me.

“Mayhap that awful war made you stop seein’ the Lord
doin’ what He does,” Constance said. “Mayhap you just quit listenin’ to the Holy Ghost. I think you best stop hangin’ your head and look up. Open your eyes and let His light in so you can see what He’s tryin’ to show you and get out of His way so he can do His work on you. And, Michael, He’s given you a life to live, so you best get busy and live it, and mayhap you won’t be gray anymore.”

Constance rose and went to the stove. She busied herself with the stewpot while I sat quietly, sipping the now-cold tea.

Cane in hand, I pushed back from the table and stood. “Mrs. Ennis, I would like to thank you—”

“No thanks needed,” she said, turning toward me once again. She went to the door and opened it. “Now go outside and set for a spell, Michael, while I set the table. You and Uncle Jube be stayin’ for some lamb burgoo before headin’ back to town. Maybe go down by the creek.” She pointed a thin cracked finger toward the pastureland across the lane. “That’s where I always do my reckonin’. I’ll ring the bell when the men come back.”

I hobbled down the three steps and walked across the dusty earthen yard toward the lane as clucking chickens chased every faltering step. At the lane I paused, studying its deeply rutted contours and protruding stones for the path across least dangerous, least likely to cause me to trip and fall. Indeed, I almost turned back, thinking the risk too great, but something akin to a gentle hand in the small of my back nudged me forward, compelling me to cross over. I paid careful heed to each step.

I lifted my gaze and was greeted with a remarkable sight. Brilliant sunshine bathed a strip of fertile pasture perhaps fifty yards wide that sloped gently downward toward the creek just out of sight below its tree-lined bank. Mingled grasses and clovers composed a patchwork of every imaginable shade of green, dotted all over with multihued blooms of the season’s wildflowers — clover florets of white and violet, daisies of yellow and
white, black-eyed Susans, red and white poppies, phlox of brilliant pink around which flitted dozens of colorful butterflies, and hundreds of small flowers with deep blue petals and yellow centers I had never seen before.

The pristine nature of the land before me attested that no flock had yet grazed upon this land this springtime. I took a few steps into the pasture; the ground was fairly smooth, my footing secure. A few more steps caused a startled bird to take wing several yards ahead, a meadowlark by its bold yellow and black markings. Swallows darted busily back and forth, sometimes soaring high above, sometimes diving low and fast until just inches from the earth.

Perhaps above or below the Ennis farm Claybank Creek was a typical mountain stream, raging downward from the heights, tumbling over rocks and fallen timber in its haste to merge with other waters and rush onward to the New River, but on that day, as I came upon the bank of that stream at the edge of that verdant pasture, its flow was placid and unhurried, as if the water itself had come upon the glories of that land and had quieted itself so as not to disturb the tranquility. A pair of wood ducks paddled slowly against the almost-still water, the gentle current evidenced by only the faintest of meandering, shimmering ripples.

I found a sunny place near the creek and eased myself down to sit amid the tall grasses and wildflowers, enveloped in that glorious festival of light and color and sound. A gentle breeze stirred the leaves of the trees along the creek. I turned my face upward toward the sun and closed my eyes against its beaming brilliance. Trilling notes of birdsongs filled my ears, from cardinal and chickadee, warbler and wren. Every leisurely breath brought with it the sweet aroma of honeysuckle in full bloom. I could not help but lift my eyes and thoughts heavenward.

How far have I gone from You? How often have I cut myself off from
You? Yet You did not forsake me. I thank You for the simple words of Mrs. Ennis, words filled with Your grace and truth. I know You brought me here for this. Now give me the grace I need every day to put the evils I have seen and done away, so that others may see Christ living in me and give You all the glory because of it.

I took my pipe from the right pocket of my jacket and the tobacco pouch from the left. Child, mother, father, I thought as I pressed the shreds into the bowl. I felt a smile crease my face as I thought again of John, and the smile remained as I regarded the toes of my shoes before me, the right one now two sizes larger than the left. For a time I just sat and smoked with the glories of the created realm all around me. Then I lay back among the pasture grasses and clasped my hands behind my head.

Be still, and know that I am God,
the psalmist wrote, and indeed, my storm-tossed heart was stilled, as surely as the Lord Jesus calmed the waters of Galilee. No longer did shades of death darken my sight. Terrible images of killing and dying, of flame and destruction, passed from my mind and I beheld, if even through a broken mirror, a glimpse of the glory to come, glory for all of eternity to be sure, but also glory for the here and now, as God’s transforming power did its work upon this miserable wretch. My soul was renewed within me, and for the first time in all my days, I possessed the most precious jewel any man can have—blessed, complete, and unclouded contentment.

I slept then, but only for a short while, I think, as the sun was still near its zenith when the loud clanging of a large cowbell summoned me to return to the austere mountain cabin that had once been Wyatt’s earthly home, to sit at his table with his widow’s husband and old Uncle Jube, and to partake of a hearty midday meal of lamb burgoo prepared by that leather-skinned saint of the backwoods, his widow Constance. I smiled at the marvelous harmony of it all.

I tottered a little on the irregular ground as I rose. Turning
away from the stream, I set my gaze upon the upward slope toward the cabin and heard Jessie Anne’s stinging words once again —
Why have you not returned to me, Michael?

I took one tenuous, uneven step, then another, and another up through the verdant pasture.
It has been a long time, my dearest, but my war is done. I am finally coming home. May it be so, Lord, may it be so.

F
OR ALL MY HELPERS ALONG THE WAY, FROM
A
DELE AT THE
start to Julia at the end, and for the love and support of my wife, Jackie, throughout, I give thanks and praise to the One who has supplied my every need.

The citizen soldier:
fearless in battle
industrious in peace

INSCRIPTION, CIVIL WAR MONUMENT,
NAUGATUCK, CONNECTICUT