A Heartbeat Away: Quilts of Love Series (14 page)

She folded the letter back and felt the first spike of heat in her cheeks. She’d had no business reading something so personal without his knowledge, even if he had seemed open to the idea of her finishing the letter. She smoothed the stiff paper, then put it back in the haversack for safekeeping.

Jim returned as the sun grew hotter with an armful of produce, fresh from the ground judging by the mud clinging to the carrots. The women didn’t ask and neither did Joe, where Jim
had gotten the food or the berries. They ate with thankfulness and need, the women making sure Joe and Jim had the bigger portions. What they didn’t eat Jim stored under a floorboard, along with a fresh supply of willow bark.

Beth made Joe drink a tea made of the bark. He felt no better than before, but no worse either. Just weak and sick. Not even the little bit of food Gerta forced on him seemed to relieve the weakness. Gerta fussed over his shoulder for a long time. After taking off the bandage, she’d frowned over the wound and he feared what the dark look meant. He didn’t ask.

Silence stretched long as tension pulled at each of them. They rested, waiting for Riley to arrive, expecting a shell to destroy the blessed silence accompanied by the rattle of guns and screams of war. Already worn nerves stretched tighter.

Joe pushed himself to stay awake. He needed to get stronger. To force his muscles to work as they should. Jim fashioned another crutch, notching the crosspiece and he offered to help. He found that though he couldn’t grip the wood, his arm could trap it and hold it still while his left hand worked. The work was tedious and frustrating but he forced himself to do it for much the same reason he suspected Gerta had gone in search of more herbs and Beth huddled over the quilt blocks, her needle rising and falling. Work was normal and a diversion from worry.

He rested against the wall at his back and let himself enjoy the weak sunshine and quiet. “Where are we?”

Jim stopped working on forming the long, smooth stick. “In the woods northeast of Sharpsburg.”

Beth continued to sew, oblivious to his stare or his question. He admired the way her dark hair shone in the stream of sunshine. He smiled at the messy braid that lay over her shoulder. She was beautiful. An angel. Her selflessness matched that
of her grandmother and he wondered if it was that easy to become enamored of a nurse.

Joe turned his head and saw Jim’s sober expression merge into a sly lifting of the corners of his mouth. Joe ducked his head. It wasn’t hard to know what the black man must have thought catching him staring at Beth like that. He smoothed over the wood caught beneath his right arm, determined he would not look up again.

“You’re feeling better?” Jim asked, a trace of amusement in his voice.

“Some.” And he did. Just the act of sitting up had helped. He still felt hot, but determined to help Jim instead of sleeping. He tried to lift his right arm. What had been numbness the previous day in his arm had become a burning sensation today. He wondered if Gerta’s care of the wound had helped.

“I’ve known about this cabin for a long time. Knew it would be a good place to go,” Jim offered.

“Why didn’t you leave me back with the rest of them?”

Jim’s eyes widened, his glance back at Beth seemed to say something. “You’re not in uniform and you saved the others. Didn’t seem right to leave you when staying might mean you’d lose that arm.”

He suspected Jim’s reasoning left a deeper story untold but he didn’t press.

“It might be wise for you to stay here with him, Jim.”

Joe swung his head toward Beth, gulped at the picture of loveliness she made, haloed by the light. He lowered his eyes. This was no time to mire his emotions with another woman. Not when he still had to decide about Meredith. And then there was Ben’s death . . .

All at once, he lost what little strength he’d had. He could feel the room begin a slow spin. Jim was beside him, guiding him down. Beth, too, fussed. Her hands against his cheeks. He
didn’t want to think anymore, but when he closed his eyes the trickle of images became a torrent.

He was being dragged by Ben, wounded, bleeding. They had sought refuge in the woods in a dilapidated structure not more than a shack with a narrow loft. They’d huddled there, Ben working over his wound when they heard shuffling, muffled voices, and a man’s tormented scream. They had stumbled upon the hiding place of three blacks—a woman, a man, and an older man who was losing his mind and slowing them down. They were lost and fearful and so close to the North. Ben had sought to reassure them that he could help them
.

In the dark of the night, they’d led them from the shack. A figure loomed up in front of them, gun aimed at them. Ben backed up a step, grunted his name and rank, but shots rang out, catching Ben. Twisting him. His face contorted and Joe’s muscles tensed as he reached to catch his brother. There was a wrench of pain in his shoulder as his own wound did not bear the stress and broke open. For a brief moment he’d stared up at the shooter. One glimpse before the man turned and walked away
.

Joe gasped and stiffened, the memory shattering. He cradled his head in his hand, a cry stabbing from his throat.

“Joe?”

He opened his eyes to Beth’s concerned face and didn’t know what to say, even as the image snapped into place, heavy with truth. A Confederate had killed his brother. Shot him dead right before Joe’s eyes. He drew air into his lungs, unable to speak. Felt himself lifted, or was he falling?

“Joe?”

Beth hovered over him, those beautiful eyes filled with anxiety. Her hands smoothed over his face and he longed to grasp them, to still them so they could not distract him. He had to think. The last piece of the puzzle was there. Out of reach,
slipping away even as he tried to rein it closer and force it to yield its secret. “Why didn’t you shoot me?”

“Sh.”

His hand clamped down on Beth’s wrist. She had to understand. “Why didn’t he shoot me too?”

