Love Rules (8 page)

“Where should I put her, sir?” the young corporal asked.

“The supply shack for now,” the major replied after some consideration.

“The supply shack, sir? But there isn’t room in there to sleep.”

“We are to provide a place. It does not have to be the most comfortable place.

The women here would not welcome her into the barracks, and we can’t have her with the male prisoners, so put her in the supply shack for now.”

“Yes, sir.” The corporal saluted and guided Maggie outside.

She saw the frustration on the young soldier’s face and shrugged. “Please don’t fret about me, Corporal. The supply shack will do.”

“Yes, ma’am, but…well, it’s not a decent place for a woman. There’s nowhere to lay down at night, and there are often rats….”

Maggie cringed inwardly, but she wouldn’t let the young corporal worry a moment longer. It wasn’t his fault. “I’ll manage, I’m sure.”

“Yes, ma’am. And I’m sorry. Sometimes a man doesn’t have a choice.”

The corporal unlocked the shack, and Maggie saw that it was full but she hefted herself up onto a load of grain and sat down. “I’ve been in worse.”

But those words rang in her head a long time.
A man doesn’t have a choice….

The corporal turned red and fastened the door quickly behind her.

For four months she lived in the intolerable squalor of the supply shack, and then she was transferred to another prison just as ill-equipped. This went on until they finally shipped her to Camp Ford near Tyler, Texas.

Camp Ford was one of the best prisons she’d seen. With an open stockade, it allowed the prisoners to build their own shelters, and local farmers to furnish fresh food. When her trial came up, a court appointed attorney tried to defend her. He was a lean, short man with a long mustache that rode over his mouth as though someone drew it there. He was straight out of law school, and he tried every dramatic defense he could think of to impress his peers.

“Her age alone is enough to consider the sentence too harsh,” he had

demanded.

But it fell on deaf ears. They brought in a guilty verdict, and Maggie was sentenced to hang. Scared out of her mind, she trembled the first time they shut the bars on her after the hearing. She nearly fainted. Fear surrounded her.

“Are you all right?” the captain’s wife asked as she passed by the homemade jail one day.

“I’m just a little under the weather, I expect,” Maggie answered, aware that her feeling poorly was happening on a regular basis.

However the captain’s wife seemed concerned for her and insisted her

husband move her to better quarters.

“She’s scheduled to hang, my dear,” the captain protested.

“It’s only humane. After all, she is a woman,” she insisted. “Besides, I think she might be in a family way.”

“Very well. I’ll put her in the maid quarters, and she can tend to the laundry until her sentence is carried out, if that will suffice?”

“Thank you, dear. You won’t regret it.”

I wonder. She does seem harmless, but we must remember she was the

black widow.

“Of course.”

Maggie was treated decently by the captain’s wife and some of the other ladies, but the guards were cruel and vowed to watch her hang. She endured the rebel guards calling her names, talking ugly to her, even threatening her. She figured she deserved some of it. The Union prisoners treated her almost the same because of her color.

She’d been guarded in a lone room at the back of the guard’s barracks. But the guards continued to harass her and because she earned sympathy from the captain’s wife, they were even crueler.

However, when the captain’s wife suggested she might be pregnant, Maggie was shocked. Never had she expected it. Jesse’s baby! Part of her wanted to shout out with glee, and part of her wanted to die. She was to be hanged. How could she be pregnant and hanged?

As time passed, she was pleased to have Jesse’s baby. A part of him he could not take away. Although the captain turned out to be a fair man and allowed her more privileges than most because of his wife’s insistence, Maggie remained under full guard.

Life at Camp Ford proved easier on her in more ways than one. There was little disease there and when able to earn money, she could eat healthier, too, buying vegetables from the local farmers who were allowed in.

So at the captain’s wife’s insistence, Maggie became the new washwoman for the fort.

“I can’t thank you enough,” Maggie was saying as the captain’s wife visited her while she hung wash on the line.

“Think nothing of it, dear. It’s the very least I could do. My husband is a fair man, most of the time. And…I truly don’t think they will hang you.” The woman smiled kindly at her.

“But the court has already sentenced me.”

