A Heartbeat Away: Quilts of Love Series (10 page)

Shells and gunfire exploded. Screams punched the air from both the injured brought to them and those outside. Another shell beat at their house, hitting close enough to rock the floor. Emma screamed, and the men joined her chorus, some trying to rise, others only groaning their terror. Beth covered her ears and shrank back against the wall, feeling it shudder. Smoke and dust rose in a cloud.

“Get into the cellar,” Gerta yelled at her.

Beth and Emma exchanged glances, each knowing the other could not abandon the elderly woman.

Beth spoke first. “You can’t do this yourself.”

Gerta’s blue eyes held hers. “You’re not afraid?”

She was terrified, expecting any minute to be her last. But her vulnerability didn’t match that of the men in their care. “I’m staying.”

“Check on Jim. He’s digging another hole.”

There was no time to think, only to act. Another shell screamed and landed, piercing her ears until she couldn’t hear her feet on the wooden planks of the porch as she hurried down the step. No time to consider the danger that being outdoors posed. The black man worked fast, muscles straining as he plunged the shovel deep into the earth, stomped it down deep with his big feet, and pulled a shovelful of the rich soil from the ground. As soon as he saw her coming, he motioned her away.

“Don’t need nothing. Get on inside.” He stilled, eyes flicking down the road. “ ’Nother wagon coming.”

It meant more wounded. As the sun climbed higher in the sky, the sounds raged on. Beth kept moving, indicating places to put more men, afraid being still would awaken her to what movement muffled. A Confederate surgeon’s assistant arrived and began sorting the men based on the severity of their wounds. He commandeered the dining table and set up a makeshift operating table in the open air.

A woman ran down the street, hair flying behind her, under each arm a sack leaking grain as she ran. Two little boys yanked the hand of an even smaller girl trailing behind them, her legs stretching to meet the pace, their faces showing their panic.

The urge to join them tempted Beth. She couldn’t think about it or she would do it. She was needed. Jim loomed in front of her. “Get on with ya, Missy. Send Emma on out to help.”

She swallowed. Dust floated through the air like a fog and settled a dry layer in her throat. She coughed and lunged for the house just as another wagon stopped. Stretcher bearers passed her en route to the house, droplets of blood marking their grim paths. She lifted her skirts to free her feet.

A maelstrom of activity greeted her. More groaning, one man screaming at the top of his lungs. Confederate men nodded to her as they passed. One planted himself right in front of her.

“Best place for you, ma’am, is far away from here.” His drawl was pronounced, covering each word with warm syrup. His eyes were kind, his countenance gim.

“I live here. I want to help.”

“The South?”

“Side makes no difference. They are all men needing someone.”

The man stared at her with a bittersweet expression that seemed out of place. “Then we welcome your bravery and thank you for your sacrifice.”

“I make it for the Union as well.”

The man nodded. “I understand.”

She scrambled inside in time to see Gerta dipping out more hot water. “Bandages. Anything you can find. Blankets, linens, dresses . . .”

She ran up the steps and pulled down her skirts and snapped the folds out of her best nightgowns, forcing herself not to think. Emma stopped at the doorway with an armful of men’s clothes. Beth’s grandfather’s, probably stored in the attic.

“I’m leaving these here. There’s more. She wants them ripped up too.”

A shell boomed and the side of the house rocked. Emma threw the clothes into the air and immediately broke into tears.

“Make it stop. God, make it stop!”

Beth knelt in front of the woman, her own tears breaking the surface. Another hit and the window shattered, shards tinkling over the spot she’d just vacated. Smoke billowed into the room.

“Fire. There’s fire!” Emma surged to her feet. Beth grabbed her hand and held it firm, but Emma yanked free and bolted out of the room.

Air leached from Joe’s throat as he pushed himself upright. At least the old man’s ranting about Rebels and “seceshers” had died down with the last blast. The words had rained down on him most of the morning, rising in their vileness when the blasting was at its worst, lessening as the battle seemed to fade and the man’s voice cracked with the strain.