Confusion marred Beth’s features, or was that pain? Jim’s hand peeled his fingers from Beth’s wrists, pressed him back onto the ground. “You’ll not be hurting, Miss Beth.”

Hurting? Had he hurt her? He hadn’t meant to, it was just that the memory cut so deep. He turned his face away from them both.

Gerta leaned over Joe, eyes missing nothing in her quick assessment. “He should sleep now.” She sat back on her heels. “I agree with Beth, Jim. The less you’re seen the better.”

Beth rubbed at her left wrist, shocked both by the tightness of Joe’s grip and the desperation in his voice. Who should have shot him? It was like he saw her but didn’t see her.

“Fever does this sometimes. Makes them see things that aren’t there. And he’s been through so much . . .” Gerta said as she rolled to her knees. Jim aided her to her feet. “Sometimes dreams trap a person.” Her expression filled with compassion as she watched Joe’s sleeping form. “We can only imagine the horrors these men have witnessed.”

A squeaking rattle came from outside. Riley was approaching the shack. Beth didn’t want to leave Joe. But the grim expression on Riley’s face, coupled with Gerta’s tizzied roundup of the herbs she’d collected that morning, reinforced her will.

“Riley?” Gerta’s question wore heavy on the man, demanding an explanation for the distress pinching his features.

“It’s much worse than we thought. The heat of day will not help and we cannot move fast enough. Some are dying where they lie.” Riley averted his face and Beth could see his fight to retain his composure. With slow movements, he came to the side of the wagon and offered his hand to Gerta. “They torched the Mummas’. The house and barn are gone. Along Hog Trough there is nothing but . . .”

Gerta patted Riley’s hand before planting her foot to haul herself onto the wagon seat. She paused and met Beth’s gaze.

It was the deciding moment. Her grandmother was asking something of her. Based on what she’d seen the previous day, Beth wasn’t at all sure she could go out onto those fields, criss-crossed with dilapidated fences and view up close the devastation she’d only seen at a distance the previous day.

Despite the rest of the night, strain and fatigue showed in Gerta’s face. “I would like to see,” Gerta said a moment before she pulled herself into the wagon and settled her tattered, blood-stained skirt around her ankles. Gerta sat prim, as if dressed in her Sunday best and ready for a nice buggy ride. The stoop of her shoulders and lines of strain around her mouth the only sign of the woman’s discomfort.

Nurses were expected to offer comfort and help the wounded. It was on this battlefield that Beth would receive the majority of her training. Her stomach knotted with dread. Gerta’s gaze went over her, her face placid, calm. If her grandmother could do it, surely she could as well. If she could offer comfort to one man, as she had to Joe, it would ease the darkness that had inhabited her soul since Leo’s death.

Beth shifted her weight. Riley waited, expectant, offering his hand, and all she could think about was her mother’s expression, her sadness. The way her parents looked at her. Sometimes it felt as though they were looking right through her. She closed her eyes and envisioned the quilt, the colorful
triangles against the dark background, leading, pointing, to something bright and wonderful.

But she had to continue the journey. She’d taken the first step by nursing the many Confederates brought to their door. No. She’d taken the first step by overcoming her anger to take care of Joe. It was up to her to continue the journey toward that bright hope. Whatever it was. She wanted it, needed to feel the hope she had once felt, and though she didn’t understand, she knew that this was yet another step on the path.

She glanced at Jim.

“You go on. I’ll take good care of Joe.”

Embarrassed that Jim so easily read her worry, she allowed Riley to help her into the wagon and settled her skirts over her bad leg, never once looking back at the cabin or Jim.

Joe’s head throbbed and he stroked his fingers along his brow to relieve the tension that had settled behind his eyes. He remembered his dream about Ben and groaned. The cabin had grown as hot as he felt, the beams of sunlight creeping along the floor ever closer to him with each passing minute. He heard a movement and expected to feel Beth’s fingers along his face, testing for fever, instead Jim’s voice cut through his misery.

“You hungry?”

“No.” He’d been so used to low rations, or no rations, of fending for himself along the March into the Shenandoah Valley. The steady supply of food had been more than he’d had in a long time.

“Miz Gerta says the fever makes you say crazy things. You hurt Miss Beth with asking why they didn’t shoot you, too.”

He remembered none of it save the dream. Or was it a dream? But he recalled it play-by-play and knew it was yet another piece of his memory’s puzzle. “Someone shot my brother.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know.”

“They said he saved their lives. That you did. It was the reason they risked theirs for you.”

Joe’s head snapped up. Jim continued to run his knife down the long branch he was smoothing for another crutch. He had risked his life for . . . who?
The slaves
. How he wished he could have known them, their names. He wondered how far they had dragged him. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t recall anything after Ben was shot until he woke up in Gerta’s home.

“We found them in the woods.”

“Where was you?”

“Over the mountain.”

“Well, you Rebs lost that one from what I’ve heard. It’s why you’re here. The Graybacks overwhelmed Harper’s Ferry though.”

He could rouse himself to be happy for the men of his regiment. The extra clothes and shoes, guns and ammunition would have been a God-send.

“Where’d you get shot?”

Joe rolled to his good side, facing the black man and watching the slow move of his hands back and forth with the blade of his pocketknife.

They’d been marching toward that gap in the mountain from the meadow outside of Frederick. He and Ben had been caught in a skirmish with five others. He told Jim as much. They’d been in the woods somewhere halfway up the mountain, Ben nursing his shoulder in the little shack.