“True, however, I think the end to this war is coming quicker than anyone thought.”

Maggie wasn’t as sure. “What is your name?” she asked as she wiped the sweat from her brow.

“Louisa. Now, don’t you fret so. I’m softening the captain up everyday.” She walked off with a smile.

The work kept Maggie busy and her mind off her troubles to some extent.

However, she couldn't blank out the worry, wondering when they were going to come take her away and hang her, but the war seemed to get worse as time went on and they forgot about her. Besides, they couldn’t hang her without hanging an innocent.

Louisa asked that the court reconsider her execution, and her husband agreed under the circumstances he would prolong the sentence as long as humanly possible.

Then one day, news came that the war was over. Relief washed over Maggie.

Prisoners of war would be exchanged once more, and her sentence was

overturned immediately.

Maggie chose to stay on as the fort’s washwoman to earn money for herself and her baby once she was sure there would be no hanging. Louisa had become such a friend; she hated leaving her. And it was Louisa who delivered Abby, Maggie’s baby.

***

Maggie found the place the captain had located on the map for her. She’d gathered all her possessions and started out. One of the soldiers, a black man, gave Abby a homemade doll. Her daughter clutched it happily. But her leaving wasn’t completely peaceful. An ex-guard showed up as she was mounting her horse, Abby in her arms. She swung up and held Abby close.

“You ain’t goin’ nowheres, girl. You might’ve escaped the hangin’, but I’m here to see you dead. Too many of my kin died because of you and your big mouth. Pea Ridge, Cane Hill, and Prairie Grove, I lost kin in them battles. Heard them Federal prisoners tellin’ how you gave the information to the generals each time.

That’s all the proof I need that you are as responsible for their deaths as any soldier. Now, I’m gonna take pride in killing you and that half-breed kid of your’n.” He pulled the gun on her as Maggie felt for the small derringer that Louisa had given her as she was leaving.

“Don’t do this. I can’t bring your kin back, and killin’ me won’t either.”

“Maybe, but it shore will make me feel better.” He spat in the dirt and aimed the gun. “I believe in a person knowin’ why they are dyin’. This is for Papa Joe, Cousin Sol, my brother Dwight and the multitude we buried on that field that next day.”

Without a second thought, Maggie aimed the small gun at his heart. He couldn’t see the gun under her skirt, and she hoped the fabric would muffle the sound of the shot.

She didn’t need to wait to see whether he would survive, she shot him stone dead, point blank. It was dark and inside the barn, and she prayed no one had heard. The look in his eyes told her he was dead. She put the gun back in her

small leg holster and grabbed Abby tightly. “Mama didn’t want to do that, but I had no choice. I couldn’t let him hurt you.”

Without another word she rode out of the fort that night alone and scared, watching over her shoulder to see if anyone followed.

***

They’d been traveling for a couple of days, and Maggie and the baby were bone weary. She couldn’t travel fast because the baby rode with her in her lap. Abby was too big to tie on her back, so she sat in front on the horse.

Stopping at an old Negro’s shack on her way, Maggie asked about Jesse’s place.

Most people knew their neighbors, and she figured the old man might give her better directions than the captain had. She’d seen him sitting on his porch looking out on the meadows. He seemed to live alone as there was no sign of others about. He invited her in and waited until she sat at the table before saying anything. The Negro man had eyed her carefully. “Yeah, I know the place. It’s about fifteen miles up the road from here. Don’t nobody live there now. Ain’t for some time. It belonged to the Coleman’s. Heard tell the last son went into the army. He ain’t been heard from since. Oldest one they said died at Shiloh. What you so interested in a white man’s place for?” the old man asked. “You gonna squat on the land or something? That ain’t a very wise thing to do.”

Maggie didn’t trust the old man. It wasn’t his business, but his eagle eye seemed to bore right through her. His constant frown told her he didn’t like her.

The fact that Jesse hadn’t returned from the war yet bothered her. The idea of him dying in battle sent a chill up Maggie’s spine. If he were dead, then she would be a squatter. It felt like a knife going into her heart at the thought. For a moment she didn’t say anything.

“I-I plan to work there. He sent me here to work the place for him, during the war.”

