My Vicksburg (8 page)

I didn't mind helping Landon in Pa's surgery. He didn't ask me to do much except take the patients' names and ailments down in the waiting room, then bring them into the surgery in order of their arrival.

"How's your pa?" they all asked me.

I told them we'd received only two letters, that he couldn't give out his destination but that he was with General Lee and in good health and said he would write to us soon. They all missed him.

"Landon's a good doctor," I told them.

They came with all kinds of ailments, from poison ivy to deep coughs, from sprained wrists to earaches. One woman came, she said, because she had nervous spasms from the sounds of the shelling, and she wanted to see if the young Dr. Corbet was as good as his father.

Once I had escorted the patient inside the surgery and fetched what Landon wanted, he would not let me stay. About six patients came that Saturday morning, even while we were being shelled and cannonaded and the musketry exploded overhead, and added to this treacherous music was the smashing of windows in nearby houses from the percussion of the explosions.

Landon dismissed me before noon to go and have lunch. But first I took him a tray fixed by Clothilda. He was as if lost in that surgery, time frozen for him.

When I returned to the cave, Mama asked me to take a tray to Robert. I watched him eat. He liked rice and mushrooms, and Mama had made him his own concoction. But he didn't eat much.

"Your brother is convinced I have brain fever," he told me quietly, "but the only fever I have is to go home."

"I can understand that," I said.

"Suppose the quinine won't break the fever. You think your brother will let me go anyway?"

I had no way to answer. Landon told me, only last evening when we were putting away the food he'd brought, that he'd decided he had to turn Robert over to Pemberton. "It's the worst thing I've ever had to do," he'd said, "but it's the only thing I can do in my position."

"Your mother was in here this morning giving me a decoction of sprigs and leaves from the hemlock spruce tree," Robert was saying. "She asked your brother first, of course. He said yes. I think I'm feeling better. But how will we know whether it was the quinine or her remedy if the fever breaks?"

I smiled. "My mother often has that problem with Pa," I told him. "They always decide it doesn't matter as long as the patient gets well."

He then asked me to tell him about Pa, so I did. He
listened carefully, then told me about his pa, a plantation owner, now under the Yankees, since Jackson, Mississippi, was captured a while back. He told me about his own little sister, Cassie Lea, who could ride better than he could, and about his brother, Billy, who had been in a military academy before the war and now, at only seventeen, had joined up with the army and had a thirst for Yankee blood. He told me how he longed for some of his mammy's biscuits and ham and chocolate cake.

"My pa hates the Yankees with a passion," he told me. "Wait'll I tell him that my new friend is a Yankee and how he saved me."

I went solemn.

"What's wrong, Claire Louise? Did I offend you in any way?"

I shook my head. He really did think Landon was going to save him.

The realization came down on me like a mortar shell, exploding in shards and lights all around me. The noise made me unable to focus. Robert was mouthing some more of his truths.

"Did Andy give you any money?" I asked him outright.

He looked startled at first, then he understood. "Yes. He hired himself out and worked for it and gave it to me. How did you know?"

"I was there when he asked my brother if he could. He said it was for your trip home."

"Yes, I have enough, thank you."

"You'll need some food to take along. And someone to accompany you on the way out of town. To show you the best way, where you won't be hit by shells and bothered by people. Eight o'clock at night is the best time. Everyone is out then and one more person seen 'round and about won't be noticeable."

"You sound as if you discussed this with your brother. Did you?"

I picked up his lunch tray from the bed. The book
Great Expectations
lay there next to it. I admired the gold title on the cover. We hadn't even opened it.

"No, we haven't discussed it," I said. I took a deep breath. It might as well be now, I told myself. And so I told him.

"You won't like this, Robert. And you won't believe it. But it's true. Your friend, Landon, isn't going to help you escape. He's going to turn you in to Pemberton before he reports to Milliken's Bend hospital. I heard him tell Mama. He doesn't want to. But he can't do anything else in his position as a doctor and a captain in the Yankee army. You see, you're his prisoner, technically. He told me that if he helps you escape, he's an accessory to your running away and could be court-martialed."

