The Spy on the Tennessee Walker (3 page)

CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 2

VICTORIA'S JOURNAL, 1862
VICTORIA'S JOURNAL, 1862

No one likes to see me ride in on Courage. It's not the horse, it's the fact that I'm a woman on a horse when horses have been conscripted for all but military needs. Well, perhaps I exaggerate. Most of my fellow nurses back at the hospital give me a sly look. They think I have some friends in high places. “I do,” I say tartly, when they make that accusation, “and a fair measure of friends in low places as well.” And that ends the conversation. I am not a great one for sharing personal information. And besides, few of the nurses and matrons at the hospital are willing to do what I do — walk among the wounded and the dead still on the battlefield, doing what I can until they can be moved to hospital or laid to their rest. The women of the hospital are content to leave that task to Courage and me.

I am what my friend Walter Whitman calls “a proper wound-dresser.” He, on the other hand, calls himself a mere “visitor and consolatory.” We met after the horrific December battle of Fredericksburg, when despite General Burnside's ambitious plans, and the efforts of the valiant boys of the Army of the Potomac, and the frontal assault
on Marye's Heights by Major Generals Sumner and Hooker and their men, the Union forces were badly out-maneuvered. When the terrible dark smoke finally cleared, the Union had suffered more than twice as many casualties as the Confederates. Governor Andrew Curtin of Pennsylvania visited the battlefield and went directly to the White House. He reported to President Lincoln, “It was not a battle, it was a butchery.”

CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 3

MAGGIE
MAGGIE

OAKLAND

“Josh,” I called upstairs, trying to curry a little favor. “Want to see if Lexie can come for dinner? Dad's making paella tonight.”

Moment of silence. I could almost hear those gears turning, wondering what I was up to. “Sure,” he said. “I'll text and see if she's free. And Mom, call Aunt Phoebe. I want to know what's up with those pictures.”

Phoebe, still the gentle reigning queen and observer of Oxford social life, was home. I put her on speaker so I could chop onions and peppers for Michael's paella while we talked.

“Aunt Phoebe, thank you for the package.”

“Glad it arrived, darlin'. I remember when your grandmother died and your mother and I swore we would not leave all those boxes and bins of stuff for our children to deal with.”

“Oh, I don't have to worry about it,” I said, wielding the chef's knife and squinting through the onion glasses to try to miss adding a little finger into the
mise-en-place
for Michael. “Josh has already told us he and Zach are going to back a van up to the house when we go to the great beyond and send it all to the Alameda
Flea Market.”

“Not Alma's carved mahogany dining table! It looks so wonderful in your house.”

“I couldn't agree with you more,” I said sadly. “But get this — the boys say they're afraid of the legs.”

“Oh, those beautiful lion feet,” said Phoebe. “Well, that's a shame, honey, but you know every generation has to find its own way. My daughter-in-law has a bright orange table with lime-green chairs in her dining room, and I have to say, it's either really cheerful or really bilious, I just can't figure out which. I think it's made of resin. Is that right? I thought that was the powdery material ballerinas put on their shoes. Do you know, honey?”

I wasn't sure which question to answer. “I think dancers use rosin, Auntie Phoebe. But it does sound like resin, and I think people do use resin for furniture. It's in all the cool lofts in San Francisco.”

“Well, I'm just trying to maintain an open mind and keep up with you young people,” she said. “But tell me, Miss Maggie, did you love those photos I sent? Actually, I think one is a — how do you pronounce it? — daguerreotype.”

“So, there's the one of Alma, right? I recognized her right away, and then there's the one of the woman on the horse.”

“Oh, honey, I had to send that to you when I found it out in the henhouse. I'm pretty sure that's your great-great-great-grandmother Victoria.”

“She's been in the henhouse all these years?”

“You know, there aren't any hens in there anymore. And I'd been trying to get your Uncle Beau to move all
that genealogical folderol he messes with all the time out, out, out of the house.” In her ongoing battle to control disorder, Phoebe explained, they had the henhouse insulated and painted, and they added a bathroom so it could be used as a guesthouse to accommodate the unending stream of visitors they hosted, especially during Ole Miss football season. Fending off disorder meant endless vigilance, according to Phoebe. “Every time Beau adds some other treasure to the henhouse, I make him take something out. He brought that double-frame photo in for me to see, along with the little book. I took one look and said, ‘If that's Victoria, Maggie is her spitting image, so these things should go directly to her.'” Aunt Phoebe took a breath.

