Two Girls of Gettysburg (41 page)

Margaret, Grace, and Mama were in tears. Grace murmured “Amen,” and we all echoed her.

After prayers, Luke and Amos made a handcart from a broken wagon they found in the street and loaded it with some of Margaret’s things. Luke wheeled the cart to her house on his way to rejoin his regiment, and I went along, too. Margaret held the children’s hands firmly to keep them from exploring the debris-scattered street.

Near Middle Street we met Mrs. Brodhead, who was in a talkative mood.

“I’ve been in my cellar for four days,” she said. “We were in the thick of it the whole time. I declare, I worried away a good ten pounds of flesh. I thought those rebels would never go away. Now I’m on my way to help at the church.”

“Yes, indeed,” said Margaret sympathetically, “you did have the worst of it there on Chambersburg Pike.”

We crossed the street to investigate a sort of celebration outside the newspaper office. The telegraph was still broken, but a merchant returning from Harrisburg had brought the news: Vicksburg had fallen to General Grant. Luke let out a loud whoop.

“The tide has turned!” proclaimed Margaret with more than her usual zeal.

“Surely the war can’t go on much longer, after two such victories,” said another bystander, and people nodded in agreement.

After we unloaded Margaret’s belongings and determined that no stray rebels lurked inside the house, it was time for Luke to go.

“This time you have to say a proper good-bye,” I said. We hugged each other tightly, and I said, through my tears, that I was proud of him. He was too choked up to reply. I stood gazing after Luke long after he had disappeared from view.

I returned to find Margaret picking up shards of glass in the dining room. A bullet had broken the window, shredded the draperies, and lodged in the opposite wall, cracking the plaster over her sewing machines.

“That’s not the only one,” said Margaret. “Both sides of the house were hit. There’s a bullet in the parlor mantelpiece, too.”

“Thank God you weren’t here,” I said.

“Yes. Oh, poor Ginnie Wade—and Georgia, and Mrs. Wade,” Margaret murmured. “Will you stay here tonight, Lizzie?”

“Yes, I told Mother I would.”

“Then let’s get to work,” she said, dusting off the sewing machine. “Time to make bandages instead of trousers. Lizzie, start in Rosanna’s old room and gather up the extra linens.”

I went upstairs and opened the door to Rosanna’s room. There was
the bed, mounded with pillows, where I had last seen my cousin weeping at the news of Henry Phelps’s death. I put my cheek against the pillows, but of course Rosanna’s scent was long gone. Her favorite book of poems still rested on the bedside table, collecting dust. I opened it up to the ribbon marker and read a verse she had marked with a pencil:
O for the touch of a vanished hand and the sound of a voice that is still.
There was no anger left in me, only a sad longing for something that was past. I wondered where Rosanna was and imagined her wearing a black crepe dress and weeping as she followed the Confederate army somewhere deep in the South. I started to pull the quilt from the bed but stopped. I smoothed it back in place, resettled the pillows, and closed the door again. In the hall cupboard I found some spare linens.

The rest of the day I spent cutting linen into strips while Margaret stitched up the edges. Clara played with the scraps on the floor, and Jack pressed his face to the window, complaining because his mother would not let him play outside.

“Thank you for staying, Lizzie. I know this is dull for you.”

“I don’t mind it,” I said. “I’ve had enough excitement.”

“I’ll say. Taking Grace and the children to the Weigels’ and coming back, right through the battle lines, toting a rifle, just to be sure we were safe! Jack told me about the rebel spies, too. You are indeed brave, Lizzie. I’m too scared to even touch a gun, but I’ve no doubt you would kill a man to save one of us.”

“Perhaps I would,” I mused. “But let’s hope I don’t have to. Because I left the rifle at mother’s.” Margaret and I both laughed.

“Look who’s here!” cried Jack, dashing from his post at the window to open the door. There stood Ben, covered in mud. He carried a knapsack, which fell to the floor with a heavy thud as he eased it from his shoulders.