He just stared at me. His eyes were so blue, and into the blueness now came tears, but he kept them in check, he wouldn't let them overflow.

"Claire Louise Corbet, are you funnin' me?" he asked.

"No, sir. No. I'm not. I wish I were. I've been thinking about it, you see, and I decided I want to help you
escape. I want to help you get home. To your own mama and pa and Cassie Lea and those biscuits and ham and that chocolate cake. Even if the Yankees there make you a prisoner. Because it'll all end soon, and if you're a prisoner of Pemberton's it won't end, ever."

The silence stretched between us like we were pulling taffy. He was taking it all in. I could tell by his eyes, by the way he was slowly nodding his head.

And then he said something that summed it all up. "You love that brother of yours, but you're making your own decision, because you know it's the right thing to do," he said gravely. "I hope someday my sister, Cassie Lea, will have the sense you have."

"So you'll let me help you then?"

"Have at it, Claire Louise. What would you have me do?"

"You've only to be dressed and ready. I'll give you a sack of food and a Colt Navy revolver that was Pa's from the house. I'll walk you as far down as the spring where we met, where I was picking blackberries. I'll draw a map that will take you east from there."

"When?"

I paused only a moment. "In two nights," I said. "At the eight o'clock respite from shelling. Landon will likely be in Pa's surgery then. It's when people come. All right?"

"He'll punish you when he finds out."

"He won't find out. The lie is that you left on your own. You just picked up and skedaddled. I know how to
lie, don't worry. I have to go now. Get plenty of rest and try to eat good between now and then."

He was perplexed, taken with the audacity of it. For one of Lee's officer's, I thought, he was powerful innocent. He must have come reluctantly to new plans.

I left.

I had a little scare late that afternoon when Landon called me aside and asked me why I had spent so much time with Robert after lunch.

The look of surprise on my face was real. How did he know? Had Mama told him?

"I hope you're not getting overfriendly with him," he cautioned.

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"I think you know."

"Well, damn."

"Don't use foul language with me."

And there he was, in an instant, up on his high horse. And there is nothing you can do about it when Landon gets up on his high horse, except wait until he is ready to get down.

"You were the one who said we were supposed to make him feel at home."

"His spirits are low, Claire Louise. And with good reason. He misses home. He doesn't know what's coming next. He's like a man drowning. He'll accept any rope
thrown to him. Right now I'm that rope. Don't take it away from him."

Whatever that meant, it was an order as if it had come straight down from General Grant. And the look in Landon's eyes was the seal on the order. I nodded and we parted.

Maybe, I thought,
maybe I should do it tonight.
I allowed the idea to tantalize me until I could stand it no more. And then, with no other purpose in mind, with the eight p.m. reprieve in the shelling, and with Mama's permission, I walked over to our house.

To my surprise the place was quiet in the evening of a late June day. With no shelling I could hear the birds, the cicadas, and, in the distance, the tolling of a church bell. It all sounded so nice. The chickens in the yard clucked to me. I was surprised. Did we still have chickens? Then I heard movement and voices from the barn.

"She just come flyin' in, Massa Landon," Andy was saying, "stirrups aflappin', reins jumpin', just as pretty as you please, and then just as she gets here, I come out the back door an' she sees me and neighs and comes over and she says hello."

"What time was that?" my brother asked.

"Couple hours ago, suh. I give her food and water and she happy as a pig in mud. Doan seem to mind the shellin', suh. I guess she used to it."

I stood in the barn door adjusting my eyes to the dimness inside.

Sure enough there was Jewel. My horse, come home!

"Jewel!" I near screamed it, startling both Landon and Andy. Both turned and stepped aside as I ran forward to the front of the stall and reached up and hugged her. She knew me, of course. She whinnied and nuzzled me and I hugged her around the neck for a long time. "Oh, Jewel, you're home."

"Did no one come looking for her?" Landon was asking.

"No, suh. Nobody. I think she jus' skedaddled from wherever she wuz and come back to her own barn. And them Yankees, excuse me, suh, but them Yankees too dumb to know where that is."

