The Storm Before Atlanta (17 page)

A lady rushed forward with a broomstick and swung it at Jeremy. He darted past her. She wasn’t in the mood for conversation, and it would be easier just to take the sheets than to ask for them. He ran upstairs and found a bedroom with a big four-poster bed in it. He pulled the sheets off the bed.

The lady followed him upstairs and came at him, wielding the broom. He ducked under it and ran back down the stairs, tripping over the dragging sheets and almost plummeting down the stairs, but he grabbed the banister and managed to save himself. He ran back to the fire. He shoved the sheets into a bucket of water. Then he ran to get more, hoping to find an unoccupied house this time. What were ladies doing staying in their houses when there was a war coming through?

In the fourth house, which fortunately was empty, he was pulling the sheets off a bed when he noticed that the closet door was open. A row of girls’ dresses hung on hooks inside.

He looked at the dresses and he thought of Dulcie in her stained flour sacks. But if he took one of the dresses for Dulcie, was that looting or foraging? Foraging was taking what you needed. Looting was taking what you didn’t need. It was generally understood that foraging usually meant only food.

He moved closer to the dresses and picked up a blue one. He took it off the hook and held it up to himself. It would fit him if he was a girl, and he was a little bigger than Dulcie, so it ought to fit her, more or less. There was a darn here and there. It wasn’t like it was a
new
dress. But then, there was no such thing as a new dress in the Confederacy. Not since the blockade began in 1861. If he took this dress it would be missed.

There were seven dresses in the closet. For how many girls? Well, the girls, wherever they were, probably had dresses on now. Dulcie only had flour sacks.

Jeremy made up his mind—it was foraging. Dulcie needed this. But he didn’t want to have to explain it to the soldiers down below, whose voices he could hear as they ran around arresting looters. He rolled the dress up as small as he could, stuck it under his shirt, and tucked it into his belt to keep it in place.

When he got downstairs he saw that the fires were out.

Nobody ever told you anything, at least not officially, but over time you figured it out. Originally General Sherman had hoped to march straight from Chattanooga to Atlanta with very little resistance. The Confederate Army had had different ideas, though, and there were thousands of Secesh between Sherman’s army and Atlanta. Dulcie picked this up from the things she heard, from the men talking—it had become part of the general knowledge of the campaign,
in all the hundreds of Union camps, among all the soldiers and all the people who followed them. There had been the battle at Resaca a week ago, and then a sort of business—not quite a battle—at Cassville, and now there was a time of rest, at the Etowah River, as the Union Armies of the Cumberland, the Tennessee, and the Ohio prepared to cross and make the final push to Atlanta against who-knew-how-many Rebel soldiers in their way. Everyone knew this, although no one had been told it.

They were very close to Dulcie’s old home. And with the Union Army spread out over such a wide area, preparing to cut a wide swath, the war was undoubtedly going to go through there. Dulcie wondered what had become of Aunt Betsy and Uncle John. They’d said they would wait for the Union Army to come—was the Union Army there yet? Had they run away and joined them, or were they still waiting? Would the war hurt them when it went through? She had been treated well enough by the Union soldiers, but she knew that not everyone had been. She had heard a story about an escaped slave who had been made to dance on a red-hot piece of tin by Union soldiers. Dulcie hadn’t met anyone who she thought would do something like that—well, maybe Lars and Jack—but she didn’t doubt that there were such people among the tens of thousands of soldiers moving toward Atlanta. So she worried. But there was work to do.

Dulcie was making tourniquets. There was time now for this sort of task, while the army rested and waited.
A field surgeon’s kit came with four tourniquets, and that wasn’t nearly enough. Dulcie had used more than that herself at Resaca. But making them was easy enough—you had to find good, straight sticks and good, strong cloth, that was all. Dulcie was out searching for sticks beside the Etowah when she ran into Jeremy with a bundle in his arms.

“Dulcie! Er. I brought you this.”

Dulcie took what he handed to her, suspicious because she had never known white people to give you anything without expecting a sight more in return. “What is it?”

“It’s, you know. A dress.”

Dulcie unfolded it and held it up. It was indeed a dress—what must surely be the world’s most
sensible
dress. It was a severe dark blue, and there wasn’t a bit of trim or lace or ribbon anywhere on it, nor so much as an extra tuck or a ruffle.

“Don’t you like it?” Jeremy sounded hurt.

“It’s beautiful!” said Dulcie.

Jeremy looked relieved.
Maybe he really doesn’t expect anything in return
, Dulcie thought.

She stroked the cloth—this dress would be soft and smooth against her skin, not scratchy like every other dress she’d ever had. And all the darns and mends had been carefully done with thread exactly the same color, so that they hardly showed at all.

“Thank you,” she said. “It’s real nice. I never had anything made of cloth this good.”

“Try it on and see if it fits,” Jeremy said.

Dulcie looked around. They were in the woods near the river. There were no soldiers near, nobody but Jeremy, and a few birds chirping overhead. She went behind a clump of holly bushes. “Don’t look.”

“I ain’t lookin’.”

“Ain’t looking at what?” another voice said. A rough sort of half-boy, half-man voice.

Dulcie, just out of her Union blouse, pulled the new dress over her head in a hurry.

“I’ve been looking for you everywhere, little buddy.”

Dulcie peered through the holly leaves. She recognized Charlie, the boy who’d pulled her out of the river. How had he come and found Jeremy again?

She couldn’t get the last button on the dress fastened in back, so she pulled the Union blouse on over it. The flour-sack petticoat would do to make tourniquets out of. She watched Jeremy and Charlie.