“The war’s been over a spell. You’s a little late, ain’t ya? But a single white man, hiring a black woman.” He shook his head as though he didn’t believe her. He offered her water to drink. Maggie took it and shared with Abby, then drank the

rest herself. Her eyes flitted about the small cabin with interest. It was a modest home with few furnishings and little to admire, but it was warm and suitable for a man.

“Well, yes, he said the place was a mess and he needed a housekeeper and cook, and I was one of the best during the war.” She began her lie. “And I have to have a way to support myself and my baby. I guess he felt sorry for me. I don’t know. The captain himself sent me out here.”

“Girl, what you trying to pull? It’s unheard of. Working for an unmarried white man. Only trash would do that. And I know what kind, too.”

Maggie grabbed Abby closer at the threatening tone. “I’m to work for him. This really isn’t any of your business. All I wanted was directions.”

The old man stared at her as though she didn’t deserve even the water he had given her. “I don’t see that in your eyes. I see somethin’ else.” The old man’s bushy brows nearly crossed as he frowned.

“Look, I need a place for me and my little girl.” She adjusted Abby’s position on her hip as she stood up, and she hid her embarrassment.

“I’d say she probably had a white daddy, didn’t she?” The old man stared at them both with interest.

“It ain’t none of your business.” Maggie hugged her daughter close as she backed toward the door. “All I wanted was some direction, that’s all. Why you gotta go puttin’ you nose where it don’t belong, old man?”

“She’s his, ain’t she?” the old man said, his judgmental stare traveling from her feet to the top of her hair.

“Yes, she’s his. Okay, is that what you want to hear? I want nothing from you, but a little information, that’s all. I come a long ways and we are very tired,”

Maggie cried, unable to deny the truth to this all-seeing black man. Abby whimpered as the old man eyed her again.

“You done mixed yourself with a white man?” the Negro asked, his distaste in his words.

“Why not? I’m part white, too,” she cried. “I didn’t choose a color, I chose the man. Well, stop lookin’ at me. I
am
part white, and so is she, and he’s gonna take care of us.”

“You bringing misery on yourself and that man.” The man stood up and turned his back to her. “Where you from, girl? Don’t you know black and white ain’t supposed to mix?”

“Well, someone should have told my folks. It was done mixed before I came along. Besides…where else can I go? Ain’t no black man gonna have me

either…are there? You know that. I got white blood, too.”

“Not after you done had a white man, no ma’am. There’s only one woman I know of that’s that low, that’s the Black Widow. We heard tell she hung. Or did she?” His eyes got big and wide as Maggie opened the door.

Maggie cringed. As long as she’d heard that expression, she hadn’t been able to deal with it correctly. Black Widow? Would the name follow her everywhere? She hated it. Shame had plagued her thoughts for the remainder of the war, and guilt was a hard companion. “Thanks for your help. I gotta go.” She escaped out the door before the man said or did another thing.

The old man came to stand on the porch. “Misery, that’s what you brought.

Misery!” he shouted at her.

Maggie felt hot tears spill down her cheeks. Blame and fear mixed as she tried to reason things in her head. “Where can we go in peace, baby? All I want is some peace, just to live out my life with you.” Abby sat happily in front of her, pointing to the birds that flew in a line in the sky. “Now, that old man knows we’re here.”

Hopefully he wouldn’t stir up troubles for her, too. She certainly didn’t need any more. The memories of her killing an ex-soldier just two days before weighed on her mind, a man determined to see her dead. Why couldn’t they leave her alone? She meant no one any harm. She just wanted to find a home for herself and her baby. She hadn’t wanted to shoot him, hadn’t wanted to kill him, but he had a gun and intended to kill Abby, so she pulled the trigger. Sure, she’d made some mistakes and paid for them, too, but to most she’d not suffered enough.

They wanted her blood.

When Maggie spotted Jesse’s place, it looked deserted. She sighed. Her heart heavy, what with that old man accusing her of all kinds of nasty things like shacking up with Jesse, having his baby, living in sin, and talking like Jesse might be dead.

She shaded her eyes. The cabin was good-sized with a barn and shed beside it.