“Fear thou not; for I am with thee.”
I was not alone. Yes, called by my name, but free to run toward my heart, toward whatever my life held in store for me. And it would be all right. God would not, would never, forsake me.
I knelt on the cold ground, breathing cold air, but gently, ever so gently, the air changed. It held a hint of warmth, and I detected but couldn’t identify a slight scent. I didn’t dare move; I didn’t want to disturb it. I folded myself up on the ground and closed my eyes and waited. There was water in this air and a hint of jasmine and magnolia blossom. None of these features fit the time of year or the place. I knew this because I soon recognized what I was taking in: Louisiana; the air of soft evenings; the air before storms; the air that carried water and flowers and endowed even the grayest of days with possibility. My home.
I unfolded from my prayer as though emerging again from the womb. I would turn in the direction of my mother’s blood, of my father’s voice, of my heart’s love.
“Thank you,” I whispered. “I am coming.”
Silas’s steps were behind me, but I ignored him and headed for my tent. He couldn’t force his will anymore. I had come into my own power, and in the gloam of those woods I could see as clearly as if it were a bright summer day. I rode that energy, and I knew for certain that it would take me, forever, away from him.
“Leave me alone,” I said.
The heat from the coals in the mess pan engulfed me when I entered the tent. I’d lost all thought about the cold until I’d been hurrying from the woods and felt it sharp against my face. Carrie and Martha, making their preparations for our departure, dropped their tasks and rushed to me.
“Are you all right?” Martha asked. “Silas looked so strange. Then I saw you go into the woods.”
“I’m fine,” I said. I took the blanket from my cot and wrapped it around my shoulders. Despite the warmth of the tent, a chill had come over me. “He wants me to go to Atlanta with him instead of Vicksburg.”
“But Vicksburg would get you closer to where you came from,” said Carrie. “You told him that, right?”
“Yes. I’ll only be a few hundred miles away. Gotta keep moving toward it.”
Martha sat near me. “What happened?”
“He said I needed to pray to God about it. That’s why I went in the woods over there. I got my answer. He’s not gonna like it.”
“You’re not going with him, are you?”
“No. Haven’t told him yet, though. Too tired to keep arguing with him tonight. I’ll tell him in the morning.”
Carrie clutched a handkerchief that she wrung between her hands. “What do you think he’ll do?”
“Oh, he’ll be angry with me. That’s for certain. But he’ll get over it.” I looked at Carrie. “You’ll have to help him.”
“But you . . .”
“He doesn’t love me,” I said. “If you’d heard any of what he said to me out there, you wouldn’t have heard the word love at all. Not once. He talked more about me serving God than he did about my becoming his wife.”
“Then why does he want you to go with him?”
“He thinks I’m supposed to be his partner on his mission. It’s not my mission, though. He can’t see that. You care for him, though. You can cheer him up better than I can.”
“You don’t mind?”
I shook my head. “He’s like a brother to me, nothing more. This fighting has been hard on him. Leaning on his faith is helping him get through it. Maybe after the war you can help him come back to himself, see that God still loved him the way he was before.”
“What if he wants me to be like you?”
“Don’t let him do it, Carrie. Just keep being yourself. His resolve is strong. You’ll have to be stronger.”
Martha sat on her cot and sighed. “Will we see each other again?”
“We live through this war, God willing, yes,” I said. “You’ll always be welcome at Catalpa Valley.”
As the day of the split came closer, a curtain of melancholy dropped over us. We packed and prepared as usual, but we couldn’t hide the sorrow of losing each other. I felt as though I were leaving my sisters. I’d miss their comfort at the end of the battle days. The feeling was especially keen when, in spite of our hopeful thoughts of previous days, we began to doubt whether we would all cross paths again. Carrie and Martha had become my kinswomen. Silas, as broken as the relation might be, was as good as my brother. We had toiled together and developed genuine affection and admiration for each other. It was another kind of love—again in abundance!—by which I had been made whole. I didn’t feel as singular as Silas thought me to be. I felt connected, indeed bonded, to all around me, the soldiers included. The melancholy taught me this. I couldn’t have felt the split so deeply if I hadn’t been so invested in this unusual community.
On the morning of the movement east, I helped Carrie and Martha load their things into the wagon we knew Silas would drive. They went to say their goodbyes to Mother B., who would be traveling west with me. I was standing nearby when Silas brought the horses and hitched them to the wagon.
“You ready?”
I patted the neck of one of the horses, grateful for the warmth of its body on my hands. “I’m not going to Atlanta, Silas.”
“You just gonna let me go, betray everything we been through together?”
“Betray? I never promised you anything. And what we been through, we went through because we happened to be in the same place at the same time and helped each other as friends.”
“What about your betrayal of God? What he wants for you?”
“I act in the name of what God wants for me! My purpose is here and, if I can get back to it, with the land my papa left me.” I looked away from him. “And there are other things I need to know.”
“Like what?”
“Nothing you need to know.”
“You gonna go looking for that white man.”
“I can’t go looking for him. But I do want to know what’s happened to him. It would ease my mind.”
He climbed into the wagon and gathered the reins. “I’m gonna pray for you, Jeannette. You could be on your way to hell for all I know, but I’ll pray for you.”
I flinched at his thought of my damnation, but I wouldn’t let his stubbornness keep me from parting well with him.
“Goodbye, Silas. I’ll pray for you too.”
Carrie and Martha returned. We said our farewells, and I helped them into the wagon. They joined the noise and movement of the procession of soldiers and supplies making their way onto the road. I felt so small in the middle of the whirl of change. But the change brought on a bit of energy and excitement. I realized I was hopeful in a way that I hadn’t been for a very long time. I went back into my tent, sat on my cot next to my bag, and waited. I had to settle myself and remember that I wasn’t getting in a wagon and going straight to Catalpa Valley. And yet home felt like it was right there, on the horizon, and within reach.
Chapter 18
I remembered Vicksburg from Papa’s maps. It was an important shipping port, especially for cotton. I knew a person could take a train from Vicksburg and travel west. Or take a steamboat up and down the Mississippi. Back then it had been a name on the flat paper, written in pretty script. But approaching Vicksburg from the north in the winter of 1862, I could see it was not flat at all. Vicksburg itself was like a fortress that rose up and lorded over the Mississippi from magnificent bluffs. Such high ground, I thought. From what I knew of history, it seemed the longest and toughest battles of any war involved high ground like a hill or a castle. My stomach ached when I saw the city in the distance. I didn’t like thinking about what was to come.