“There’s Yanks invadin’ across the Etowah at every bridge and ford, and some of y’all are just swimming it,” said Charlie. “I been looking all among them and I didn’t see you anywhere.”

“We’re resting here,” said Jeremy. “Before the final push, where we drive youse back to Atlanta.”

“I know,” said Charlie.

There was a little pause then, as if Jeremy was waiting for Charlie to claim that nobody was going to be driven back to Atlanta. Charlie didn’t.

“You ready to go see something you never seen before?” said Charlie instead.

“Right now?”

“Yeah. I got a skiff and everything, c’mon.”

“I got a friend with me,” said Jeremy, gesturing toward the holly bushes where Dulcie was hiding.

Oh, thanks, Jeremy
, Dulcie thought. They were between her and the camp anyway, but she could’ve slipped away after they’d gotten in the boat.

“How d’you do, Jeremy’s friend,” Charlie called cheerfully to the holly bush.

“It’s all right, Dulcie,” Jeremy called.

That was the way he saw it, apparently! Him being friends with the enemy. Lips pressed tightly together in annoyance, Dulcie came out from her hiding place.

“That’s the slave we pulled out of the river!” said Charlie.

“No, it ain’t,” Dulcie informed him coldly.

“Yes, it is, I recognize you. Never seen sharp little eyes like yours on nobody else.”

“You didn’t pull no slave out of the river, is what she means,” said Jeremy. “You pulled out a freedman. Freedgirl.”

Charlie and Dulcie gave each other a long, appraising look. Dulcie knew this type of boy. He smiled at you, sure, he was amused at everything, in his supercilious way, but you weren’t more to him than his pet dog, which also amused him and would grieve him a sight more if it died.
And which he wouldn’t dream of seeing whipped with a cowhide. He’d been brought up to think black people were animals, Dulcie thought. She didn’t have to know him to know that.

“Well, bring her along too,” said Charlie.

Oh, sure, to be handed over to the Secesh! “Where you going?” said Dulcie.

“Downriver.”

“To what?” Dulcie said suspiciously.

“Somethin’ I want to show the Yank.”

Dulcie didn’t like that at all. Why was Jeremy going off somewhere with the enemy? And Charlie wouldn’t even say what he was going to show Jeremy! The thing about Jeremy was … he was nice. He was kind; he’d brought her a dress and he really didn’t seem to expect anything in return. But he didn’t seem to have a whole lot of common sense sometimes. He seemed to think the war was just a game.

“You going to show him the m—”

“Shh!” Charlie gave Dulcie a winning smile. “We’re going to surprise him.”

I bet
, thought Dulcie.

“You coming along, Dulcie?” said Jeremy.

Dulcie was torn. On the one hand, she didn’t want to go anywhere with Charlie. On the other hand, she didn’t want Jeremy going off alone, trusting Charlie, not knowing any better.

Besides, she knew that they were very close to her old
home, which was just downriver, and if she didn’t take the opportunity to find out if Aunt Betsy and Uncle John were all right, she would always wonder.

There was also the chance that Missus would be hurt by the soldiers. This didn’t bother her at all, except that if Missus and Mas’r were hurt—all right, killed—then any chance of ever finding out what had become of Dulcie’s mother would be gone.

“All right,” she said.

“Capital! Come on then, Jeremy.”

The skiff Jeremy had brought was a flat-bottomed boat, its many cracks and leaks stuffed tight with cotton. There was a can in the bottom for bailing, and as soon as they started moving they started bailing. Dulcie did it first, but Charlie said she was too slow and so Jeremy took over. The water was right up around their ankles. It felt pleasantly cool on her feet as they drifted between the hilly banks of the Etowah. She had to admit that she would have been having fun, if it wasn’t for the fact that she didn’t trust this enemy rowing the boat.

She trailed her hand in the water over the boat’s side—the boat was sitting sort of low in the water. The boys talked as if she wasn’t there.

“So where y’all figuring to cross the river?”

“Me and Dulcie ain’t … Oh, the army, you mean. You said we was crossing everywheres.”

“Y’all, though, from New York—where you crossing at?”

“The 107th, you mean? I dunno. No one’s told us.”

“Reckon y’all are headed for Dallas?”

“Dallas? I dunno.”

“Don’t nobody tell you nothin’, Yank?”

“Nope.”

Probably just as well they didn’t, thought Dulcie, if he was going to turn around and tell it to the enemy.

They were pretty near the farm, Dulcie thought as she watched the trees and hills slip by. She couldn’t have said how near, because she’d never traveled down the river like this—she’d only been out on it in a boat once or twice, and she didn’t think she’d recognize the spot if she saw it. She was peering through the trees when she saw movement there, not rustly like an animal but smooth and deliberate like a human, and she wasn’t sure what made her yell “Get down!”

She splashed down into the bilge at the bottom of the boat as she said it, and at the same instant the bullets began flying.

SIXTEEN

J
EREMY AND
C
HARLIE DOVE INTO THE BOTTOM OF
the boat beside Dulcie. A bullet tore through the wooden side of the skiff right beside Jeremy’s face.

Charlie sloshed up out of the bilgewater and grabbed the oars and started rowing as hard as he could.

“Are you crazy?” Dulcie yelled at him. She was ducking so low in the bilgewater that she swallowed a mouthful of it when she spoke, and choked on it.

“The skiff ain’t no protection,” Charlie said. “Gotta get outta here.”

At that Jeremy had to grab one of the oars from Charlie and row—he wasn’t going to stay down hiding if Charlie wouldn’t.