The fighting continued as the Union regiments gradually made their way south. One day in early December I heard from my students that the army divisions in the whole general area would split. One set of regiments would go east toward Atlanta. The other would continue south and west to try to capture the port at Vicksburg on the Mississippi. The field hospital would be divided up too. I had no doubt which way I’d go. If the Vicksburg-bound regiments continued their progress, we would reach Louisiana and perhaps the parishes near Catalpa Valley. My fear of approaching home lessened. Madame couldn’t do anything to me if I arrived protected by the Union soldiers I had taught and tended for over a year. I had great hope that emancipation would make her entirely powerless. Silas, bent on his Bible and working out his own salvation, had his own thoughts about freedom and where it should take me.
One late afternoon we stood at a campfire, warming ourselves and talking about the movement of the regiments.
“Proclamation go through, gotta think about where you want to be,” said Silas. He was kicking at the dirt, his head down.
I pulled my cloak closer around me. “I thought you wanted to go west?”
“Not now. Need to be around the living. Preach the Lord’s word. You need to come with me. Being the way that you are, you need to be with someone who understands you.”
“Because I have mixed blood?”
“No. Because of how you don’t fit with the way people think. And you don’t care. Always by yourself. That ain’t no way to be in the world.”
He wasn’t right about that. I had companions in my sister nurses and spent time enough with Carrie, Martha, and, on occasion, Mother B. But I did enjoy solitude and, when I had the chance for it, would often choose it instead of being with them.
“Even if I’m fine with it?”
“Maybe I want better for you than you want for yourself.”
“Maybe I’m not thinking about myself. If I can get back to Catalpa Valley, I can make sure our people can make a living after they get their freedom.” I was thinking again of Mr. Colchester and had wondered often how many of the boots and shoes on the feet of the soldiers around me had come from the factory in Lower Knoll. He had been right about how it wasn’t enough to free slaves. I found myself puzzling over how Catalpa Valley could become like Lower Knoll. Would Calista be in favor of such an endeavor? I could guide her—tell her what I’d seen and what might be possible.
“And I can help my sister,” I told Silas.
“You mean be her maid.”
“We’re not like that.” I believed this deeply. Calista would not have sent Dorinda on such a treacherous errand to bring me Papa’s locket and with it her love if she did not look on me as her equal and her sister. I would have been less confident without these assurances. We’d still been girls when Madame had ripped me from our home. While I knew and loved Calista the girl very well, I didn’t know the woman. Nor did she really know me. And yet we seemed to still feel the tug of our filial ties. We had to believe those ties would pull us together again.
“And what makes you think your Catalpa Valley will still be there? Our soldiers been burning fields and big houses for miles to make sure the rebels don’t have no food.”
A bitter taste crept up my throat and into my mouth. I hadn’t thought of that. Catalpa Valley destroyed?
“It may not be,” I said quietly. “But I’ll find out for myself.”
“Are you still in love with that white man?”
“He’s not white.”
“He may as well be from what you told me.”
“He’s got nothing to do with this.”
“Then there’s no reason for you to go back there. You meant to be talking about the Bible, just like me. People would listen because of the way you sound, like you know God for sure,” he said.
I shook my head. “If I’m supposed to be doing it, wouldn’t I know that by now? Wouldn’t I be moved like you? Wouldn’t I hear a call?”
“Maybe you’re not listening good.” He took me by the wrist. His voice took on the gravity of thunder. This was a different Silas, one I didn’t recognize. The Silas I knew would never lay a hand on me. “Listen to me. I’ll say it right now. Jeannette Bébinn! You need to come with me to Atlanta.”
Silas drew on God’s power to be his own, and he would bring that power down on my head. I struggled to resist it, to know it for being Silas and not God pulling on me. But he used words to help him, words he knew to be the scripture I held closest to my heart.
“Thus saith the Lord, I have redeemed thee. I have called thee by thy name; thou art mine!”
The fire was too hot, and I felt sick.
“No, Silas, no! Have mercy!”
“You already had plenty of mercy from what I can see. Mercy all up and down the years of your life. What you think allowed us to get on that train, with Boss Everett sittin’ right next to you, and us still making it up north?”
“You think I don’t know that? But who’s to say how I answer to that? It should come from me, from God speaking to me in my heart. I don’t feel the spirit you feel for this, Silas.”
“Then ask your heart, Jeannette. Pray with me right now and see where God wants you.”
He pulled me down to our knees, there in the dust in front of the fire. He concocted a plea to Jesus that he spoke out loud, calling on the Lord to plant a seed in my breast and bring me to righteousness. I couldn’t think for the sound of his voice, let alone pray. But after a while he was quiet, and I began the work of soothing my now-agitated state.
The way he talked, it all seemed too big—the dream of remaking Catalpa Valley, creating a community of free people. Even still harboring a hope of seeing Mr. Colchester again seemed fruitless. But I thought of him every night. I wondered where he laid his head, whether he was in health. Sometimes I closed my eyes and tried to conjure his face. I craved to see it again, to be ignited by his wild eyes. Where would I go if I failed? If Catalpa Valley was gone? What would it mean to me if Mr. Colchester was dead?
I opened my eyes and looked at Silas. His eyes were closed; his lips moved with whispered words. I had fled such horrors with this man. He had helped bring me to this current home, where I’d found meaningful work and sustenance. His arguments pointed to continuing a path with him that we seemed to have been walking for years. I was already living a kind of life with him. Catalpa Valley was nothing but a dream. But if all this were true, and if what Silas offered felt right to me in any way, it seemed I would, if I left him and found Catalpa Valley in ashes, want to go find him again. I didn’t have that kind of desire. The thought crystallized within me: I can’t go with him because I don’t love him.
I stood up and left Silas and walked a little ways into the piney woods. He didn’t follow—maybe didn’t even realize I’d gone—and I was glad of it. The tall straight trunks were like pillars all around me, forming a space that felt, to me, like somewhere God could walk in and just sit and listen. So I knelt at the base of one of the trees, took out the stone from Catalpa Valley, and put it on the ground in front of me. Then I pulled the locket from underneath my shirt, took it off, and opened it. I laid it there next to the stone. I prayed to God and to my parents to guide me. My heart beat fast, and soon a sensation spread through me like the earth rumbling within me, like the moment before a cannon fires. The feeling set my whole being astir, like it was about to be broken open. It felt familiar, like home, and the sensation was bringing me back to myself. I heard the rest of the scripture passage that Silas had begun, and I spoke aloud these words, which struck a chord that went ringing through my soul.