“What do you have there? Where have you been?” I asked.

“Hunting for relics,” he said, his face shining with excitement.

Margaret and I exchanged confused looks.

“Souvenirs—of the battle,” he explained.

“You’ve been out on the battlefields?” I shook my head in disbelief.

“Sure! All around Culp’s Hill. Lots of people are there picking up souvenirs. They’ve come from everywhere.”

“But aren’t there bodies still on the field?” asked Margaret.

“No, they are mostly buried. But there are dead horses still lying around. It smells ten times worse out there than the critter that died behind the kitchen wall last year. Remember that, Lizzie? But look what I found!”

Ben opened his bag and withdrew a Confederate cap and fringed cavalry sash, a pipe and tobacco pouch, several chunks of shrapnel, a framed print of a woman and a baby, and a bowie knife. Jack clamored to touch the knife, but Ben held him back. He placed some misshapen metal pellets in my hand. I was too astonished to speak.

“Minié balls. They get bent from the heat when they strike a rock or tree,” Ben explained. “Look, these two are melted together. They must have hit each other in midair. But here’s my best find!” He unwrapped from a blanket a twelve-pound cannonball.

Margaret gasped and I finally found my voice.

“Whatever possessed you, Benjamin Allbauer? Don’t you know how dangerous this could be?” I sounded exactly like Mama.

“Oh, I know. Some boys found a shell lying on the ground, and they were throwing rocks at it, trying to hit the fuse. I would never do that.”

“Did it blow up?” asked Jack.

“Yep, finally it exploded. But they weren’t badly hurt.”

“They might have been killed!” I grabbed Ben’s collar and said in my most dire voice, “Don’t you ever go back there.”

“I think it’s shameful, to go playing and digging about where men died for the cause of freedom,” said Margaret.

“What will you do with these things?” I asked.

“Well, I can’t take them home because Ma would yell at me worse than you are,” Ben said, putting his souvenirs into the sack one by one.

“Do you plan to sell them? Did you collect them just for the money?” I demanded.

“I’m not going to sell anything!” Ben cried, clutching the knapsack. The tintype of the mother and child slipped to the floor. “I’m going to keep all of my souvenirs and show my children and grandchildren so that nobody will ever forget this battle!” He was almost in tears.

Margaret picked up the tintype and gazed at it. Then she said gently, “You may leave your treasures here for now, and I will keep them safe.”

Ben’s shoulders sagged with relief. “Thank you,” he murmured.

“Now go straight home,” I ordered my brother. “I know you didn’t mean any harm, but stay away from the battlefield. Tell Mama I’ll be home tomorrow morning, and we’ll get the shop ready to open.”

Ben left in a chastened mood. The sun was sinking behind the rooftops and the only traffic on Baltimore Pike was the Union soldiers heading south. Drumbeats kept their weary steps in rhythm as they marched on, pursuing Lee’s army.

“I hope they aren’t leaving us entirely undefended,” said Margaret in a worried tone. She began to light one lamp after another. “Let’s make it look like the house is full of people.”

Jack and Clara went to bed early, but I stayed up to keep Margaret company. I yawned as we stitched and rolled bandages. Then I realized Margaret was shaking me by the arm.

“Did you hear that?” she asked. A
V
-shaped furrow appeared between her eyebrows.

“No,” I said. “I must have dozed off.”

“It sounded like the gate creaking. I think I hear footsteps!”

We tiptoed to the front window, but the lights inside the house made it difficult to see outside. Finally I could make out the figure of a man, his face hidden by a hat.

“It’s not a Union soldier. His pants are light colored,” Margaret whispered.

“I don’t see a rifle. Do you?”

“Look at his hand. Is it a Negro?”

“I think he’s alone.”

“Oh, Lizzie; what if he’s a deserter come to shoot us? It’s after dark, so he cannot be up to any good. What are we going to do?”