I put the knife down. Maybe the onion glasses were defective. I pulled them off and swiped the tears away.

“Maggie, did I lose you, sugah?”

“No, Aunt Phoebe, I think you found something wonderful, and I am so touched you sent it to me.”

“Really? Well, I loved those photos and thought you should have them. And the book was just in the box with the photos. And you know, since your grandmother was a nurse and I think that Victoria was a nurse, too, I figured that funny old book — what's it called?”

“
Drum-Taps
,” I said. “Phoebe, if this is what I think it is, it's really valuable.”

“Well, then, honey, it's found the right home.”

“No, I mean, like it should go to a museum or something.”

Phoebe laughed. “That's exactly what I call Beau's henhouse, ‘the museum.' But nobody ever comes to visit it.”

I picked up the knife again.

“Maggie, are you still there?”

“I am,” I said. “Just thinking. You know what, it
is
a shame nobody comes to visit the Henhouse Museum. I think I want to remedy that situation. You tell Uncle Beau that if you'll have me, I'll come for a long weekend, and I want him to be my personal docent and guide me through the museum.”

“Just a second, honey, Beau wants to say hey to you.”

In a moment Beau's gravelly voice rumbled through the phone. As soon as I heard him, I remembered that when I was little, I thought that when people talked about the Mississippi as “Old Man River,” they were talking about Uncle Beau.

“Miss Maggie,” said Uncle Beau, “you took receipt of Phoebe's package? You know that woman is happy every single time she ships something out of the henhouse.”

“Well, she made me very, very happy, Uncle Beau. And I realize that I want to know more about what all you've got in the henhouse.”

I heard myself saying “what all” and realized that once again the sheer seductiveness of Southern language had crept into my accent-less California speech.

“Honey, I would be honored to give you my personal twenty-five-cent tour.”

“I want the whole dollar tour, Uncle Beau. And I really want to know more about Victoria.”

Silence. “Well, now, I know Phoebe sent you that photo because you really do look just like her,” he said. “But….”

“But what?”

“Well, you know, we just don't have a lot of information.”

“
You
don't have a lot of information? You're the most tireless genealogist in the family.”

“That is true,” he said. “But Victoria had a bit of a cloudy past, I'm afraid.”

“Okay, you just made me more interested.”

“Well, we'll see when you get here. Just so you know, your double spent some time in prison.”

“Now my interest level is on red alert,” I said. “I'll email you and Aunt Phoebe as soon as I can figure out a time to come, and you can let me know if it works for you.”

“We'll make it work, Miss Maggie. And comin' on a weekend is perfect because you know the Egg Bowl is comin' up soon, and you could see all the cousins.”

The Egg Bowl. Ah, yes, the showdown between Ole Miss, aka the University of Mississippi, and chief rival Mississippi State.

Unlike California college football games, where fans show up in team colors on top, jeans or board shorts on the bottom, depending on the weather, the Egg Bowl means blazers and ties for the gentlemen and pretty polished cotton dresses or skirts and sweaters for the ladies, along with a requisite string of pearls. “I'll pack Mama's pearls,” I said.

I could hear Phoebe shouting instructions: “Beau, tell Maggie to bring a dress.” I sighed. Much as I loved my family, the South is, as L.P. Hartley said about the past, a foreign country.

“Hey,” I said, “I heard that the powers-that-be at Ole Miss sent old Colonel Reb into mascot retirement.”
Uncle Beau gave a dry cough. “Yes, well, those powers-that-be can do all they want. And you're right, the official mascot is now the Rebel Black Bear. But you know, things don't move at warp speed here in the South, honey, so if you're looking for a Colonel Reb piece of regalia, I'm either happy — or sorry — to tell you, there's plenty of that stuff still around. This just isn't California, honey. You all have such a, ahh…
variety
of the human condition out west.”

“You have plenty of variety, too,” I said. “Oxford is a university town, after all.”

“Oh, you are so right, honey. The young gentleman who cuts my hair, or what's left of it, is an Ole Miss senior, and he came all the way from Pakistan to go to school in little old Oxford.”

“Global, global, global. Even Oxford, Mississippi, is an international mecca.” I glanced at the clock. “I've got to get back to my cutting board, Uncle Beau. Tell Auntie Phoebe I said thanks again, and I can't wait to see you both and to tour the historically significant Henhouse Museum.”

CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 4

VICTORIA'S JOURNAL, 1862
VICTORIA'S JOURNAL, 1862

       
Bearing the bandages, water, and sponge,

       
Straight and swift to my wounded I go,

       
Where they lie on the ground after the battle brought in,

       
Where their priceless blood reddens the grass, the ground,

       
Or to the rows of the hospital tent, or under the roof'd hospital,

       
To the long rows of cots up and down each side I return,

       
To each and all one after another I draw near, not one do I miss

— “The Wound-Dresser,” Walt Whitman

We met because of our brothers, Walter and I. When he believed that his beloved brother George, a volunteer of the Fifty-first New-York Volunteers, led by Colonel Edward Ferrero, had been injured in the Battle of Fredericksburg, Walter left his home in Brooklyn and began the long journey south to find George. He walked the rows of beds
in Washington, DC, hospitals looking for his brother's face, shaken and worried that the worst had happened and that George was already in the ground.

There are so few stories with happy endings in wartime, but Walter's search was to be one of those occasions. He found his brother at an inn near the hospital. George's injuries had been quite minor, and he was recovering among friends in similar situations at a rough but comfortable hostelry.

“I traveled with such trepidation, Miss Victoria. I was afraid of what I might find, and dreading how to tell the news to my family. And there, to my astonishment, was George, slouching at the table and playing cards with his compatriots.”

I, too, had traveled to see my brother, but in the beginning I could not tell Walter where I had found him. I did not know whom I could trust. For the truth of the matter was that my brother wore Confederate gray, and when I found him at the Chimborazo Hospital in Richmond, Virginia, my Jeremiah was not nearly as fortunate as Walter's brother George. Jeremiah had already lost a leg, amputated when the wicked, fast-moving gangrene had begun its terrible journey up, up, up his right leg. When I stopped at his bed, he was raving with night terrors. “Leave me alone, leave me alone. I need both legs to plow!” he was crying out. “Go away with your terrible saws!” I sat all night with him, waiting for first light, putting clean, cool, damp rags on his forehead.

By morning, the fever had broken. He opened his eyes and I said, “Hello, my darling brother.”

And then he wept. The indefatigable, adored big brother God had provided me, full of courage and good humor. The one who made sure I had partners at every dance, the one who stood up to my parents when I began to study the art and science of nursing, the one who was afraid of no man and no battle.

“Vic,” he whispered. I knelt on the floor next to his bed, so I could hear him. “You should leave me, I am good for nothing.”

I looked at him and I felt some powerful mix of anger and resolve fill my heart. “You are good for everything, Jeremiah,” I said. “And if you do not put your mind and heart and body to recovery, then I will never give you a moment's peace. I will come back to your bedside with Mother and Father. Then I will bring your sweetheart. And then,” I said, warming to my campaign, “I will bring Cannonball, and when he sees you in this reduced state, he will not know the brave master he once had.”

Jeremiah blinked and raised himself up on one elbow. “My dog? You will not bring my dog here!”

“I will,” I said, “because it is cruel for him to think you are never coming home. So, I say, if you have surrendered to these…these…inconsequential Yankees, then Cannonball should see you in your hour of despair, and…failure!” I got to my feet. “Shall I go fetch them all now? Mother, Father, Elizabeth, and Cannonball, to see how the mighty
have fallen?”

Jeremiah collapsed back onto the bed and began to laugh. “You are the worst nurse a man must endure. Where is the comfort? Where is the sympathy? Where is the gentle hand upon my brow?”

I scowled at him. And then I melted, as I always did. No matter what, Jeremiah makes me laugh. “All right, sirrah. I will not threaten you with Mother, Father, and the…spectacularly admirable Miss Elizabeth Townsend.”

Jeremiah caught my hand. “But you will threaten me with my own dog?”

“Oh, yes, I most certainly will.”

Jeremiah grinned at me. “You have bullied and badgered me into feeling better, Vic. You are a trickster and a witch, but you are the best medicine possible.”

And so I sat down again, and we began to make a plan for Jeremiah's recovery.

Just a few months later, I found myself in the Armory Hospital in Washington, and Walter and I began our friendship. “We have a brother-and-sister bond,” Walter said. “We made journeys to care for our brothers, and in so doing, we made a bond that could not be broken.” I had always considered a promise like that to be sheer hyperbole, but when it mattered, Walter proved me wrong.