He’d been quiet for too long now and Joe determined to make sure he wasn’t harmed. It was semidark, the low light of the flickering candle Jim had lit unable to reach the width and depth of the cellar. Joe squinted, careful not to stare directly into the flame, but beyond it toward the last place he’d heard the sound of the man’s voice. The man was there, slumped in a chair. Joe debated going to him, but his ears still burned with the hateful words against the South that mirrored his hatred for the North. But the man was still, too still.

Joe struggled to a sitting position. He’d not seen Beth all morning and he wondered, even hoped, that she had left for shelter far away from the frenetic chaos of war. He heard enough tramping around above his head to know many more occupied the house than had the previous day. The fury of the battle was only slightly muffled by the cellar. He felt trapped in the hole, afraid to be in the thick of the battle but equally afraid to flee and brand himself a coward. A continuous rattle of gunfire and screams rocked and shook the house. Pebbles of dirt and dust filled the room until his lungs felt clogged with the debris. Men moaned and screamed above him. Joe used his sleeve to wipe beads of sweat from his brow.

He squeezed his eyes shut, his chest tight with anxiety. Any minute, and the house could crash down around him. He forced his mind to other things. He inhaled slowly, feeling like his mind would splinter in a thousand different directions.

The creak of the cellar doors hailed someone’s arrival. Two men, a stretcher between them, surged down the steps and laid a man on the floor. They left and returned with another. The fetid stench of unwashed bodies permeated the air. The old man remained miraculously quiet.

Three men in total were delivered to the cellar, and on the heels of the stretcher bearers’ exit, Beth, a black woman at her side, came down the cellar steps. She appeared to be cradling the black woman, whose cries were audible, if not hysterical.

Joe lay his head down and swallowed, lips working. It had been a long time since he’d uttered a prayer. There was blackness in his soul. He knew it. After Sue died, there had been no merciful God. His mother’s death, his father’s mental decline, the destruction of all he’d known by the Union had congealed, then hardened into hatred. He had never understood God’s hand in taking Sue, but he’d seen enough death and suffering since joining the Army of Northern Virginia to know God was Someone to whom a dying man must make his peace. His mother had pressed the Bible into his hands, as a memory of home and a symbol of her faith. Her death had been the propulsion for him and Ben to join the army and spend the rage they harbored against the enemy.

And now Ben was gone, too.

He tried to remember home and wrap himself in the anger he’d felt before joining, but there was no anger left. He swung his legs to the floor and pulled himself up, gritting his teeth against the pain and numbness of his shoulder. The numbness scared him the most. It marked him as useless. Shells rattled in a constant barrage now. The boom of cannons gave him
strength as he lunged for his haversack. His shoulder muscles contracted tight and hard. His weakened limbs almost gave way as he tried to straighten. He panted from exhaustion and dragged the haversack to within arm’s reach of the cot. His knees gave way and he slammed onto the thin mattress. The jolt thrust fresh pain through his body and beaded sweat on his forehead, which trickled down into his eyebrows and burned his cracked lips.

He rested, heart slamming with the exertion and fear. More dust lifted to obscure his vision and choke him as the cannonading became a constant roar. The men writhed on the floor, calling for someone to care for them. For help he could not give. With shaking hand, he lifted the flap of the haversack. He’d been writing a letter, he remembered, to . . . A hot hand squeezed him and his head throbbed. He lay back and wept, disgusted with his weakness, his inability to move, the uselessness of his right arm, and the dark, cold fear.

He felt the presence of her before he felt her touch and heard her voice. The constant noise of the battle had waned. Dust still filled the air, making Beth seem a hazy presence. But he welcomed it.

“How are you doing?”

He blinked at the brightness of the lamp she carried.

“Sorry.”