Landon tried to control a smile. And then I saw she was wearing a Yankee saddle and blanket. And so I went around and into the stall and unfastened the saddle, without saying a word. And I took off the blanket. Landon and Andy watched me. Everything was all right until I fetched one of our own blankets and saddles and put them on her.

"What do you think you're about?" Landon asked.

I didn't answer.

"Take that off. She isn't to be ridden for a while. Give her a rest."

I ignored him. I intended, you see, to have her ready for whenever I took Robert down to the stream. It wasn't a long way, but I might have to take him well beyond.

"Claire Louise, do as I say."

More ignoring on my part. After all she was my horse,
given to me by Pa, wasn't she? I just flung him a superior look. "I may ride her tomorrow morning," I told him.

What could he do? When it came down to it, nothing. I'd never pushed him to the edge to find out how far he would go. And I wasn't about to test his mettle, not here and now in front of Andy, anyway. He was too much of a gentleman to do anything in front of Andy. No one in my family ever displayed any unpleasantness in front of the servants.

"We'll talk about this later," he said.

All I knew was that I didn't want any Yankee blanket or saddle on Jewel.

Landon went around to Jeffrey's stall. Jeffrey was Robert's horse, and Landon checked on a bandage on his right front foot. I hadn't seen it before. "Try to keep him quiet today," he instructed Andy. He stood up, patted the horse's flanks, and was gone without so much as a fare-thee-well to me.

I felt a pang of panic. "What's wrong with Jeffrey?" I asked Andy.

He shrugged. "That horse come up limpin' t'other day after prancin' 'round in the pasture," he told me. "Your brother wuz here couple of times, fixin' him. I been await-in' to tell you, Miz Claire Louise. That horse never gonna make it all the way to Jackson for that Confederate officer feller."

I felt my face go white. Of course Andy was in on this. Hadn't he earned the money to give to Robert for his
escape? "How much have you told my brother about his plans to leave?" I asked him.

"Ain't said nuthin' 'cept 'bout earnin' the money, Miz Louise. Kept my mouth shut since you told me you wuz plannin' on makin' off wif him soon."

"Do you know why?"

"No, but I 'spose you got your reasons. An' I think it's right he shud go. 'Specially since I heard your brother say he was thinkin' of turnin' him over to the 'thorities. Doan know what he done, but he seem like a powerful nice boy, and I think he shud have another chance. So I'm wif you. When you goin'?"

"I had planned night after tomorrow."

"Tha's good. Make it fast. Too much dillydallyin' gets a body nowheres quick. You need me, you know you gots me."

"I need you to have both Jeffrey and Jewel ready here."

His eyes widened. "You ain't gonna go runnin' off wif him, is you, Miss Claire? That would kill your mama. An' your brother, he have half the Yankee army after you all."

"No, Andy. I'm only taking him as far as the creek."

"I be ready, Miz Claire Louise. I be ready."

I scarce slept at all that night for my plotting. When I did sleep, my dreams were fractured things, coming and going in broken flashes, elusive, cutting themselves off at the knees and disappearing just when I thought I had a purchase on what they were all about.

Mama was sleeping, I knew that. So was Easter, in a small room next to her. Robert was reading. James was sleeping, and Landon was out on a mission of mercy, delivering Mrs. Rappaport's baby. I thought about how, when Pa was home and came in late from a house call, I would wait up for him with a pot of hot chocolate. I wondered what he was doing at the moment.

From outside came the usual sounds of mortars, musketry, and shells, then, in between somehow, the sound of people screaming a dreaded word.

"Fire! Fire!"

Of a sudden it seemed like the whole world around me woke, like a sleeping tiger who'd been disturbed. Mama came looking for me and we met in the hallway. "What is it? Where is the fire?"

She had in her arms her daytime clothes.

Chip, who usually slept outside the entrance, had taken this night off. Now he came to alert us. "Ma'am, Washington Street is in flames. People all runnin' down dere to help. Captain Beggs of the fire brigade already be dere."

"Washington Street. Oh! Claire Louise, isn't that where Landon went?"

"Yes, ma'am."