I wished I had John Ray’s rifle to put between us and the stranger. Otherwise I was out of ideas. “I’m thinking!” I said.

“I’ll grab Jack and Clara and we’ll run out the back door,” suggested Margaret.

“No, wait,” said Lizzie. “If he has come to the front door of a lighted-up house, he isn’t looking for trouble. And there are two of us. Get the fireplace poker, just in case. I’ll see what he wants.”

With Margaret beside me hiding the poker behind her skirts, I swung the door open and demanded in the surest voice I could muster, “Who’s there?”

The man took off his hat and said in a voice deep and soft with the accent of the South, “My name be Thomas Banks, an’ I mean you ladies no harm.”

I could see that the man was in a pitiful state. One arm was in a sling made from a scrap of blanket that was damp and sticky with blood. Over his other shoulder he carried a haversack with a red cross stitched to it.

“We can’t take any wounded in,” said Margaret. “You’ll have to be on your way.”

“I didn’ come for myself, ma’am,” he said.

“Let’s at least get him some water and food,” I said, noticing how he swayed as he stood there.

“First tell me, what is your business?” Margaret asked warily.

“If it please y’all, I’m looking for the sister of Miz Rosanna Wilcox.”

Margaret let out a cry and the poker clattered to the floor behind her.

“Rosanna! You have news of Rosanna?” I said eagerly. But I didn’t want to hear it. It could not be good news, brought by this weary, injured Negro. “Don’t tell us she’s—”

“Tell me,” Margaret said, trembling all over. “I am her sister.”

“She’s a short ways off.” Thomas Banks nodded his head toward the road. “Comin’ across the fields was awful hard on her.”

Margaret brushed by him and ran out into the darkness, shouting “Rosanna! Rosanna!”

I helped Thomas Banks into a chair and poured him some water. He pointed to the door, as if urging me to go as well. A quick glance in his eyes and I knew he could be trusted, so I left him there and ran outside.

Margaret was standing in the middle of Baltimore Pike, crying and holding up Rosanna, who could barely stand. Her head was wrapped in a bandage, but her familiar black hair sprung from beneath it in wild profusion.

“My side! Oh, it hurts to breathe. Don’t … make me cry, too … dear sister!” Rosanna gasped, grimacing with pain.

I ran up and seized Rosanna’s hand. “Is it you? You’re really here?” I said, choking back tears.

“Yes, it’s me. I think. Lizzie? I don’t remember! My head.” She groaned and reached up to touch the bandage.

“Hush now, Rosie, let’s get you inside and lying down,” said Margaret.

“Oh, Lizzie, I’ve missed you so,” murmured Rosanna.

Somehow Margaret and I managed to carry Rosanna up the stairs to her bedroom. We laid her on the quilt that I had smoothed only hours before. We undressed her and checked all her limbs, bathed her as best we could, trying not to touch the bruises. I saw that she wore John Wilcox’s wedding ring and a leaden heart around her neck. There was a small wound below her left breast.

“What happened to you?” I kept asking, but Rosanna only shook her head.

“Let her rest now; we’ll learn everything later,” said Margaret gently, drawing a clean nightgown over Rosanna’s head.

But Rosanna seemed worried about Thomas Banks, and only when Margaret promised she would take care of him did she fall asleep. I confess I wasn’t much help as Margaret bathed and wrapped the Negro’s wounded arm. He explained that he had been John Wilcox’s valet but was now a free man. Margaret looked surprised but did not question him further. I went back upstairs, climbed on the bed next to my cousin, and gazed at her familiar features: the full, red lips, now cracked and sunburned, the arched brows over her closed eyes. I wanted to know everything she had been through. I held her hand, rough-skinned and brown, and touched her cheek, then her unruly black hair. Why was she in Gettysburg?

I had so many questions, but what did the answers matter? My cousin Rosanna was alive, and she had finally come home.

Rosanna
Chapter 46