The light receded a bit, and he turned to face her. She sat there as if every drop of energy had drained from her body and puddled on the floor and she had no way to claim it again. Yet she was here. She had stayed to help.
He
wanted to help. To ease the burden hunching her shoulders.

“Beth?”

She raised her eyes to his, her gaze clinging, tears pooled on her lower lashes. Another shell rocked the house and she was up, running toward the steps before he could say anything.
His nerves were drawn tight by the whimpers from the men around him. He was shattering and he knew it. Struggling up onto his elbow, his right arm almost numb, his shoulder protesting the movement, he sat on the edge of the bed again, willing strength into his legs and body. He smashed his fist into the mattress and eased himself to his bare feet, the cold earthen floor barely registering. His world spun. He reached out to the wall, his legs shaking with the effort. He needed to check on the others. See if he knew them. They were on his side. And the old man, too, needed someone.

Joe’s legs quaked. He fought for equilibrium before he slid to his knees. A gasp slipped out at the impact. Pain pushed blackness into his vision and his consciousness shrank to a pinprick.

Gerta protested all the way down the cellar steps. “It’s nothing more than a scratch.”

“You’re bleeding,” Beth said, countering the woman’s persistence, thankful that the shelling had stopped, allowing them respite.

“And I feel fine.”

“You’re exhausted.”

“Everyone is.”

“Then use this time to rest. The surgeon seems to have everything well in hand.”

Gerta snorted, the most unladylike response Beth had ever heard from her grandmother. “I’ll rest, but there will be more. It’s not over.”

There was nothing more to say. Her grandmother would die trying rather than curl up in a corner. And Beth had good reason to fear. Gerta’s color wasn’t good, her breathing seemed more labored than usual.

“Where’s Emma?” Gerta asked.

“She’s down here.” Another worry. The black woman seemed on the verge of hysteria. “I sent Jim down to be with her.”

“Good, I didn’t like the way that fancy captain was eyeing them.”

Beth helped her grandmother down that last step, and Gerta rushed forward and knelt at the side of one of the new arrivals who had yet to be given attention. Beth pushed back a sigh. No matter how much she harped or expressed concern, her grandmother’s heart was set on helping. She turned her head and saw Jim in the corner, lifting a limp form in his arms.

Joe.

“Found him like this,” Jim murmured as she came to the big man’s side. “Came to get the lantern, and there he was.”

Beth heard something else in Jim’s voice. “Emma?” she whispered.

“Told her to go to Killiansburg Cave. There’s a steady stream of people on the road, running for all they worth.” He turned his face away. “She took Mr. Nisewander.”

“He didn’t put up a fight?”

“No fight left in him. He could hardly talk. Like his mind had left him. Emma led him away like a sheep.”

“You should have gone, too.”

He nodded. “Should have. Probably wish I had before too long, but I couldn’t leave seein’ as Miz Gerta needs me.”

Beth checked the bandage on Joe’s shoulder, grateful to see it remained clean. She turned, digging in the deep pocket of her apron for another roll of bandages and knelt beside Gerta, biting back a weary sigh.

“Water?” Jim spoke the single word as a question.

“And the surgeon,” Gerta responded. “Be my best guess he’ll want to take this leg off.”

Beth turned her face away at the mangled mess of the limb. She’d seen so much more in the last few days than she’d ever experienced before. Gerta moved on to the man next to him. She put out a hand to help her descent and slipped in a dark
puddle. Her hand came up bloody, and she rubbed it down her blood-stained apron. Beth’s eyes went over the man, trying to assess the wound, seeing nothing wrong with the man’s torso, or his arms or face. She looked at her grandmother, Gerta’s steady gaze meeting hers.

“He’s gone.”

“But . . . ?”

Gerta rose, the lower part of her skirt soaked with blood, and it came to Beth in slow degrees what her grandmother didn’t bother to explain. The blood said it all. He’d been shot in the back, perhaps in his head.